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fzw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2013
8
0
Frustrated with it not doing what I want. Would be nice if there was a way to select what is supposed to keep stable. Talent jumping & bobbing their head back & forth is making it completely unusable, so trying to manually stabilize.
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,541
1,653
Redondo Beach, California
Frustrated with it not doing what I want. Would be nice if there was a way to select what is supposed to keep stable. Talent jumping & bobbing their head back & forth is making it completely unusable, so trying to manually stabilize.

The filter loks at the background, I think. It tries to correct camera motion. THis is NOT what the filter was designed for. What you need to do is keyframe the crop box. A lot of work.

This should have been caught while shooting.
 

adamneer

macrumors 6502
Apr 18, 2013
420
747
Chicago, IL
i dont know what your software availability is, but i know the warp stabilizer in Premiere and After Effects does what you are describing in many cases. there is really no way to fix this using the effect itself, with the exception of changing the options for smoothness and changing type of stabilization from warp to position, or vice-versa.

the only way to get a good stabilization of the type of movement you are describing, outside of actually stabilizing your camera better in the first place is to use motion tracking, such as in After Effects. It will allow you to track the point of motion you want to keep steady, and then it will use that data to keyframe motion, keeping your tracked point centered. you would then manually scale the clip until it is completely framed with no cropping. additionally, in the case of trying to stabilize a motion shot, such as that from a camera slider, you would keyframe the motion to recreate the linear movement you originally captured via the slider. otherwise, you would end up with a clip that begins cropped on one side of the action and ends cropped on the other.
 

fzw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2013
8
0
thanks adamneer, that was the kind of thing i was thinking of, but i have FCP6 & dont think it has anything like that.
 

fzw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2013
8
0
ok motion has that but its not working... am I missing something.
import into clip, apply stabilizer & analyze motion behaviors, set tracker, click analyze, connect stabilizer to analyze...
 

Chad3eleven

macrumors regular
Dec 11, 2012
144
0
Do you have After Effects? If so you may have Mocha AE. Depending on your shot and what you need it to do you can track it in Mocha AE, stabalize it.. then send the data back to AE. and even FCP and render it to see how it turns out.
 

adamneer

macrumors 6502
Apr 18, 2013
420
747
Chicago, IL
while i agree that Mocha has a better overall tracking method, i believe it would be a bit beyond the OP's current abilities. Mocha is better for matchframing, not really needed for image stabilization anyway. The built in trackers in AE and Motion aught to be just fine for most stabilization needs.

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ok motion has that but its not working... am I missing something.
import into clip, apply stabilizer & analyze motion behaviors, set tracker, click analyze, connect stabilizer to analyze...

im not sure how Motion's trackers work compared to AE, but I would assume they are pixel cluster trackers, which means they will have a small window that you'd set to whatever the most easily distinguishable object in the frame that's at the same distance from the camera as the subject you want stabilized (same depth of field). usually you will need to set the boundaries for tracking so it knows how many pixels to scan when locating your point in each frame. for faster motion, you'd need to make this box larger, since your object will move more per frame than with slower motion. generally, you'd set your tracker box, then allow the program to track a few frames to make sure it has an accurate point of reference, and then if all looks good, let it track the entire shot. after its done, you'd apply the tracking data to your clip using the stabilize x and y setting. you shouldn't need to stabilize your rotation, but if you absolutely must, it will give you 2 tracker boxes instead of 1 and you'd have to do the same process as noted above but utilizing 2 points that are relevant to the orientation of the clip. I urge you to look up some tutorials on all this though since I can only describe the basics of how After Effects works, and Motion could be entirely different.
 

fzw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2013
8
0
got it working... maybe software bug... but it allows me to add a tracker to the stabilizer behavior instead. also had a moving target just stabilized that & then added keyframes to keep the clip in frame.
 

adamneer

macrumors 6502
Apr 18, 2013
420
747
Chicago, IL
got it working... maybe software bug... but it allows me to add a tracker to the stabilizer behavior instead. also had a moving target just stabilized that & then added keyframes to keep the clip in frame.

so did that produce the results you were after? just curious as to whether you'd agree that this method produces better results than the simple one-click stabilizer effect
 

fzw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2013
8
0
Worked super..lot better & faster then the one click. Only way it could be better is if it was directly in FCP.
 
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