Deshaker (Gunnar) Problem - Really need help from an expert.....

[JayBTV]

Hello,

I do a lot of video editing for a band that I really enjoy. I started a Youtube channel where I rip fan posted youtube concert footage, filter, and sync with taper audio to create multi-cam amateur mixes.

Anyway I've been doing this since June and deshaker has been my most useful tool by far since 95% of what I use is handheld camera/phone shot video. I've never had a problem with it.

Well a couple weeks ago I made it to 3 shows and brought a new Panasonic SDR-S50 with a tripod. The camera has 70x optical so I stayed on the lawn and wasn't overly concerned about minor unsteadiness thinking I'd run whatever I taped through deshaker.

The problem is when I deshake the footage I got the background gets wobbly. Like you can see amps and stuff behind the band members with straight edges bend and rotate. I've tried all sorts of different settings and I can't find a way to get good results - it always makes it much worse. Even things like deinterlacing first...nothing has worked.

I'm going to another run of shows in early September and I'd really like to figure out why deshaker wouldn't work with how I taped this past time. If I need to get a new camera or something I'd definitely consider.....or perhaps there's just a setting that's messing things up (Recording speed/stabilization/etc?)....

Thanks for any insight and I could upload an AVI/WMV/etc clip if anyone would like to try it on their side....

-Jay

[2Bdecided]

Rolling shutter? (see deshaker web page)

[JayBTV]

Rolling shutter? (see deshaker web page)

Yea I tried all different %s of that (I have no idea what the exact value would be) and it really didn't make a difference.....I guess that still could be it but how precise do you have to be? I mean if I overshoot the actual % by 5% or so will that mean the difference between good results and bad results?

Or if anyone knows if the Panasonic SDR-S50 has a rolling shutter and what percentage I should try please chime in

[2Bdecided]

Google says it's CCD, so it shouldn't have a rolling shutter. Good. You can't fix rolling shutter problems completely anyway!

Is it interlaced?

What you describe is really strange - maybe you could provide a small sample for people to see what you mean? Original footage and/or deshaken.

Cheers,
David.

[JayBTV]

David,

Thanks so much for entertaining my question. Here's two clips. The first is a WMV I created from the master .MOD file with TMPGEnc Xpress. I'm pretty sure .MOD is just MPEG2. I saved it to WMV w/o deinterlacing and using the NTSC wide setting to avoid borders that would be a problem for deshaker.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gcv36x

The next is an AVI created by Virtualdub after running deshaker on the clip. I used all standard settings for deshaker but set Video Type to interlaced lower field first (I've tried all video types):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ny5f5t

See how the background rocks? I'm at a loss for why this happens but if anyone has any ideas I'd really appreciate any suggestions....

-Jay

[2Bdecided]

The source isn't interlaced (at least what you've provided isn't), so don't enable that.

Other than that, nothing magic is happening - DeShaker is just getting confused on an image with few real details, and "correcting" zooming and rotation that's not really there. There are two things you can do:

1. watch the analysis phase. See where and what it's motion tracking. If it's tracking empty space, or locking on to the singer rather than the background, then change the parameters to stop it (brightness, cropping, etc).
2. for the correction phase, don't ask it to correct zooming or rotation. Set those to zero (or minus 1 - I can't remember what disables them without going and reading the manual).

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
David.

[JayBTV]

David,

Thanks a lot for your help! I'm trying it now with a full song and it definitely seems to be working better. I think it might have been telling it to not discard anything regardless of brightness in combo with the disabling of zooming and rotation.

It's odd though because I really did spend like 3 hours messing with settings and couldn't get good results. I'm guessing when I fixed it in one place I probably broke it in another. Oh well I think the big thing is that you allayed my fears that it was a camera or interlace issue that I wasn't understanding. At least it seems to be a footage thing which maybe I can run tests on.....perhaps if I use a different "outdoor/indoor/focus" setting on the camera it'll make it easier for deshaker.

Anyway thanks!

-Jay

[JayBTV]

Another thing I just realized is that after 2+ years the author released a new version mid-July. Just upgraded and there's a few subtle changes one that lets you disable zoom/rotation in the first pass. He also changed a couple default values. I did a quick test and the results look very promising. Trying a full video now....

Just in case anyone else stumbles across this version 2.5 is out now.....It'd been so long I figured he was done w/ it.....

[2Bdecided]

Glad it's working better now. I can believe you played with deshaker for 3 hours - there must be billions of combinations of settings!

When I googled your camera, it supposedly had decent optical image stabilisation built in - are you working beyond it's limits?

Thanks for the heads up - I had no idea a new version was out.

Cheers,
David.

[JayBTV]

When I googled your camera, it supposedly had decent optical image stabilisation built in - are you working beyond it's limits?
.

It does work pretty well - there are two settings on and active and perhaps I didn't use the proper one....I had just gotten it.

But more to the point is that I was filming this concert from the back of the lawn (at an amphitheater). So I'm zoomed in at least 50x (it does 70x optical) practically all the time. At that zoom the slightest bump or guy next to me jumping up and down can still cause shake. Needless to say I'm in love with this filter....

And btw it works amazingly now. He also changed a few of the default values (the motion smoothness ones from 400 to 1000) which I think help it to be more powerful. The only time I really fiddled with those was during that 3hr trial I mentioned

Well I'm happy now that I can be confident with this camcorder for my next outing. Plus I'm able to salvage a lot of footage that would have been frustrating to watch after a period of time.....

Thanks again for having a conversation about this,

-Jay

[2Bdecided]

That's OK - glad it worked out.

I also find deshaker to work wonders sometimes - I tried it on some roller coaster footage and it was perfect. Too perfect in fact - it didn't feel like you were on a bumpy roller coaster any more!

Cheers,
David.