Image stabilitization

[build18er]

I am working on making a ski movie, and I am working with a lot of footage shot from a helmet camera. the images are 720x400 at 30 fps.

The problems is that the footage is quite shaky, as I am skiing moguls and the back country.

I am working with the adobe cs3 suite, and am unsure of any feature that could help me to keep the image from bouncing so much.

I can link over to a couple of video samples if that would help.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Snakebyte1]

After Effects has a Motion Tracking/Stabilization feature. Basically you select a given point of reference and After Effects then moves the frames position to keep that reference point centered.

It works well for hand held shots you want to stabilize. The most extreme use I put it through was when I had footage I shot while riding on an inner tube being pulled by a boat. Considering the amount of camera movement it did well with the exception of a few places.

A good place for some tutorials on using it is at Video CoPilot http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/. Several of the tuts there make use of the feature in some capacity.

[redwudz]

There is a VirtualDub filter called 'Deshaker" if you are using AVI type video. http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

You will loose some of the edge video, depending on how much the camera moves around. It's slow, but it may get you some improvement.

Alternatively, the quick-and-dirty method is to put the video in a small box on the screen where the jumping isn't so noticeable.

And welcome to our forums.

EDIT: Snakebyte1 probably has the better solution, but VD and Deshaker are freeware.

[Snakebyte1]

I believe its only After Effects Pro that has the stabilization feature. If you have the pro version I think its something to try out as its quite easy. After the stabilization you'll have to crop the edges as well, or scale up the frame. I think you'll need to do that regardless of what product you use....

If you don't have the pro version look into Virtual Dub as Redwudz suggested...