CS6 Premiere Pro - Warp Stabilizer- Does not work for me yet

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Warp Stabilizer: Please: What's happening here? Not working................

Upgraded to Premiere Pro CS 6 (as I don't have After Effects) specifically in order to stabilize video. Thus far, from my experience, it produces a clip which is much worse than the original after being subject to the analyzing/stabilizing processes!

How is that possible? It baffles me! Go figure. Hence this post.

Camcorder is Canon A1s or A1. Format is HDV/.m2t. Rolling shutter issue?

The preliminary analyzing process equal to or even slower than rendering. A 5.5 minute clip takes hours! CS 6 is slow compared to CS 5.5 to begin with.

I record services in a house of worship. The clip I'll use as an example is one I shot recently of a lady kneeling down and praying. I tried every improved setting that I could think of such as no motion, advanced detailed analysis and the like in addition to the default settings.

Shot composition: Subject zoomed in on fairly tight with part of a grand piano in the background.

Since I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist & my tripod shot somehow moved a slight bit up and down while shooting which created this issue, I wanted to make the movement so it was not so noticeable. It wasn't extreme, just obvious to my trained eye.

After things were "stabilized/corrected, here was the result:

The foreground/main object is ok, however anything around or behind that looks like it's footage shot handheld from a rolling deck, on very tumultuous ocean which defeats the purpose. I thought subspace warp was 3d?

Any suggestions? Is Warp not up to this basic and simple task? Workable alternatives?

I wish I could down load the clip so everyone could see the before and after.

Upload size would be considerable however. A solution would be to stabailize it yourself and then show me how you were sucessfull.

Anyone willing to help me make this work? Image stabilization/correction is a key skill I need going forward. Suggestions please.

Thanks in advance.

[jagabo]

Yes, stabilizers are often confused when there's not a lot of background detail. Instead of stabilizing on the background they stabilize on objects moving in the foreground. If the stabilizer has the option to specify an area on which to base the stabilization, use that.

[poisondeathray]

Shot composition: Subject zoomed in on fairly tight with part of a grand piano in the background.

Was the shot in the process of zooming, or already zoomed in ?

The foreground/main object is ok, however anything around or behind that looks like it's footage shot handheld from a rolling deck, on very tumultuous ocean which defeats the purpose. I thought subspace warp was 3d?

It depends how bad the "jello" or rolling shutter effects were in the original. Warp stabilizer probably trying to compensate, but not doing a very good job. If there it was minimal "jello" in the original shot you should use method=>position instead of subspace warp. (subspace warp will attempt to correct for rolling shutter artifacts, dividing up the picture - thats why you get this "ocean" effect )

Warp stabilizer might not be the right tool for this - it's more suitable for smoothing out handheld shots, not rock stable tripod shots

If you can upload even a lower resolution, lower quality proxy version of the original , it will provide more information than a text description. A video is worth 10,000 words

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

7 second represebtative clip.

Not the best or the worse section of a longer 5-6 minute video which is full of the same problems.

Thanks for any assistance.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

The shot was zoomed in and I presumed it at that time to be steady which turned out not to be the case.

Hope this is correctable!

Thanks

[jagabo]

The lack of sharp detail in the background will make this difficult to deshake. And the very low frequency of the shakes will make it even harder.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

If you want, I can give you a much more" wild" movement-wise example from the same master clip.

[poisondeathray]

Warp stabilizer isn't suitable for this scenario for the reasons mentioned above

Normally what is used for a "rock stable" shot is a point tracker - such as the one in after effects. You choose the points to track, so you can purposely avoid foreground objects such as the singer in this example . But examples of other problems you often encounter are objects like cars, people, moving in front of the camera that may confuse the tracker. Although you choose the points with point trackers, they have difficult "locking on" to blurred backgrounds and objects moving in front may "dislodge" track points.

The solution is to use a planar tracker like mocha (comes with AE) that track planes (walls, the ground ). So "impossible to track material" is often made possible with planar trackers because they don't lock onto specific pixels, they look for relationships and features along planes - so even shallow DoF, blurred background footage can be tracked . Objects moving in front can be blocked out with mattes

Whenever you "stabilize" a shot, you're left with black borders around the edges. The higher in magnitude the maximum deviation, the larger the borders . You have various "border fill" options , like zooming in, cropping . Other stabilizers often have options like mirror edges or some even track parts of other frames to fill in the gaps

[jagabo]

I don't think a sample with more movement will be of much help. The main problem is a lack of sharp edges in the background for a deshaker to lock on to.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Thanks for the detailed explanation and the reasons behind it.

Do you have any other reccomendations for a planar tracker other thn AE which bought seperately is pricy?

Are you saying the Warp's ability to correctly stabilize is a crapshoot dependant the scenes particulars?

Does Mercalli or another alternative offer more hope?

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Where does one draw the line between sharp edges and edges which won't be usuable?

How much detail is required?

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Maybe I need to buy replacement tripods as apparently they are not totally locked down and are somewhat loose?

[poisondeathray]

Do you have any other reccomendations for a planar tracker other thn AE which bought seperately is pricy?

Blender has a planar tracker now, but I don't know how good it is. Mocha is kind of like the "gold standard" for FX work and scenarios like these

Are you saying the Warp's ability to correctly stabilize is a crapshoot dependant the scenes particulars?

Yes . But that' s true of any software stabilizer . Each has pros/cons . None of them correct rolling shutter "jello" artifacts well

Does Mercalli or another alternative offer more hope?

Mercalli does have a "rock stable" setting - I suspect it will have problems for the same reasons (it will lock onto points like eyes, nose, etc... and as the head moves, it will cause unwanted motions in the wrong directions) . It has no precise way of distinguishing foreground and background objects

Maybe I need to buy replacement tripods as apparently they are not totally locked down and are somewhat loose?

You tell me - I'm confused as to how this could have happened on a tripod ? Was there any other contact ? Vibrations, kids running around.

This clip had subtle movement, not large bumps - very bizarre

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

It sounds like one needs to have an ample/prominent/sizable background in order to function.

What amazes me is this:

Tripod is supposively locked down.

Very little movement overall other than body parts.

Modest amount of movement. Epic fail..............

Does the light level available in the shot have any bearing?

Does it not distinquish between the foreground and background because of focal concerns?

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

I suspect what cause this is this:

pod not 100 percent locked down and tight.

pod is old and has unintended slack in there somewhere so it now wanders up and down unintentionally unless the arm is held throughout.

[poisondeathray]

It sounds like one needs to have an ample/prominent/sizable background in order to function.

Not necessarily. Even if you have a large background with a tiny mouse in the foreground, movement of that mouse can skew results - it depends what the tracker "locks" on to

I have used the warp stabilizer in AE since it came out (it started with AE only, wasn't available for premiere) . My experiences with it are mediocre. It's decent for handheld shots , it smooths everything out - that's about it . Personally I use mercalli for those scenarios (and I just gave it a quick whirl, it failed miserably on your example, perhaps some tweaking might improve it a bit... but...)

None of these push 1 button stabilizers are going to give you good rock stable results . Those programs I mentioned require some manual input like drawing masks showing where to track ,or not to track etc... and it has to be done per scene. It's not like warp or mercalli or those sort of stabilizers that do everything automatically for every shot.

What amazes me is this:

Tripod is supposively locked down.

Yeah.. I would look into that, maybe do some tests at home before your next shoot.

Does the light level available in the shot have any bearing?

Only if you are at the extremes - eg few stops over or underexposed .

Does it not distinquish between the foreground and background because of focal concerns?

No computer algorithm can distinguish between fore/back ground effectively hence the need for human user input with masks etc....

[budwzr]

Since the main subject is stable, I would float her and blur the background, or take a snap of the background if the shot stays the same throughout.

[jagabo]

The deshaker doesn't really distinguish between foreground and background. I was just using those terms because you want the deshaker to use the background as the basis for deshaking, not the woman speaking in the foreground. Generally, brighter video is more easily deshaken.

[budwzr]

This is a quick and dirty mask, but it will work if you refine it, feather it out a bit.

[dn8lane]

Similar problem but Different. Does this happen to anyone????
I analyze the footage and it works for a sec then large balck boarders appear around the footage cropping most of the image. I shot the footage with a steadi-rig and my 60D and it looked pretty good but for some reason this happens. Is it a premiere bug??? Plus I can used the stabilizer before no problem with the same set up.

Please, HELP!

[smrpix]

Similar problem but Different.

Then please start a similar but different thread.

One or two big bumps could easily result in those borders if you leave the effect in it's default Stabalize, Crop, Auto-Scale settings. You have to twirl down the options and play with the parameters until you find something acceptable.