Re: How to smooth footage in shake?

HI,

David makes some good points here. I'd like to add a few comments.

I have been working on some hand held shots that have both low frequency bobbing and weaving as well as high frequency jittery shake. There are not a whole lot of pans or any kind of tracking shots so my job is a bit easier than yours, but what I found has worked for me is this...

I run the shot through Smoothcam. Here I set the clip mode to union, steady mode to lock and depending on the shot, I may turn on Perspective lock under the lockdown section. This can create a remarkably stable image that moves within an over sized frame (okay... I know that doesn't make much sense, but it's 4am and I'm not quite awake yet.)

I then track the shot using stabilize. (I would follow David's suggestions on getting good tracks.) Once you have the track, turn on the curve view and load the track into the curve editor. Apply the smooth operator to the curve - I've been setting it to 15 and applying it a few times until the curve looks nice.

Then set the inverse transform for the Stabilize node to Match and apply it to the locked down footage. This will give you a smoothed out version of your camera shake. You will then have to do a bit of cropping and fitting so you don't have black edges bouncing into your frame.

I'm not sure how this will work on a shot where the scene is tracking past rapidly, but it has worked surprisingly well on relatively static shots.

I hope this helps,

Lars