Stabilizing a shaky video pan
by Kristian Pettyjohn
on
Apr 10, 2008 at 5:57:53 am
I have some footage from the top of a mountain that pans from left to right across a valley but the problem is that the shot is shaky (but not to bad) and I don't know how to stabilize the motion in a shot that is panning 360 degrees. Anybody know how to do this in AE? I am using CS3. Thanks.
Re: Stabilizing a shaky video pan by Brian Lynn on Apr 10, 2008 at 9:39:27 pm
Check out these tutorials on Set Extensions, and Demon Face warp by Andrew Kramer. By combining the concept of tracking multiple points from Set Extensions, and reverse motion tracking to eliminate camera movement in Demon Face Warp, you should be able to stabalize the image fairly well.
You will likely loose edges and either have to repeat edges to hide black areas, or crop out an area you like from the middle of the stabalized video.
I've just started with a new tool called SynthEyes. Its a tracking tool that can interact with AE in someways, but it also includes the ability to stablize shots with many different options. Go to their website as well and watch the video on how SynthEyes stabalizes a shot. The arial helicopter video stabalization is the one that comes to mind. It will include some concepts you might want to think about as well.
SynthEyes itself might be the tool you're looking for. There is a lot of good info on their site as to what the program is capable of. Check it out, if it works for you it just might be worth the cost for some of the features, like (I forget what its really called...) "auto-crop". Basically it automatially maximizes the viewable image you can crop to based on where the stabalized image twists in and out of frame, not allowing the frame to hit black ever.
