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Image Stabilize 5D Mark iii footage with Pans/Tilts & convert to 720p (from 1080p) in FCP7 or other
Hi Creative Minds!
I am working mostly in FCP7 still, so I thought I’d post this here (although I also have Adobe CS6 as I slowly switch to Premier & am open to working in an Adobe program too).
I have a 3 camera shoot. Two cameras were HVX200s (which shoot 720p) and one was a 5D Mark iii (which shot at 1080p). Both were at 24fps. The shoot was of a live music performance.
The issue I have is the 5D Mark iii footage needs to be stabilized. It was shot on a 200mm lens without IS and is has a lot of these micro shakes in it (mostly from the wait staff which constantly walked by the tripod on a slightly shaky platformed floor).
The second problem is that the shot is a medium shot, so there is pretty constant panning to follow the lead singer around and some tilting as well.
The third issue is that instead of using a stabilizer that will “scale up” the image (how the stabilizers normally work, by slightly scaling up as it zooms slightly to get rid of the shake), it would be nice to just scale the image down to 720 at the same time so it matches the HVX footage in the timeline, and maybe keeps more of it’s quality.
So my questions are:
– Is there a way to stabilize and scale down to 720p at once? And should I even do this?
– What is the best stabilizer I should be using?
– How can I account for the fact that there are intentional camera moves in the footage (slower pans & tilts)? Is there just a stabilizer that is pretty smart with this distinction?
– Should I try something in FCP7 or CS6? After effects?All advice is very much appreciated.
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4 Replies
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[David Turner] “- Is there a way to stabilize and scale down to 720p at once? And should I even do this?
– What is the best stabilizer I should be using?
– How can I account for the fact that there are intentional camera moves in the footage (slower pans & tilts)? Is there just a stabilizer that is pretty smart with this distinction?
– Should I try something in FCP7 or CS6? After effects?”What you are looking for is “Smoothcam”, which doesn’t “lock” onto a particular object, but seeks to take out sudden movements. I don’t use any of the filters supplied in Final Cut, in favour of the tools in “SHAKE” and MochaPro.
Check out MochaPro, there is a free trial, which can export tracking data to Final Cut and a number of other applications.
Image stabilization within an oversampled frame and mapped to a lower resolution is a pretty common strategy and mostly what 4.5K is good for, since the common extraction is 4096, anyway.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Hey Joseph!
Thanks for your response!
I will definitely be checking out Mocha Pro and be doing the Free Trial.
Are there any tutorials you would recommend I watch to get the hang of the program?
[Joseph Owens] “Image stabilization within an oversampled frame and mapped to a lower resolution is a pretty common strategy and mostly what 4.5K is good for, since the common extraction is 4096, anyway.”
I figured this was the case, with all this large footage flying around these days! Are there any specific tutorials I can check out to do this with my footage with MochaPro? Or even with Shake?
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Smoothcan compared to Warp Stabiliser in Pr or Ae is slow and usually poor, particularly with rolling shutter issues on DSLR. I would go with warp stabilize and that can wait until after the edit so you only work with the actual shots. Doing a complete shot will not only take time but may cause the zoom to be greater than necessary to correct aspects of reframes & whip pans that would not be in the final edit.
If you want to warp stabilize process in Ae you could export and downconvert to 720 files in one step.
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Another option would be Apple Motion. You can import the clip as a new project, add the behavior “Stabilize,” and adjust the settings they give you. This way you can decide if you want it to just smooth out the shakiness (recommended) or create a static shot. You can also adjust if it just works horizontally, vertically, on trackers, etc. When the stabilization looks good, you may have some black around the edges depending on your setting, but you can crop those out and export 720.
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