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Stabilizing Footage – How Do You Prefer?
Hello Everyone,
I’m looking into different image stabilization software at work for some footage we shoot, as an alternative to Warp Stabilizer in AE CC8.1.
I’m finding a couple that are Mac compatible and have trials but adding them and seeing the result is always interesting – I notice there’s not much of a difference, if one is even noticeable at all.
My question is – what’s the benefit of an external plugin for stabilization? Is stabilization even a thing that should be attempted? I know sometimes it works wonders but there’s usually that clip where you just know any amount of post processing isn’t going to help (at least on our level here).
I don’t want to tell them it’s not worth it to buy if I’m just not understanding how these other plug ins work so just wondering if someone can shed some light – or if anyone thinks anything that can be done, can be accomplished with just warp stabilizer and a little tweaking.
Thanks in advance!
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6 Replies
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I have been using three different stabilizers:
. Warp Stabilizer (Adobe)
. Lock & Load (Coremelt)
. Mercalli (ProDAD)Because they seem to be using different algorithms, you will obtain different results depending on your shot motion. In general Warp Stabilizer seem to be the slowest in my test for analyzing a clip. Lock & Load is pretty fast. Again results quality varied depending on the shot.
HTH,
David Baud
Post & VFX
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com -
And Mercalli 4 can fix more. Robust and very fast motion stabilizing plus CMOS correction.
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Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, according to their website, Mercalli4 is only for Windows and we do not have a Windows ecosystem as a setup.
David – when you say results vary depending on the shot, can you explain? Are you saying one software would give you a better result on a certain shot and another would give you a better result on another shot? If so, do you know why that is?
Lock & Load is interesting, but the website lists support up until CS6 for Adobe programs. If they do support CC then I’ll give the trial a shot. Do you happen to know if it’s compatible with CC?
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[Mike Sjr] ” when you say results vary depending on the shot, can you explain? Are you saying one software would give you a better result on a certain shot and another would give you a better result on another shot? If so, do you know why that is?”
I believe some of the algorithms used are better for some type of motions than others. For example, if you have a handheld camera shot of a person with lateral move and moving forward or backward to your subject, and with a moving background further back to your subject: Warp Stabilizer in my experience has a harder time to resolve the motion and you get a “warp” result! Also any sudden moves inside of your shot to stabilized (as opposed to a regular pattern) might mistake the stabilizer. Ideally you would want to track and break down your shot to parts needing special attention to the stabilizing process. Obviously this can be a time consuming process. Again don’t expect the stabilizing process to work the same way, with the same result on any shots!
[Mike Sjr] “Lock & Load is interesting, … Do you happen to know if it’s compatible with CC?”
Yes I use it on a Mac (10.9.5) and AE CC 2014.Good luck,
David Baud
Post & VFX
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com -
Perfect, thank you so much for your insight! Definitely don’t expect it to fix all our problems, but it’s a good back up to have in the arsenal.
Thanks again.
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FYI, Mercalli V4 with 35% discount here
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