Lars. Deshaker is not "experimental". Actually, it’s very good. But you have to dig deeper into this program to obtain good results. Deshaker is created by Gunnar Thalin and you can read more here:

http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

And as Gunnar says, “a good but slightly dated Deshaker guide by John Meyer”, you can find here:

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/deshaker_guide.htm

And you can also try Mercalli Pro from ProDad:

http://www.prodad.de/gb/mercalli_std_details.html

Jøran

Here is a simple example I did to show someone else.

http://www.youtube.com/user/perroneford#p/u/5/FwewV0-svHg


Here is another example I did for someone who shot from a helicopter with no gyro:

http://www.youtube.com/user/perroneford#p/u/3/2EzV_ne8n68

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The reason that Deshaker looks superior to so many of us is that instead of zooming in, it patches in bits and pieces of the edges of frames from previous frames that had that detail. The good thing about this is that you don't lose resolution and detail. The bad thing is that there are many occasions where the pieces of the frame patched in from earlier frames don't match the current frame. Examples of this would be when someone is walking across the frame, head movement at the top of the frame, water waves, leaves blowing in the wind, etc. I find myself actually shooting around these limitations. For example, if I know I am going to stabilize later, I'll shoot so that the top of a person's head isn't cut off a little at the top,

Keep in mind that Deshaker is versatile and you can mask the edges by zooming in as well. This is where a little skill and understanding of the program comes in.

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More parameters, deeper analysis, more control. I don't believe the FCP version can compensate for rolling shutter effects either like Deshaker can.

The FCP Smoothcam works amazingly well, it does its work in the background (so you can continue editing), and it is very easy to use (no propeller hat required).

For those in a hurry, there's also the CoreMelt Lock & Load plug-in that does the same thing, only much faster.

For jellocam, you need NewBlue Video Essentials III which is available for FCP as well as Vegas.


The various open source tools can get better results in specific situations, if the operator has spent the time to learn a lot of geeky stuff.

LOL!

Yea, propeller hats come in handy when you need pro-level results though. I handed off some footage last week to another pro for some post work. I never told him the footage had been stabilized and he had no idea. It was all shot hand-held in near freezing temps. My hands were shaking like mad for the entire shoot. I wouldn't even show anyone the native footage. But the stabilized stuff looks like dolly work.

If you want those results, you have to get your "hands dirty" so to speak and learn the intricacies of the good tools.

If you want those results, you have to get your "hands dirty" so to speak and learn the intricacies of the good tools.

Even being a geek, I find myself less and less interested in digging under the hood unless it is absolutely necessary.

In most situations, Smoothcam and equivalents produce a perfect result.

It's only in trickier situations that the "propeller hat" tools are necessary.

It seems John Meyer does this kind of stuff nearly every day, so it's no skin off his back to tweak low level parameters, write scripts and feed frames to and from open-source programs.

Increasingly, I want to focus on the creative side, and if I shoot footage that needs more tweaking than I can muster, I'm happy to pass it on to a specialist, because I don't accept substandard results.

In the case of light-weight cameras, I always used a Steadicam or a heavy tripod hanging underneath for stabilization. Saved much post work...

Lars,
You can always take a look at http://www.prodad.de/gb/mercalli_std_details.htmlMercalli[/link] also.

Do people not understand that Mercalli is the same as the freeware with a nicer interface and about 1/3 of the options removed?

Perrone, can’t you cool down. People with other views than you are not idiots.. Mercalli is simple to use, it’s fast and the stabilizing is good. But Mercalli lacks some of the border handling options found in Deshaker. But you don’t have to store the stabilized clips as physical files on your hard disk if you use Mercalli, and you don’t have to transfer files between Vegas and VirtualDub. (Sometimes it’s difficult to find a free codec that works in VirtulDub.) And it can be cumbersome to install and configure the NewDeshaker script. I use Deshaker a lot, but I only want to point to the fact that there are other alternatives that is preferred by others.

Jøran Toresen

I agree with you that other options have merit (especially when they don't require shuttling real rendered files between apps.

My comment had nothing to do with suggesting that people who don't share my view are idiots. I suppose my frustration with people suggesting Mercalli without even the knowledge of the free app, has biased me somewhat.

So if someone prefers to pay the extra money for the simplicity and convenience or Mercalli. Have at it. Sorry to butt in.

Perrone, time to shake hands. Sometimes I use Mercalli, most of the time I use Deshaker. And I gladly paid for Mercalli Pro because of its features, but also because I think it is great that more and more plug-ins are available for VegasPro (and Vegas Movie Studio). I want to support companies that creates plug-ins for my favorite NLE!

Jøran

Completely understood. Being one of the aforementioned propeller heads, I love the power of the Virtualdub suite and generally do all my pre-processing there. Deinterlacing, IVTC, deshaking, etc. Then I bring the prepped files into Vegas.

Just a different way of working I guess.

Have a nice day.

Gunnar Thalins home page points to a “Detailed Russian article comparing Deshaker to other video stabilizers, by Eugene Vasiliev:”

http://www.ixbt.com/divideo/digital-video-guide/5-2-1-stabilization.shtml

You can use Google Translate to translate this into English (or as I do: Norwegian):

http://translate.google.com/#

Jus copy the url from the Russian site into Google Translater.

Jøran

Very interesting article, especially the first third that Google actually translates to English.

Anyone getting the whole page translated?


The title, "...comparing Deshaker to other video stabilizers," really should say "comparing Deshaker to two other video stabilizers" as there are plenty more.

Bjørn, try this: Press Translate one more time and see if more of the page is translated. If you still can’t read the whole article, open another instance of Google Translate and just copy and paste the remaining paragraphs. Håper dette hjelper :)

Jøran

" I suppose my frustration with people suggesting Mercalli without even the knowledge of the free app, has biased me somewhat. So if someone prefers to pay the extra money for the simplicity and convenience or Mercalli."

I was the one who recommended looking at Mercalli. I do have knowledge of the free app... tried it, liked the outcome, hated the interface and inconvenience. As you said, sometimes we all choose to pay for the simplicity and convenience. There are only so many plugins that you have the time to dive in and figure out.

I really do have to add this . . .

Step 1: I initially bought SteadyHand. Thought it was great, but it had no easy way to integrate with Vegas. However I was sold on the philosophy of using digital solutions for digital media. Kinda got that? And basically that's ALL I need to know and appreciate. But, yes, there WAS softness.

Step 2: I saw JM's deshake output and after many months, and when it fitted in to his own "work", John produced Deshake - for me it was a revelation on the lossless front. I used this with much grateful free abandon.

. . time passes . . . .

Step 3: I buy Mercalli Pro! Wow, that's easy! Templates, integration, variations that I can SEE as I work, before and after results in REAL TIME, major customer support and tutes . . . the earth breaks open . . .

. . even more time passes . . .

Step 4: Recognise the mutterings and murmurings off-stage of a development of Deshake as a newly formed reworked wunderkind - NEW Deshaker. OK, I have now downloaded and installed and again recall my initial awareness of the softness being eradicated by this use of VDub as the engine of preference for the IT Glitterati and am now experimenting with this as a way forward. I ahve yet to spend time on getting VDub templates to get the most out of it and would like to be informed on the best place to learn, just enough, to be able to move forward.

So, Perone, I may not be one of the IT creators, movers and shakers here (pun intended!), but I HAVE spent money, time and brain cells on getting to understand just what makes this stuff appear essentially VooDoo.

I know enough to know I want more, PLUS that all important ease of use. I am not going to change in this respect and most likely this is why several of the script writers appreciate my input and have assisted me in my quest for ease and allow me to get to my creative ideas - there is more in the pipeline too! - and I am STILL coming up with ideas for SONY. The point I'm badly making here is that I do NOT want to know what goes on under the hood/bonnet. But that does NOT mean I don't have an appreciation of just how professional the outcome is and that I have got here as a result of trying and testing and buying product. Those that have written scripts on the basis of my own foot-stomping "me-wants!" know exactly where I am coming from, and I am very comfortable with this 2-way street that we have ALL created over the years "working" together. It's a collaboration born out of a deep wish for Vegas to do better; allow us all to get to our creativity quicker, smarter and earn more money as a result.

Collaboration and sharing - there is NO other road-map.

Grazie

Well,

If you can't bring Mohammad to the mountain....

As I mentioned before, for many folks, creative or otherwise, the tools OUTSIDE of the NLE are really where work happens. Whether you be a compositor, 3D artist, colorist, etc. Your work happens outside of the NLE then get's plugged in at a later time. To me, that is one primary factor separating what I call "professional" work from other work. It would probably better be called collaborative work.

In this business, you have people who specialize in a great many disciplines, from sound, to color, to editing. And each of them has a specific set of tools they prefer to work in. Obviously the editor works in the NLE, but generally they are the ONLY people doing so.

For me, VDub is the platform of choice to do pre-processing. So rather than sit in the NLE and call scripts out to other programs to do what I need, I prefer to sit in a shell like VDub, tell it that I want to change my 5D movie footage from 30.00 to 29.97, tell it that I want to deshake, tell it that I want to Gaussian blur in a certain place, and tell it that I want to do it all losslessly and prep a file to go to my NLE. It can take advantage of my GPU there. It can be minimized and run in the background while I work on other tasks.

Vegas as an NLE is very unique among "pro" editors. It is a kitchen sink editor. It tries to do all things. It wants to control sound, it wants to control video effects, it wants to control compression, it wants to control color. And that paradigm is carried further in the world of scripts. Essentially calling external applications to do processing so that the NLE doesn't have to be left. You don't find that behavior in other pro editors like Avid, FCP, Premiere, Edius, etc. And people who prefer that paradigm tend to be left cold by the "all things to all people" paradigm of Vegas.

I suppose it's really just a matter of preference. But I DO understand where you are coming from. However, I also understand that if you want to be good with something you have to spend time with it. Go through some trials with it. I'd used DeShaker numerous times in the past for projects, but it wasn't until my feet were held to the fire last fall, with a movie that was going on the festival circuit, and needed a dozen scenes processed, that I really started to learn the program.

Learning to minimize the jello cam effect of the CMOS sensor. Learning to not introduce those same kinds of effects with the program. Learning when it's proper to use fixed zoom, or blended edges, or black edges. Going through the pain of a manual keyframe in the NLE to remove those black edges in order to preserve more of the frame.

I probably spent a total of over 100 hours in deshaker over the course of 2 months. Sometimes that is what's required to get the results you need. Something you just aren't going to get from a script.