How do you stabilize entire frame and not lock onto heads?

hambonio wrote on 9/7/2020, 3:12 PM

This is something that has been bugging me for years. Every version of Vegas I have used since 2009.

In a clip like the video below where there is some camera bounce shake - in this instance I was basically shooting at 900mm - but if I try to stabilize within Vegas Pro with the built in Vegas Pro stabilizations (many version over the years) or Prodad Mercalli, I can never get it to stabilize the entire scene. They always seem to end up latching onto a head in the middle of the screen, and following the head and even rotations of the head (I know how to turn that part off). It gives a very unwanted effect. I just want the clip to be completely still.

I tried messing around with motion tracking and latching onto something in the background but don't know how to get that to apply to camera stabilization. I tried the dropdown menu and setting it to the Vegas Video Stabilization - but nothing happens. I am sure this is user error (I hope) and there is a way to do this correctly within Vegas.

In After Effects I can track motion on something in the background then hit stabilize motion and it is magically rock solid (I can crop in the black edges after the fact). The problem is I end up rendering to insanely huge uncompressed AVI files then re-rendering again in Vegas pro to XAVC-I to save space. This also results in multiple separate files of sections I stabilize for a few seconds at a time. Projects get messy and there are WAY too many steps compared to if I could just ONE TIME get the same result with my tools within Vegas Pro.

Also I don't know jack crap about Adobe software other than how to stabilize a clip like I stated above, and I like the Media Encoder for easily preparing my files for web and client delivery. (if Vegas has something like Media Encoder that I am unaware of - I would love to know - but that is not the purpose of this post).

Comments

set wrote on 9/7/2020, 4:46 PM

I never tried it myself, but someone suggested to 'mask' (maybe using bezier mask?) the center subject first, then do Video Stabilization process.

This will 'force' the Stabilization process to detect the remaining 'background' as the 'reference' rather than subject foreground.

After Video Stabilization done, uncheck the bezier mask chain in Video FX.

Hope helps.

Jack S wrote on 9/7/2020, 4:59 PM

@hambonio Check out my YouTube tutorial on this very subject

hambonio wrote on 9/7/2020, 6:39 PM

Thank you BOTH! This is a nice workaround, although I don't see the need to add to media events? It seems to work well adding just to the clips - and works well with both Vegas stabilization and proDAD Mercalli and CMOS fixr.

But wink wink VP engineers - would it not be just as easy as using the data from motion tracking to apply some kind of stabilization?

set wrote on 9/7/2020, 11:28 PM

Yes, the new Video Stabilization no need to be added as Media FX level. Still can work in Event FX level, just make sure you have cut properly as changing duration on the clip will require reanalyzing.

set wrote on 9/7/2020, 11:29 PM

As for using motion tracking to be a stabilizing, that can do in Vegas Effects although I personally haven't experiment with it a lot.