That software is probably your best option....otherwise get ready for a LOT of keyframing :)

Or get a DV camera with optical stabilization which will be good enough.

JJK

Have to disagree with JJK---although DV optical stabilization works well, there are times when only software like Steadyhand will do the job.

My camera has only digital stabilization... I don't know if that was on when I shot this footage. Shooting from a bus is murder on video(of course). IT's a Panasonic PV-GS70, which I like a lot but may not be up to what some of the pros here are used to using.

I'll check out that software. Thanks.

-Jayson

In addition to Steadyhand (from Dynapel), there is also this product:

Steadymove

I have not used it because it requires Premiere or After Effects, but the demos on their web site make it look much better than Steadyhand.

There is also a free plugin for VirtualDub called DeShaker, by Gunnar Thalin. Many people on this forum have recommended it.

Thanks for the additional info.

I don't have Adobe, so I won't be using that program, but I'll try out the VirtualDub Plug-in.

Does anyone think there's value to running the video through multiple steadying programs to increase the stabilization, or is that just likely to degrade the video more?

-Jayson

Iv'e used both Steady Hand and the Virtual Dub Deshaker plugin. They work very well on Digitalcaptured stuff but analog captured stuff not to my liking. They will steady it up fine but they will tend to fog up the results even on small corrections. So if you have a moving object it will tend to go in and out of focus as it passes. In my case the entire
picture becomes slightly blurred with varying degrees of in and out of focus on small objects. Too much correction makes everything start to "dance" like flies on a terd. It will not correct for analog glitches however it works fine on digital stuff. My dlips were captured with ADVC 300 from Beta SP tape and the camera registration was not very good
and I don't know what the pro guy's did during the conversion. To answer your question the more you process the more out of focus it will get. I would try just for laughs the velocity envelope down slower and it might help a bit but not a lot. The Deshaker pluggin is two pass and does take a lot of time. It is also much more complex in the settings. Make sure you download the instructions for the Deshaker pluggin or you will never figure it out. Also depends on which standalone codecs you have which you might also have to purchase.
Good Luck.

JJK

I just shot some video on the weekend and had to zoom in on some distant shots. Well...no tripod...tight zoom...you know, got the shake thing going.

Edited the video this week and had to toss out this part. Sooooo, figured I'd try the "SteadyHand". Here's my opinion. It definately DOES work. However, it's a toss up between shaky video and blurred detail. I guess you can say it's better to have blur than extreme shake. Also noticed that the program goes crazy if the video is not simple. For example, I had one spot where someone's head crossed in front of the camera. SteadyHand didn't know what to make of it and went nuts with adjustments.

In conclusion, I think it's worth experimenting with as it also has "custom" setting adjustments which could correct the odd and rare problem I experienced.

I'm playing with DeShaker now. It seems pretty neat but I was wondering:

Does anyone know if there is a way to batch render it on a large number of clips?

Thanks.

-Jayson

Haven't tried "DeShaker", but I do know that "SteadyHand" does Batch rendering.

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I actually felt the DeShaker was better than the SteadyHand software. Perhaps it's just an idiosyncrasy of the input video. But I have a lot of clips, and it takes a long time to process each one. I don't know how I can do this without batch processing... it will just be too much work.

-Jayson

If your video is fairly shaky then it's also going to get blurry unless you had a very fast shutter so it's not all the fault of the image stabiliser. We expect things with fast motion to be blurry so we don't notice it but when you take the motion away and still have the blur then you notice it.
I've find sometimes just a bit of a slowdown can be quite effective. Doesn't stop the motion but makes it more whatchable. Digital image stabilisation can make these issues worse, later model cameras seem to be better but for best results optical stabilisation is the go, well actually the best thing is a tripod but funny how you never have one when you really need it.

Just purchased SteadyHand after reading the posts and trying it out. Works great for me as I'm 76 and unable to hold steady (normally shoot from sticks). Tried it with a monopod and it's fine for occasional use. I expected it to be somewhat blurry and it was. Works for me.

From what I understand of AVISynth, it should be able to handle a script that batches files to VirtualDub.

1. As already pointed out, the blur is inevitable. When the camera moves, a 1/30 second shutter speed will blur the image. Solution: Use a fast shutter speed when filming hand-held video that you expect to later stabilize using one of these programs.

2. Most people use stabilization to fix really shaky footage. It can also be used on footage that is almost, but not quite, perfect. If you use in-camera stabilization and have a pretty stable hand (or a shoulder mount), the resulting footage can be very stable. If you then use a stabilzer on this footage, you can actually make it look like it was taken on a tripod. I did this on a full-length ballet (the Nutcracker) where I had to change a tape during the curtain call. My backup camera caught the action I missed during the tape change, but when I resumed filming with my main camera, I didn't want to take the time to re-mount the camera (it is a Sony camera, and you can't change tape without removing it from the tripod).

Thus, the last two minutes on the main camera were hand-held. I simply stabilized this footage, and it looks just like the video taken on the tripod.

Have had very good luck with Steadyhand, but only stablize the section which is shakey!
I had a crappy hand-held audience pan (about 8 seconds) which was then good (ie steady) at the end of the shot. So I "steadyhanded) the move only and cut back to the better "end of shot" footage, uncorrected. The move was soft, but definitely better.
But software ain't no tripod - not yet, anyway.

I was, after tremendous suffering and some e-mail to the author of DeShaker, able to create a script that appears to work. It even handles the future frames feature. I have embedded it in a VirtualDub jobs file. It is a little cumbersome to create but it worked. Basically I copy the job over and over again, then use find and replace to change the file name for each individual job. I now have a job file for each of my 3 tapes, with all of the clips on each as a job.

The nice thing about putting together these job files is like having a Vegas veg: you can skip archiving the DeShaken media and just keep the originals, because you can always recreate it. And if I decide I want custom settings for a particular file, I just edit the particular job later on.

One thing I'm still fighting with is sometimes in VD scripts and jobs, I get the error "invalid variable name" or something like that. If I exit and restart VD, then sometimes it works, with no changes to the script. Sometimes I have to move lines around or change whitespace. I've also noticed that manually deleteing the .jobs file is sometime necessary before loading a new jobs file, or else this error can appear. It's all really strange and frustrating. Any VD gurus out there have any ideas for this?

I'll have to wait till I get more opportunity to start using my host of modified source media to decide whether or not DS is good for everything. The author was reticent to suggest that I do batch work; his opinion being that the settings should be tweaked per file manually. While I agree with him, my thinking is that some improvement is better than none, and I have seen very few sections of video that have gotten worse as a result of the filter. If it doesn't need deshaking, it doesn't appear to do anything negative(except waste time processing it). If it does, then yes, as mentioned earlier in the thread, noticeable blur will exist. But in most cases that means the clip would have been worthless to being with. There's no substitute for good videography in the first place, but this seems to work well for making bad camera work into acceptable camera work. As a hobbyist working on lots of questionable raw footage and just wanting a watchable vacation highlights video, this seems to be the way to go.

If anyone's interested I might post my script after I play with it some more and make sure it's working properly. Perhaps some of you more experienced individuals can improve upon it. Or perhaps some of you will find some use for it. I'd like to think that all the time I spent trying to get this darn thing working could be useful for someone.

-Jayson

I have managed to steady some shaky hand held video by slowing the video down with the "stretch" function. Because this produces slow motion video, it is not suitable where the slow down of the film is obvious, such as people walking etc, but in several instances the results were quite acceptable. To do this, I have had to separate the sound from the original video clip and insert sound that has not also been slowed down.

Although this is probably a somewhat crude substitute for software that is designed specially for the task, I have found the slow motion video to be of good quality and you would often find it hard to tell that the film had been slowed down. Does anyone else do this?

Regards, Fred

Yes - ;-)


. .. makes for great cutaways - aHAH! - Turn a Lemon into Lemonade . yeah?

Grazie

First video I shot was from trains and busses in China. Trains were great, had camera nestled in matress on top bunk but busses were a nightmare so I just slowed it down a tad. Yes it was noticeable but shutter speed was pretty quick as I had lots of light and it gave the viewer a bit more time to take in the passing parade.

Yes. And I also use the velocity envelope on static scenes and set it to "0" with the resampling set to off. Then go to pan/crop and inject some fake movements so it isn't so obvious. If the sampling is not set to off there is some slight blur added to the scene. In my case the slomo works well until it gets to some kind of analog hiccup then jerks around a bit then ok. this hiccup occurrs every 1/2 second.

JJK

Yeah, I've done the slo-mo thing too, in addition to my deshaking on some clips, mostly for effect but it also helps the camera movement issue.

What does the resampling parameter do? JJK says you need to set it to off when using velocity = 0. What about velocity = some small percent? Should it be off or on? Is it one of the event "Switches"?

Injecting movement on purpose? Heh, that's pretty ironic, but I see what you mean. If the video is static it is obvious it is a still. I have some of that, but again, since it's for effect, I think it's okay. Mostly I've used slo-mo, not stills.

-Jayson