New Deshaker 1.1.0.0

Andy E wrote on 5/1/2009, 10:45 AM

1.1.0.0: 1st May 2009. Change/Bug fix release.

Fix: Change made to generated VirtualDub command line.
Fix: Checkbox for "Ignore pixels inside" on Pass 1 now saved/loaded.
Fix: Clear method on event's VideoMotion Keyframes collection doesn't remove first keyframe. All keyframes now individually removed.

Change: log4net logging removed to due to extremely crap behaviour and replaced with my own.
Change: Logging default is now INFO instead of DEBUG.
Change: Tooltips added to dialogs.
Change: Choosing location of the VD script file now defaults to showing *.vds files.
Change: Support for Deshaker Filter presets added.
Change: Presets can be imported and exported.
Change: Removing effects and pan/crop settings prior to render is now optional (default is removal).

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.edmiston/deshaker.htm

New Features

Presets have been added to Version 1.1.0.0. They can be edited, deleted, saved, imported and exported. New presets are created by editing an existing one and changing the name of the preset. On click OK you will be prompted to answer "YES" to create a new preset or "NO" to overwrite the existing one. All presets can be deleted but there can never be zero presets. If you delete all of your own a preset called "Original" will be automatically added to the list - this is a preset that matches the original Deshaker settings. Saving presets saves them to New Deshaker's configuration file (nowhere else). Import and Export allow taking presets from and saving them to an external file. Use this option to move presets to another computer or to share presets with other users.

On the Preset dialog itself are four new items. An edit box to change the name, an undo button which will undo all the changes you made after clicking on the Edit Preset button (sorry that's as granular as the undo is at the moment) and a "reset to original" button which removes everything you've done and sets the preset back to the original Deshaker settings (useful if you want to start from scratch).

In addition, there is a "toggle tooltips" button. Tooltips have been added to both dialogs. However this button does not affect the tooltips that are displayed when you hover over buttons etc at the top of the Preset dialog or the whole of New Deshaker dialog itself. This only affects giving help on the filter settings. The help text is, in some cases, somewhat large and has been lifted directly from the filter homepage. Everywhere that "I" is mentioned relates to the author of the filter and not me. A browser link to the filter's homepage has also been added at the bottom next to the OK and Cancel buttons.

Another new option is the ability to choose whether or to remove Video Effects or Pan/Crop settings prior to deshaking the video. The default is removal (as per the original Deshaker) and these checkboxes will initially be ticked. Unchecking these options will result in warning dialogs being displayed and if left unchecked the text background of these options will be red to draw attention to that fact.

It is important to understand the ramifications of unchecking these options. *All* effects and pan/crop settings will end up being rendered out and therefore part of the new take. The corollary is that they are then disabled (in the case of effects) or removed (pan/crop) from the original event. This is to prevent them being applied twice to the new take. Obviously, they will no longer be available to the original take - although in the case of the video effects they can at least be re-enabled. If that's not what you want, *don't* uncheck these options.

Edit: Meant to add that John Meyer has very kindly sent me some Deshaker settings that I'll put up on the website for download and import over the weekend - haven't had a chance to play with them myself yet :-)

These are the result of a good few hours of work on his behalf and my thanks go to him for his willingness to share.

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Comments

A. Grandt wrote on 5/15/2009, 4:51 AM

Fyi. it seems that the VP8 Deshaker script works fine in VP9. At least for version 1.1.0.1.
I just copied the Deshaker files from the VP8 scripts folder to the VP9 scripts folder and deshaked a few files.

Andy E wrote on 5/16/2009, 9:06 AM

Thanks for that. It's useful to know.

A. Grandt wrote on 5/17/2009, 11:51 PM

I just deshaked a 720x576 PAL DVD Widescreen format clip. The result had black bard added to it's top and bottom.
Apparently the Deshaker thought it was in 4:3 aspect, the project and the original is 16:9...

Running Vegas Pro 9.0, on XP-SP3 and Deshaker 1.1.0.1 (and also with 8.1.0.2)

Running Deshake on an HD clip works fine (Original HD version of the above DVD-PAL clip) . The export setting was DH 1080-50i YUV. However if I use PAL DV Widescreen, I get no video back at all, the avi only contain the sound track.

JJKizak wrote on 5/18/2009, 6:40 AM

Update:
I have Vegas Quake installed in V9.0 32 and V9.0 64 and it works fine in both versions. I have New Deshaker installed in both versions and it functions normally except for the added black bars on the widescreen (top and bottom) in both versions. It sometimes "flops" from the black bars on widescreen to black bars on 4 x 3 and don't know how or why it "flops". In each case one or the other works fine and the other gets the black bars. In other words when the 4 x 3 has black bars the widescreen does not and is fine. When the widescreen has black bars the 4 x 3 is fine. This occurrs in both V9.0 32 and 64 versions. The operation of the new Deshaker is otherwise flawless in both 32 & 64 bit versions.
JJK

Andy E wrote on 5/19/2009, 12:38 AM

Apparently the Deshaker thought it was in 4:3 aspect, the project and the original is 16:9...

Does this happen on every clip you try?

However if I use PAL DV Widescreen

Do you mean if you export out as PAL DV WS, there's no video?

Edit:

I've just tried Deshaking a PAL DVD clip and also a PAL DV AVI clip without any problems (both widescreen)

If you right click on a problem take (one with an incorrect aspect ratio) and choose properties->media, what does it say for the aspect ratio?

johnmeyer wrote on 5/19/2009, 10:22 AM

Andy,

While your script is completely re-written from what we did in the jscript predecessor, it still retains the basic workflow.

The sorts of problems reported here with aspect changes remind me of two problems. The first related to using something OTHER than uncompressed when sending the video from Vegas to VirtualDub/Deshaker. The outbound codec can sometimes cause a problem.

The bigger issue is that there is an underlying bug in how VirtualDub handles PAL uncompressed video. I researched this quite a bit three years ago when I did this and found that it is a problem in the underlying Windows architecture, not just in VirtualDub. You will see a comment in my script to that effect:

     // VirtualDub doesn't set PAR and reverses fields when using PAL uncompressed, so must reset here.

However, since Andy is getting it to work OK with PAL, maybe this isn't it ...

A. Grandt wrote on 5/19/2009, 12:21 PM

The black bars are added on all SD (DVD) content when using the HD 1080-50i YUV Outbound template. HD content (with square pixels) are fine.

The missing video stream happens on all content when using the PAL DV Widescreen.

The pixel aspect on the PAL DV content I'm testing on is 1,4568.

Andy E wrote on 5/19/2009, 10:19 PM

The bigger issue is that there is an underlying bug in how VirtualDub handles PAL uncompressed video.

My very first thought since I remembered the comment - in fact the comment's still there :-)

...but other than wrapping a check on it to see if uncompressed has actually been chosen it does the same thing.

A. Grandt wrote on 5/19/2009, 11:12 PM

A bit more information.
The black bars are added by Vegas.

The Pal DV Wide clip has a pixel aspect of 1.4568, when deshaked using the HD 1080-50i YUV template the returned clip is 1920x1080, but still has the old PAL DV pixel aspect. changing that to 1.0000 in the media's properties on the timeline solves the black bars.

The missing video on my PAL DV template (tried NTSC DV Wide, with the same result) is still puzzling me, opening the file in Avi Demux showed me that there is indeed a video stream in there, but it starts with the "Deshaker: Output is delayed 30 seconds..." message.

Andy E wrote on 5/19/2009, 11:49 PM

The black bars are added on all SD (DVD) content when using the HD 1080-50i YUV Outbound template.

I can recreate this. The problem is the SD content is being upscaled and rendered out with a different PAR to the source (the project settings don't matter, they are temporarily set to the same as the clip being deshaken and then restored upon completion). On the return, the PAR is then set (as per comment above) to the PAR of the original clip. If you right-click on the take, properties->media and change its PAR to 1.0000, then no more black bars.

I can maybe put some better checks round this. However, as a rule you'd be better off rendering out SD footage to a SD template for deshaking. You're forcing the deshaker filter to work on upscaled content.

The missing video stream happens on all content when using the PAL DV Widescreen.

What are you rendering the PAL DV WS footage out to? Uncompressed, PAL DV, HD 1080 50i YUV or something else?

Andy E wrote on 5/19/2009, 11:54 PM

I see our posts have crossed....and you've already discovered changing the PAR gets rid of the black bars.

Ignore the "output is delayed" message - that's on every clip that's been deshaken. Will the clip play correctly outside of Vegas - in other words, once you've got past the 30 frames (assuming you didn't change the default filter settings), do you see "real" video?

A. Grandt wrote on 5/20/2009, 3:44 AM

QuickTime and DiVX player died on the deshaken video. Windows media player, VLC and AVI Demux plays the clip.

Vegas just tells me "Stream attributes could not be determined"

But the 30 second delay at the start of the generated clip does not take 30 seconds in for instance VLC...

A. Grandt wrote on 5/20/2009, 4:00 AM

About crossing posts, I forgot to read all of yours.

What are you rendering the PAL DV WS footage out to? Uncompressed, PAL DV, HD 1080 50i YUV or something else?

Outbound Template: PAL DV Widescreen.
(NTSC DV Widescreen displays the same behaviour)

Andy E wrote on 5/20/2009, 1:40 PM

30 second delay

30 frames rather than 30 seconds.

The documentation on why this is done is here:

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

under the heading Previous and future frames to fill in borders

===============================

Vegas just tells me "Stream attributes could not be determined"

This is the clip after the Deshaker has done its business (or not in this case) right? Do you have any other VfW PAL DV codecs installed on the system?

Although you have chosen to render PAL DV Widescreen, this will use the Sony DV codec which doesn't make itself available AFAIK to other installed apps.

If there isn't another VfW DV codec on the system, I'm not quite sure what VirtualDub will end up doing with the video (and I currently do not have access to anything useful other than the Internet to try it out). WMP will use DirectShow and I'm pretty certain VLC comes with all the codecs it needs anyway.

Quick way to check it is to try and open one of the clips in VirtualDub itself and see what it makes of it (after all it produced the file in the first place).

If you don't have one the one I use is Cedocida:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Cedocida_DV_Codec

A. Grandt wrote on 5/20/2009, 3:49 PM

I'll look closer in the morning. but as far as I can figure out, the final avi file is using a codec called "DIB Full Frames"

Edit: However installing the Cedocida codec solved the missing video issue.
Thanks :)

Andy E wrote on 5/20/2009, 7:39 PM

I'll look closer in the morning. but as far as I can figure out, the final avi file is using a codec called "DIB Full Frames"

That's just uncompressed video.

Edit: However installing the Cedocida codec solved the missing video issue.

No probs. Glad I could help.

Joshalot wrote on 5/26/2009, 5:55 AM

Noob question: Is there a web page somewhere that describes what deshaker does and how it does it? I assume from the name that it stabilizes the image, perhaps fixing shaking from handheld cameras.
The web page talks aboutbux fixes, improvements, installation instructions, but not what it does or why one would want it.

JJKizak wrote on 5/26/2009, 4:40 PM

Deshaker will steady up a video taken with a hand held shaky camera operator. It will give you some focus changes depending on how bad the shaking is. There will also be some components of the video slightly dancing around within the frame. How it does it is a very complex issue and is comparable to discussing the "Theory of Strings". Use the default settings on your shaky video and you will see very good results. The deshaker filter is located within the VirtualDub application created by a bored college student at Cal tech I believe. Both the Deshaker filter and VirtualDub are freeware items. Andy improved and expanded the script in Vegas 8 $ 9 which made things hugely easier than operating the Deshaker filter out of VirtualDub. The download includes the VirtualDub 1.88 application with the Deshaker filter 2.4 version. The actual instructions for using the Deshaker filter in VirtualDub are on the Deshaker website.
JJK

Jøran Toresen wrote on 5/29/2009, 9:14 AM

Does New Deshaker work with Vegas 9 (32 and/or 64 bit)?

Jøran Toresen

ritsmer wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:03 AM

Yes. Both.

steveandbelinda wrote on 5/31/2009, 7:46 PM

I can't seem to get it to work on mine. V8 Pro (8.0C)
I installed the New Deshaker/Virtual Dub for Vegas 8 Pro to default areas, but when I go to use on a video, it goes all the way through the process of deshaking, and when it's through it says:
" Despite planning for all possible contingencies Deshaker Script had the following error: "The system cannot find the path specified"
What is going on? It did this on my other computer also, that is running Vegas 6.0.

douglas_clark wrote on 6/7/2009, 12:37 PM

Non-ascii character in pathname causes problems.

I could not get New Deshaker 8.1.0.2 to work on VP9 in WinXP SP2. It seems to have been due to use of Danish characters in the pathname for Render to: path. Although the pathname appeared correctly in the script dialogbox, the pathname got truncated internally at the character before danish character. That caused an error that the file was not accessable. I think it was when VirtualDub was trying to write the avi in the 2nd pass of Deshaker.

When I removed the Danish character from the pathname, it worked fine.

The offending character was the "ø" (latin small letter o with stroke, U+00F8 in Character Map, or Alt+0248) This is in the Latin character set, but perhaps it is getting treated like Unicode filename in the script API. This might cause problems for others using "accented" characters in paths and filenames, like in French. Can anyone else reproduce this, and/or identify where the error may be in the script?

Douglas

Andy E wrote on 6/8/2009, 4:04 AM

I think it was when VirtualDub was trying to write the avi in the 2nd pass of Deshaker.

The render to path is only for the temporary renders out of Vegas. Virtual Dub + Deshaker filter reads that file and creates its 2nd pass output in a "deshake" sub-folder beneath the folder your source footage resides in.

Having said that, it is probably still an issue with the VirtualDub command line. Does Vegas render the temporary file out successfully?

douglas_clark wrote on 6/16/2009, 12:34 PM

Andy, I am running New Deshaker 8.1.0.2 as a script in Vegas Pro 9.0 under WinXP SP2. (I also have Vegas Pro 8.0 installed, but would like to get this to work in VP9)

In VP9, the Outbound Template dropdown list is being populated from the Vegas Pro 8.0 render presets for AVI. I confirmed this by creating and saving a unique avi preset in VP8, exiting both VP8 and VP9, and then restarting VP9. The unique VP8 render preset showed up in the Outbound Template dropdown list in VP9.

I tried looking in New Deshaker.dll.config for a path for Outbound Templates, but that doesn't appear to be included in the config file.

Can you modify New Deshaker to read Outbound Template presets from the version of Vegas that the script is running in, rather than hardwired to a specific version?

When saving a new AVI render preset in Vegas, it doesn't show up in New Deshaker script until after Vegas is closed and restarted. I don't know if this is a New Deshaker issue, or limitation in the way Vegas stores render presets.

Regarding my previous post, the script doesn't like non-ASCII characters in the path names. I changed the path name to all-ASCII and the problem went away. I haven't pursued that further to see where the error was occurring.