New Deshaker Settings

amendegw wrote on 8/29/2010, 5:34 AM

I just discovered a very old (circa 1995) 8mm video of a family trip to the Washington Zoo. I thought I'd clean it up as a memory for the kids.

Turns out the footage is in serious need of deshaking (is that a word?) So I've been playing with the New Deshaker script and here's what I get (using the default, out-of-the-box settings.)

As you can see, the improvement is dramatic but I wonder if I can make it better. Notice the fence post in the background - it moves around even after New Deshaker is applied.

The Deshaker settings are rather cryptic. Is there something that can be modified to more aggressively steady the shot?

Maybe this is "as good as it gets", and I'm just showing the perfectionist in me.

...Jerry

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 8/29/2010, 3:58 PM

Looks pretty good to me. In my experience it is very difficult and almost impossible to get it perfect, the only perfect one was by a college in Madison and it was experimental and a ton more complex. There were many earlier threads on this subject.
JJK

Grazie wrote on 8/29/2010, 10:33 PM

What happens if you RE-NewDeshake the NewDeshaken footage? What happens?

Grazie

ritsmer wrote on 8/30/2010, 12:57 AM

I use the New Deshaker for years and for handheld skiing videos - and IMHO your result is "as good as it gets".

Have you seen the guide at
http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

farss wrote on 8/30/2010, 1:34 AM

One thing worth keeping in mind with film is there can be more than one kind of "shake" going on. A lot of those cameras didn't hold the film in the gate very well plus more random shakes / wobbles can be added during the transfer process.
Using a 'telecine' with an enlarged gate so the edge of the camera's gate is visible can help. First pass deshaking you track the edge of the camera gate (the black mask around the image) to get the camera / telecine shake removed.

Bob.

fausseplanete wrote on 8/30/2010, 3:23 AM

You can set the horizontal and vertical settings to [-1] which means "statiionary" but the effect may or may not be as required - worth a try though! I would set the zoom and rotation to 0 to simplify the problem / remove the potential for unwanted drift in these dimensions. If [-1] is too harsh, try 100000 instead (the largest number it will accept).

Deshaker also has a Rolling Shutter correction option, possibly useful for a film-based recording, depending on shutter speed at the time.

Otherwise, can use e.g. a trial of Boris Red to do tracker-based stabilization, where you pick specific objects that you want stationary. But for me at least, Boris is so fiddly it can take ages to get working (e.g. had to be run standalone not plugin and sometimes it only likes mov not avi) and unlike Deshaker, my version of 'Red (4.3.3) doesn't appear to make use of all the cores (so it's really really slow).

There's also Mercalli of course, again worth a try. Sometimes on difficult important material I try a bunch of these methods, they all have different niche strengths that can sometimes (not always) be important.

The fundamental limiting factor on how smooth you can get it may be any edge-blurring, which is best "disguised" by allowing a certain degree of motion to remain (otherwise the edges can look "angry").

amendegw wrote on 8/30/2010, 3:51 AM

Thanks to all for their suggestions. I've come the conclusion that his is, indeed, "as good as it gets".

I went to the www.guthspot.se site and read about the input parameters (they boggle the mind!).

I played with several settings, notably rotation & zoom settings (note the source video does not rotate or zoom). I also played with the pixel selection criteria, but no love.

Also tried a double pass at deshake - no improvement.

...Jerry