My question is, after stabilization, should I add motion blur back in to simulate 1/48?The motion blur in Vegas is very crude. I don't think you'll get very good results with that. You'll need something considerably more sophisticated and, unfortunately, expensive (although the AVISynth plugin, MVTools2, does have motion blur settings).

As for shutter speed, I'd be interested in what you found about the various speeds. I have found that unless the camera motion is going to be quite violent (like in a small airplane at low altitude on a hot day), that 1/125 or 1/250 is usually plenty fast enough to reduce or mostly eliminate that annoying "blur pop" that you get after the footage has been stabilized. I figure the lower the shutter speed, the more "natural" the resulting footage will look after stabilization, even without motion blur.

If you are interested, send me ten seconds of footage and I'll apply some motion blur using MVTools2 and you can compare it to what you get with Vegas.

John Meyer

Thanks John,
I wish I could say I was more scientific about it, but it was just one of those timing things-some parrots landed in a tree 3 feet above my head and started eating and I was scrambling just to get usable footage without scaring them away (of course the tripod was somewhere else).

I can tell you that I didn't try anything as slow as 1/125. And so far everything I've stabilized at faster than standard shutter speed has had good results. I may run some tests this weekend if I get a chance.

Thanks for the offer, I'll take you up on it! What format works best?

kairosmatt

"although the AVISynth plugin, MVTools2, does have motion blur settings"John, Following your lead, I've been getting excellent results using AVISynth/MVTools2 to produce slow motion using the following script (for 60p footage). How would this be modified to just add motion blur and no slowdown?

loadplugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\mvtools2\mvtools2.dll") 



AVISource("C:\Users\Jerry\Documents\Vegas Projects\@DebugMode\frameserve.avi").Killaudio()



super = MSuper(pel=2)



backward_vec = MAnalyse(super, overlap=4, isb = true, search=3)

forward_vec = MAnalyse(super, overlap=4, isb = false, search=3)





MFlowFps(super, backward_vec, forward_vec, num=8*FramerateNumerator(last),den=FramerateDenominator(last))



assumefps(59.94)

...Jerry

What format works best?I can handle anything, although I prefer not to deal with MOV. If you have any original that is 10-15 seconds long and would benefit from motion blur, that is ideal. Lacking that, just cut a segment and encode it to the format of your choice, using about 4,000 kbps bitrate.

As for the MVTools2 settings to achieve motion blur, I always start with the examples given in the MVTools2 documentation, and then visit doom9.org to see what other settings or ideas people have come up with. So, this is the starting point (the MVTools2 example):

AVISource("c:\test.avi") # or MPEG2Source, DirectShowSource, some previous filter, etc

super = MSuper()

backward_vectors = MAnalyse(super, isb = true)

forward_vectors = MAnalyse(super, isb = false)

MFlowBlur(super, backward_vectors, forward_vectors, blur=15)

I would probably experiment with block size and some other parameters in order to get the best resutls. I expect that the result will actually look pretty good (I did try this once or twice and it did what I expected: blurred the moving objects, but left the static objects alone).

Here is a link to the motion blurred result. I used MVTools2 in the script I posted above, but I set the blur setting to 48.

Parrot With MVTools2 Motion Blur

Frame 32 provides a very clear look at what this plugin can do. Compare the background to the foreground. In the original, the parrot is razor sharp on every single frame. If you put the original on one track and this on another, and then A/B between them, you can see exactly the changes that have been made.

I tried some really high motion blur settings (200) and it was really remarkable how well the software worked: the parrots head became a blur when he moved it, and the branches blurred at the points where they moved a lot. But, the background (which doesn't move much) stayed quite sharp.

[edit] In looking at this again, I probably should have used a slightly lower setting. I think this is too much blur. However, as I said above, it certainly shows how the process works.[/end edit]

You might consider posting your original video (or I could do that for you) so others can see the "before/after" for themselves.

John Meyer

Thanks John,
The original for anyone interested is here:
http://www.loggerheadfilms.com/videos/parrot%20feeding.mp4

Checking it out now!
kairosmatt

Wow its kinda funny, when you pause it and A/B you can clearly tell the difference.

Playing it back its harder to notice anything specific, but you can definitely 'feel' it (for lack of a better term).

Especially the berry dropping in the beginning, it seems to be punching out of the picture until the blur is added. Looking at it frame by frame, the berry itself has only very subtle blurring, but it must be the overall effect when watching it.

Its very hard to put in words the difference this makes, but I definitely feel that for this kind of material it is better for the blur. Its got less jolt maybe.

I'll fire up After Effects and see what it can do as well.
Thanks!

kairosmatt

It's very hard to put in words the difference this makes, but I definitely feel that for this kind of material it is better for the blur. Its got less jolt maybe.Yes, I had the same reaction. The A/B on a frame-by-frame basis is quite different, but when you play it, you "feel" rather than "see" the differences. So I think you actually said it quite well.

Also, I too had the "3D" experience.

I'll fire up After Effects and see what it can do as well.I didn't know you had AE. It should be able to do an even better job than what I just did for you. My advice would be to use settings that generate a more subtle effect than what I created for you. Like any fX, the initial reaction is to be a little giddy because it is so "neat" to see the change in the video. Then, after a few repeated viewings, you usually realize that "less is more" -- the architect Mies van der Rohe said it a lot -- is a great mantra for video as well as architecture.

I do HAVE After Effects CS3, using it is another story! I'm not sure how to go about adding motion blur to only the moving parts of the video, but I'm reading about it now.

I was just playing with Vegas motion blur through the video bus, and those results are just down right bizarre at points.

BCC has a motion blur plug in that seems to work well, I'm going to mess with this too and see if I can get results similar to yours.

kairosmatt

The BCC plugin is pretty powerful and intuitive, I haven't quite gotten the same results as John, but getting there. Just starting with it and its the end of the day!

This page has both the original and the BCC motion blured:

http://www.loggerheadfilms.com/parrot%20not%20blurred.html

cheers,
kairosmatt

It is interesting to A/B/C the original, MVTools2, and BCC. Go to frame 33. While I think I like the BCC blur better, this frame has me puzzled. As you toggle between the original and the BCC blur, look at the parrot's head: it's left eye (on the right side as we view it) is in perfect focus in the BCC blur, but the other side of the head is blured. In looking at the actual motion, the entire head moves pretty much by the same amount from the previous frame. The MVTools2 motion blur ends up affecting the entire head by pretty much the same amount, resulting in that eye becoming blurred.

So it looks like the BCC algorithm is perhaps treating sharper objects (the eye) in a different manner than things which start out with detail that is less distinct. Whatever the algorithm and whatever the reason, the BCC motion blur definitely is doing something different.

Okay, here's my contribution to this discussion:



...Jerry

I think that is because I increased "blur threshold" in BCC.

According to the help file:
"Increasing Blur Threshold causes the parts of the image with abrupt changes in color to blur, while areas with subtle details remain unchanged."

I wanted to play with this a little bit because I was hoping to find a balance between natural motion and still retaining some of those details because its so rare to be so close to these parrots. I'm not sure I truly understand the way it works nor that I achieved the right balance, but I think it accounts for the difference.

Jerry-I watched that full screen 720 and it didn't seem like you ended up zooming in very much for all that shake. Nice! Also, liked the motion blur in the water splashing when the coot went in the water.

kairosmatt

"As for shutter speed, I'd be interested in what you found about the various speeds. I have found that unless the camera motion is going to be quite violent (like in a small airplane at low altitude on a hot day), that 1/125 or 1/250 is usually plenty fast enough to reduce or mostly eliminate that annoying "blur pop" that you get after the footage has been stabilized. I figure the lower the shutter speed, the more "natural" the resulting footage will look after stabilization, even without motion blur."

For what it's worth I agree. The one time I've shot something I knew I was going to have to stabilize in post I went for 1/250. That was shooting hand held from a heli. I used of your scripts and it worked a treat.

There's another good reason not to use really fast shutter speeds. They can mean having to open the iris too far and on all but the most very expensive prime lenses that means loosing resolution, even more so at the wide or telephoto end of a zoom lens.

Bob.