Any way to straighten tilted video?

[dalemccl]

I took a lot of video on my recent trip to Las Vegas, and even though I didn't drink, many of the video clips look like I had been. They are "crooked", where the horizon is not quite level. I obviously did not have the camcorder level when I shot these clips.

I don't see any tools in VS to staighten them. And indeed this would seem very difficult for video software to do, unlike still photos where it is easy.

A google search didn't turn up any tools either. This is AVCHD, which probably complicates the problem by being hard to edit.

Any ideas on how to staighten video clips with minimal loss of quality?

[Ken Berry]

Don't worry -- I recently did some editing for friends who had never used a video camera before. They had been on a long trip through the game parks of South Africa, and thought some shots might look better with the camera turned on its side, like they were used to doing with a still camera!! Hmmm...

But I bet you would find that just about all users here regularly find that, even though they think they have their camera's held horizontally, a slight -- or even more pronounced - slant is there in the final. Personally, I just ignore it.

The only way to get round it in existing video is to do a lot of very tedious cropping, but that will not only take a lot of time, it will reduce the frame size of the resulting video. Or if you can use it in the overlay track and expand it upwards to fit the frame, probably resulting in a noticeable drop in quality.

The only safe way of avoiding it while actually filming is to use a tripod -- but that rather defeats the purpose of a 'handy cam'!!!

[Black Lab]

You may want to check out Virtual Dub. I happened to find the following:

But sometimes, the default 90 or 180 degree rotation isn¡¦t enough and you need to rotate a video by some custom angle like say 45 degrees. In that case you would need VirtualDub - a lightweight but exceptionally useful video program.

Open the video clip inside VirtualDub and press Ctrl+F to load the filters menu. Now a add a filter that says ¡§rotate2″ - this allows you rotate video clips by any arbitrary angle.

VirtualDub supports most video formats and can also be used to straighten videos captured via mobile phone cameras.

[dalemccl]

Thanks Black Lab, I'll check out Virtual Dub's capabilites.

Otherwise, Ken is probably right, it may be best to just ignore it and try to do better next time by using the horizontal line that the camcorder can super-impose on the LCD/VF as an aid to keeping the camera level with the horizon.

Update: I downloaded Virtual Dub (the price is right - free). As far as I can tell, it doesn't support AVCHD.

[boxy]

Update: I downloaded Virtual Dub (the price is right - free). As far as I can tell, it doesn't support AVCHD.

Does anyone know if Virtualdub will support HDV?

[mitchell65]

Not sure if the latest version does but as it is open source why not download and install it and give it a try?

[Accolades]

Maybe the CROP FILTER ? in VS3 would help?

Even the ROTATE FILTER applied to the video will work.

[boxy]

Maybe the CROP FILTER ? in VS3 would help?

Even the ROTATE FILTER applied to the video will work.

I am using X2 and I do not see a 'ROTATE' filter.

However, the clip in question is a tripod shot that is tilted one degree off of center and I found that using the 'distort' effect - the little green squares on the corners - I can straighten it out and the amount of distortion is so miniscule it's unnoticable!

[Black Lab]

The Rotate filter is in X3.