Stability Plugin ??

[krwzmann]

Hi all. Just wondering if there is a plugin (3rd party) or a feature within MSP8 that you can apply on parts of footage to 'stabilize' shaky shots? Thanks in advance!

[Terry Stetler]

First understand that there are limitations to what a video stabilization program can do. Too much motion and nothing can help.

Free:

DeShaker, which is a plugin for the also free VirtualDUB video manipulation program;

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

VirtualDUB;

http://www.virtualdub.org/

If you don't know about VirtualDUB and its huge number of freeware plugins, you should make the effort to learn about 'em. One of those tools you shouldn't be without.

Google for "virtualdub plugin" and prepare to lose a week or two

This is a good place to start: http://neuron2.net/

Commercial:

2d3's Steadymove ($$$);

http://www.2d3.com/jsp/products/product ... product=11

DynaPel's SteadyHand;

http://www.dynapel.com/index.shtml (it's in the Products/Video Editing link)

Trialware or Buy: https://www.softwarehouse.biz/cgi-bin/p ... 632/reg=US

There is a plugin version for Premiere, but it won't work in MSPro.

ArcSoft also makes a video stabilization program that's a bit more expensive;

http://www.arcsoft.com/en/products/videostabilizer/

[krwzmann]

Thanks Terry! It's probably a little too late for me to do the reading. It's past 12am and time to hit the sack. But i'll definetly check it out! Thanks again!

[Devil]

I've been trying, for years, to persuade Ulead to have a steady filter working on a different principle to most of the available ones. For example, I occasionally use SteadyHand, which is one of the best, but it is frame-based, like the others. The disadvantage of this is that if the object you are interested in occupies a small part of the screen but is closer than the background, the background will stabilise, but, because of parallax, the object will still jiggle. Alternatively, if you have a foreground that is dominant but the object of interest is in the background, it is the background that will jiggle. My idea was to be able to select the part of the pic that you wish to stabilise and let the rest take care of itself.

This idea was born out of two incidents:
1. In the wilds of Utah, I caught a glimpse of a Bighorn sheep running at about 80 m distance. I tried to follow it by hand on full telephoto, the result being a 1½ second, very shaky, panned clip, with a lot of foreground detail. SH tried but "focussed" more on the foreground and the improvement was marginal. I then manually used MP to try and position the animal at the same spot in the frame and this was a distinct improvement.
2. In much wilder country again, in the heart of Cairo, I was crossing a bridge over the Nile in a bus in the late afternoon. Looking sideways, the distant city was attractively lit and I shot it through the bus window. There were three planes in the shot: the bridge parapet, part of an island in the river and the distant city. Obviously, the bus was moving and the road was probably bumpy into the bargain. SH "focussed" more on the island and the parapet and the city was not improved.

I'm still hoping that Ulead will work on a selective stabiliser, but I fear that it is not for the immediate. When I watch TV, especially impromptu news items, I tend to look out for hand-held and shoulder-mounted shots and observe the interplay between, for example, the head of an interviewee and the background. Sometimes, you can even see that it has been manually improved with a moving path or full frame stabilisation. However, I'm convinced that selective stabilisation would be a good trump card for Ulead, if they implemented it.

[HankM]

I have all three stabelizers. virtualdub plugin deshaker is the best. It has many combonations. It took a while to figure it all out, but once you get it it really does a great job. And it's free
HAank

[Fizick]

There is also DePan stabilizer for Ulead MSP.
http://www.fizick.com

Devil,
Some time ago I consider implement "selective", ("tracked") stabilizer,
but it is not easy make user interface for it, especially when tracked object moves out of frame borders.

[Terry Stetler]

Forgot all about yours Fizick. Sorry

Also useful is Fizick's DNR plugin (freeware). DNR = Dynamic Noise Reduction;

http://www.fizick.com/dnr-ulead/dnr.html

[Devil]

Devil,
Some time ago I consider implement "selective", ("tracked") stabilizer,
but it is not easy make user interface for it, especially when tracked object moves out of frame borders.

Obviously, if the selected object goes out of frame, there is no way of following it. There are three possibilities:
1. you could simply display an error message "invalid stabilisation: object out of frame" and abort the stabilisation.
2. you could revert to full-frame stabilisation and start again with a warning message
3. you could track the pixel pattern in the same area, but where it went out of the frame, so that the actual pattern changes.

[Gorf]

...My idea was to be able to select the part of the pic that you wish to stabilise and let the rest take care of itself...

Icarus did this.

It was mainly a camera calibration and tracking tool, so you could transfer camera position and movement data to a 3D program for superimposing CGI and live action (for example).

At least three features were borne of user requests on the "it's easy enough to do while we're at it" mindset, and one of these was camera stabilisation.

The program works by taking feature points (automatically generated or manually specified) and tracking them throughout the clip. If you put in a manual feature, and track it throughout the clip, you can then go to the clip which has the feature in the position you want it, and Icarus will export a new clip with the frame moving about so the feature always stays in the same place.

I say "Icarus did this" because the free program developed by the University of Manchester was sold, and is now the four-figure Pixel Farm application PFHoe. There is a cut-down version called PFTrack for £49 (about $85) but it's not clear from the website if this still permits you to track on a user feature.

Anyway - why did I bring all this up? Because if the feature was added in a "because we can" moment of developer showing-off, it shouldn't be too difficult for Ulead to implement something similar as a filter.

Just my opinion, of course.

[Fizick]

Probably I can consider to implement the tracking for short clips later (soon).

By the way, today I release new beta version 2.7 of DePan stabilizer.
I am still do not try it with MSP 8.

[Terry Stetler]

Haven't tried it functionally yet due to my lack of shaky clips (tripods, cam dollys and steadycam ) , but the classic UI opens and the effect seems to work (I get the red slash on rendering the trialware).

Main problem seems to be that a control interface doesn't appear in the new Effects Manager. Maybe time to check & see if there is a new version of the dev kit that'll let you set up a second UI for EM.

[krwzmann]

Hmm I wonder how well the DNR plugin works. On the site it says it works up to Media Studio Pro 7.3 . Anyone get it to work with MSP 8.0? If I can reduce some noise from some of my darker scenes...that would be great!

Forgot all about yours Fizick. Sorry

Also useful is Fizick's DNR plugin (freeware). DNR = Dynamic Noise Reduction;

http://www.fizick.com/dnr-ulead/dnr.html

[Fizick]

Terry,
I checked Ulead site.
There is no new Ulead SDK. (Videofilter is from 2002 year, version 5.0)

krwzmann,
You can try use DNR plugin with MSP8 yourself. It MUST work, but I did not test it. Please post your test results here.

[fabri22]

Terry,
I checked Ulead site.
There is no new Ulead SDK. (Videofilter is from 2002 year, version 5.0)

krwzmann,
You can try use DNR plugin with MSP8 yourself. It MUST work, but I did not test it. Please post your test results here.

Both your plugs work like a charm with MSP8 !

[Terry Stetler]

Yes, but without an Effects Manager interface. That'll have to wait for 'em to release new versions of the SDK files.