Adobe and the University of Wisconsin are working on a potentially very useful tool that turns shaky handheld footage into more professional looking, smooth, steady looking stuff people will actually want to watch.
While not expected to be complete until about 2 years from now, I think this could be quite useful, and not just for amateur videographers. Even in pro and semi pro shooting scenarios, without a physical stabilization device such as a SteadiCam or similar, sometimes even the most steady hand produces less than smooth video footage.
Here is the full article about this software.
Camcorder Shakiness
In particular those small consumer camcorders are difficult to keep steady. The smaller and lighter a camcorder, the more shake will be translated to the end footage. Even stabilization systems can only do so and so much.
While shake can add to the realism, a lot of times footage just looks better when the viewer’s eyes and brain doesn’t have to compensate for jerky movement.
Also, and this is something that’s often forgotten when one discusses the pros and cons of image stabilization, video encoders will usually provide a better result with smooth and steady footage than with shaky footage. This is why encoding a talking head filmed with a tripod can be encoded with a much lower bitrate setting than, for example, a scene with trees and leaves that are moved by the wind, shot with a handheld camcorder.
(Of course another, even more important factor for this is the amount of “information” in the image: the more detail in the frame, the more bitrate you need. On set I get rid of anything that has a lot of fine lines or lots of detail, like bed sheets with stripes, or pillows with intricate flower patterns.)
Tags: adobe, image stabilizer, shaky video, shooting handhelf, tracking software, university of wisconsin, video stabilization, video stabilizer, video tips
