Comparing video stabilization methods

Background: the HD Hero sports cam produces awesome high quality HD videos but it lacks built-in video stabilzation. This means any camera shaking transfers directly to your video. While for some sports applications this is fine, I have found the quality of aerial shots improves significantly when the footage is stabilized (i.e. deshaken).

This test video was put together with the purpose of comparing raw GoPro HD Hero footage shot at 1080p 30fps with two different techniques for "deshaking" the video. Method 1 is using the built-in Stabilize Media option (Tools | Video menu) found in the Sony Vegas Studio HD Platinum 10.0 software. This is an earlier version of the proDAD Mercalli video stabilizer that has received good reviews. Method 2 is using the VirtualDub video editing program and the companion Deshaker filter plug-in, both of which are available for free. Note I did not compare the paid version of the Mercalli product.

This short comparison video first compares the raw and Vegas deshaken clips side by side, then compares the raw and VirtualDub deshaken clips side by side, and finally the Vegas and VirtualDub clips side by side.

The bottom line: if you want basic deshaking, simplicity, and fastest processing speed then use the built-in Stabilize Media option in Vegas. The downside to this option is that the stabilization process cuts quite a bit more viewing area from your raw videos as compared to the VirtualDub Deshaker stabilization filter. If you want the best deshaking quality I would go with VirtualDub + the stabilization plug-in. VirtualDub Deshaker clearly does a great job stabilizing while subtracting the least viewing area of the video. The major downside of this approach is time. It takes considerably longer to process your clips and in fact is a two-pass process so this means more processing and more operator time too. While there have been some scripts developed to semi-automate this process, I have yet to find one I'm happy with.

If you want specific stabilization settings I used for either technique, shoot me a message.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• HD Hero
• RC soaring
• video stabilzation
• VirtualDub
• Sony Vegas Studio 10

[SoaringDude1]

The more movement your raw video has the more the deshaking process has to cut off some of the video edges. That's exactly how it does the deshaking: by locking on the image content (center) and dynamically shifting the video window around to match your camera movement. To take one extreme example, if your camera was shaking left and right by 1/4 the total frame width, then the deshaking process would have to cut off ~1/2 the picture width to give you a shake-free image.

[dreyTee]

VritualDub with deshacker is much better - it cuts less! (because of it's smart technology, that can add missing edges from neighbour frames).

[iLoveSkateboardingHD]

hey is there a way to stabillize Withouw Zooming in too much ! ?