Stabilization

[Gopher77]

I know there was a thread about stabilization, but I couldn't find it, so here's my question. In that thread I remeber there was a statement something to the effect that since red has an overscan area we won't need stabilization. Also I remeber a statement that there will be no keyframes in Redcine. So where do we do stabilization at, in the NLE? will either Avid or Final Cut be capable of recognizing the over scan area?

Here is why I ask, I just shot a commercial for a large funiture retailer. I shot in HD and the footage was down converted to SD. One of the shots was a jib starting at the foot of the bed and jibing up and panning right to a three quarter of the bed. After several takes we felt we had a good shot. Once in editing the shot was sped up 400%. Several little bumps in the move became very appearant at that speed. These were not visible on the monitor though we could feel vibration in the floor.

So could I fix this in post with Red?

[Rob Lohman]

My advice is fix this while shooting. So cranes, steadicams, dollies etc. Then if you detect a problem in post there are ways to fix this. There is stabilization software out there and I have no doubt some of the bigger post applications have support for it as well (with auto tracking).

You can "fix" this with any camera. Question is how good will it look after it's done. Hence try to make it as good on set as you can.

[Gopher77]

Understand, it is being fixed in post, the bumps are very minor. But really my question is more about how we can take advantage of the over scan in post with the red.

[tj williams]

Guess that will never see version 1 of RED Cine. but it would make a great upgrade if using the 4K area one could make re-framings and track objects in frame. In an HD out this would really take advantage of the superior 4K area.

[ChristopherKenworthy]

If you plan to project or finish at 2K, then shooting at 4K is wonderful, because you can reframe and shift around in post, and nobody will notice. It won't look like a blow-up. When it comes to stabilization, however, I find that most post solutions aren't very good, even when you have loads of resolution to spare.

I've worked in post more than anything, and fix shots for a living some of the time, and the real issue with post-stabilization is motion blur. You can stabilize the image perfectly (so that all bumps are invisible), but the very fact that the camera moved when the image was captured, means there will be some motion blur in those frames. A million factors affect how much motion blur, of course. In some cases, with a small bump, these post fixes work well. But most of the time, you'll remove the bump, but the image will still blur at that moment.

So, although having lots of pixels will make this easier than usual, I wouldn't rely on the post-fix.

[Poi Boy]

I don't quite agree, I've found shake's stabalizer to work pretty well...I can tell the difference because it is my shot but I've never had someone else notice. I think when I do it with 4k footage and downress for broadcast it will be invisible.
-A

[ChristopherKenworthy]

Shake does a good job, of course, but it's all a question of how much you're trying to stabilize. I'm talking about clients shooting handheld as they run through a field, then handing it to a post house and wanting it to look like it was shot on a track dolly. I'm barely exaggerating.

But if you want to shoot 4K on a shoulder-mount, and then dial out a little of the float, then the technique will work wonderfully. It's the philosophy of 'fix it in the mix' that worries me. Even if you fix every shot yourself, that's a lot more time consuming than getting your operator to shoot a perfect shot on the day.

Anyway, this is something I'll test out in the first week that I get my camera. I'd never rely on this as a shooting approach, myself, but it would be good to know how much of a bump we can get rid of without having to reshoot.

[Poi Boy]

You are right, no stabilizer can make up for a stupid client.
Aloha
-A

[Brook Willard]

Five minutes setting wedges beats an hour fixing a bad shot in post.

[Poi Boy]

Five minutes well spent for sure but sometimes a post stabalizer can be your best friend.
Aloha
-A

[Chris Kenny]

If you have a crew of a few dozen people getting paid union wages, and you're going to have to pay your actors millions of extra dollars if you need to add shooting days, and you have a first-rate VFX pipeline to drop footage into, there are a lot of cases where "fix it in post" probably really is reasonable choice. It's even being done to fix up performances now. (Changing facial expressions, etc.)

On the other hand, if you have a crew of five people, and everyone is working for free food, and "fix it in post" means you're going to be up until four in the morning messing around with Shake, you're much better off spending a few extra minutes to get it right on set.

[Gopher77]

What happeed on this shot is we were on the second floor of the building. The dolly track was set correctly and level, the jib was ratched to the dolly and the jib head was level and balanced. The floor literally bounced every time someone walked by. Since the client doesn't give us the option to shoot when the store is closed it is a problem we have to live with.

Still though I'd like to know if it is possible to access the overscan area of the chip with some kind of keyframe capability so we can stabilize a clip. I haven't heard anything yet about how we can do that, I'm sure it's no big deal, but has anyone thought of how to accomplish it?

[Simon Blackledge]

If your speeding up a shot that much your always going to see little things.. it's the same as models always looking like models if there are 2 materials, solids are fine.. mix solids with say water or smoke and the 2 won't have the correct dynamics when you over crank.

Ok this is how I would fix it in post.

You speed up a shot 400%. Unless you worked everything out before, right down to shutter and correct motion blur for when it's re-timed you don't have enough motionblur in the spedup shot. Best not do that as you want it as sharp as poss to track.

At 400% your either doing it the cheap way and chucking frames away or the best way re-timed in a proper re-timer like furnace, creating new frames.

Either way there is more information in the orig plate than the spedup shot (more frames less blur)

So stabilise the orig un sped up plate. Even though you can't see the bumps you know they are there. Then speed the shot up. Then apply motion blur to the shot using another plug-in by the correct amount for that speed of shot.( unless you want that look)

theres a stabilise plug in for after effects that take into account movement etc but remove bumps.

or you can do it another way in flame buy removing just the bumps from a tracked curve.

It's a pain like has been said on fast moving shots as the blur remain.. especially if some idiot ran over a wire but in your case as your going 400% I suspect its just making it look a tad cartoon like. You should be fine.

Hope that helps.

s

[Gopher77]

Guys your missing the point of this. The shot is not what is important, I was just using it as an example. It will be fixed using flame, no big deal. What I was wondering if a situation like that will be easier to fix utilizing Reds over scan area. Then I got to thinking where will we be able to access the over scan area? Will we be able to offload the full 5 k frame. I know we can't key frame in Red Cine so that takes us into the NLE, once there are we going to have the luxary of the overscaned image to utilize something like motion track without having blow up pixels?

[Blaine Golden]

I don't quite agree, I've found shake's stabalizer to work pretty well...I've also had good luck with SHAKE.

[Poi Boy]

Hey Gopher,
I don't really think there is anything to worry about; if you have to blow up a 4k frame a little to cover a slight crop no one is going to notice, even if you are doing a film out.
Aloha
-A

[Rob Lohman]

If you frame for 4K and shoot 4.5K (RED-RAID) then sure. If you know ahead of time this could be an issue I would leave a bit more head-room by framing different.

On the 4K and down modes you will see overscan (4.5K), but not record it.

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

I've also had good luck with SHAKE.

I found that I can rescue almost anything with Shake unless its so shaky that I have motion blur in the frame.
So there is a relation between shutter speed and rescuability (does this word exist in english?).

Jochen´s 2 cent

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Gopher to answer your question: Overscan doesn't matter and it can't be recorded because as soon as it's been recorded it's no longer overscan, it's part of the image.

If you deliver HD and you shot in 2k and you just crop the final you have overscan. If you deliver on HD and you shot on 4k you have a ton of overscan potential. If you deliver 4k and you shot at 4k... then no you don't have overscan, your resolution is your deliver resolution (unless you are shooting elements of a composite). If you deliver 4k and you shot at 4.5k with an attached RAID then you have .5k overscan.

The feature that is advertised about the RED is that if you're shooting 2k or 4k the viewfinder can display what's beyond the recording area much like an optical viewfinder. But once you hit record, it has to save it to a rasterized image size. That record size - delivery is your potential cropped overscan.

[Gopher77]

Thats the answer I was looking for thanks! So it will be possible to shoot 4.5k and then crop it in the NLE to 4K. I know thats extreme for this day and time but I doubt it will be like that in the future when theaters have 4k projectors. One last question this probably should go in workflow but; Will we be able to take say 4K footage into Avid cut it, crop it and then use Redcine to conform it to desired format, 720 or 1080?

[Simon Blackledge]

Ah ok :-/ bit of an over kill!..