SmoothCam Weirdness

[Paris Remillard]

Hey, I was just looking at this SmoothCam clip from a blogwad link on HDforindies.

http://postproduction.digitalmediane....jsp?id=162747

Anyone else notice the weirdness in the edges of the frame? It looks similar to the stretchy stuff in Crossing the Line. Just wondering if this is a common side effect of SmoothCam. Also, if trying to smooth out the airplane shots could be a cause of that strangeness in Crossing.

Sorry, the clip is about halfway down the page on the link.

[Joel Kaye]

(Note: the original source material was HDV 1080i50 with CineFrame 25; however, the clip I dropped it onto is 1080p24—23.08 fps—rendered in pjp 75.) It took around 13 hours and 20 minutes (13:20:00) to analyze the clip, and less than 4 minutes to render on a 3GHz Mac Pro Quad with 8GB of RAM.

I see what you're saying. I think smoothcam must stretch the edges as part of how it fills the black space. Can you set it to enlarge instead? In this case there is so little headroom for the guy that might not really work either.

But 13 hours for 1 minute? OMG - I guess steadicam isn't going out of business. I was kinda hoping smoothing handheld 4K would be a great way to speed production and get a lot of dynamic shots fast. It may yet prove to be as there are many smoothing tools out there. And hey, 90 minutes x 13 hours... that's only 40ish days. Render farm time.

[mdo]

And hey, 90 minutes x 13 hours... that's only 40ish days.

At 1920x1080.

[Mark Pugh]

you have to get out of HDV - convert to prores and times drop dramatically

[Anders Holck]

What you are seeing is distortion from the wideangle lens.
The smoorthcam algorith pans in and out of the outer edge, and therefore the lensdistortion moves in and out of the frame.

Smoothcam works most of the time, but there are no settings to tweek if it tracks the wrong object. Also sloppy object edges can be very obvious at times.
But for simple shots it generally works great.

If Apple would just make it analyze the actual used clip, instead of the full mediafile, a lot less time would be wasted.

[Greg Voevodsky]

If you are getting motion blur from vibration... smoothcam is not going to remove it since the pixels it is referencing are blurred. I've had shots in high wind that shake the camera... and what you see with the smooth cam is that the camera is smooth but the content will go in and out of focus (actually motion blur). If it is not there (ie blurred) it will appeared blurred in the stabilized shot! Nothing like shooting it right the first time. There are times where this trick will work... like on Apple's demo of a moving and blurred shock on a motorcyle that you expect to be blurred... However, on a locked off shot say, a beach shot with the objects, hit by high wind... it will all go soft when stablized.

[Cail Young]

Smoothcam works most of the time, but there are no settings to tweek if it tracks the wrong object. Also sloppy object edges can be very obvious at times.
But for simple shots it generally works great.

Smoothcam doesn't track objects, it averages the entire frame's motion to determine the camera's movement in 2D (i.e. pan/tilt, zoom, rotate, and perspective change). If you can afford Shake, the smoothcam node offers a lot more control.

[Anders Holck]

Smoothcam uses motion vector analysis to track objects/features within the frame, (Apple calls it optical flow) and use that information to extract the camera data. While technically it will be at the pixel level.
The algorithm can indeed get fooled by multiple objects, and locking onto that instead of the background/camera motion.

[Hans von Sonntag]

Smoothcam doesn't track objects, it averages the entire frame's motion to determine the camera's movement in 2D (i.e. pan/tilt, zoom, rotate, and perspective change). If you can afford Shake, the smoothcam node offers a lot more control.

I second this. Shake is affordable and a great composition tool. Never use HDV for postproduction. Use ProRes HQ which is in most cases a great option. Export only the part of the media which shall be stabilised. Put it into Shake and analyse it there. Use "intersection" and "smooth". In the end put a Resize node and enter the size-values of the used media. eg 1920 x1080 for HD. You'll be able to finish on G5 Quad a 10-15 second shot within an hour.

Smoothcam cannot de-blur motion blur nor is it a replacement of a steadycam system, but it can stabilize helicopter shots or shots from a power boat nicely.

Hans

[Cail Young]

The algorithm can indeed get fooled by multiple objects, and locking onto that instead of the background/camera motion.

I should have been clearer. I'm aware that it only tracks a certain number of points but what I was getting at is that the intent is to find global movement not local. If enough points are moving in the same direction counter to camera movement then yes, it will get confused.