Okay, I searched this forum and found the good posts on stabilizing video. I installed Transcode, then updated the files (I got a ton of errors on my codec before updating). I tested it out on a short clip of three of my beagles hopping around and me using the Kodak ZI10. Seemed to work fine - the output MP4 had mush less jitter and shake than the original.

So - my son and I put together a short 3 and a half minute video of hiking at a local park and doing a cleanup. Wayyyyyyy too much shake, it will make you seasick! (okay, I did not hold the camera steady, and we did some pans that are way to generic - sweep left, sweep right, come back half-way around).

I think I can fix the shake with the transcode. Question is - do the whole project in one sweep? Or do each clip and start the project over again?

For folks that get here instead of on the original forum question, the posts pointed to http://blog.hamoid.com/stabilize-video-in-ubuntu-linux and http://public.hronopik.de/vid.stab/download.php?lang=en


I'm liking KDenlive! But do you have a tool for folks that found they made generic, trite clips with cliched pans and goofy zooms?

I beleive a vstab based stabilizer is already in MLT underlying kdenlive but not yet made accessible in kdenlives effects->enhance list. Looking forward to using it in edit rather than Deshaker after. But hope it's a YCC based approach. :-)

It may be accessible directly via MLT on the CLI, not sure.

I use Deshaker with virtualdub and Avisynth with Wine on Linux on the occasions I've shot with no IS in camera / lens or sufficient support, but nothing beats a tripod, monopod or basic handheld support setup and no panning, with as careful and purposful as possible camera movement. :-)

Deshaker works relatively well, won't fix 'jello cam' though, as I usually take a lot of short clips and easily 100+ to work with I leave deshaking until after editing, although whilst editing I try to use as little 'shaky' video as I can knowing there's no simple solution and sometimes numerous iterations of settings to get it as good as I can get it. Then Deshake frame ranges (via Virtualdub interface) at a time, if need be.

Multiple iterations of settings to try and fix 100+ short clips would be tiresome to do before edit, and to then not use a good amount in the edit anyway.

Sounds bad 100+ shaky clips, :-) but sometimes theres no alternative, currently can't afford decent camera stabilization and enjoy using old manual lenses without IS way to much. :-) Just got to keep on practising moving the camera steadily and purposefully.

Yeah - I had 24 short, shaky clips. I edited them down to three and a half minutes of shaky video with nausea-inducing pan and sweeps. I did the two-step transcode to stabilize each clip individually, as I couldn't figure out how to do the whole project.

I think I might try to just grab individual images from some of the clips and use them, rather than "walk. trudge trudge trudge in the leaves. look straight ahead, pan left. pan back. pan right. pan back to center. trudge trudge trudge."

So, learning KDenlive for editing. Transcode to stabilize. But the monopod and carefully considering what image I want to capture is an entirely different thing.

For transcode, I just used default settings. I might want to mess with different settings.
Here's the video pre-stabilizing: http://youtu.be/pBKAMIhBebc
And in 720P: http://youtu.be/pBKAMIhBebc?hd=1

My son and I need to work more on the edits. We cut some edits too short. We need to yank out some pan 'n sweeps and simply put up an image. And I think we should cut out some of the audio and maybe do a voice-over. We need to work on a cleaner way to present our idea. And that's not a KDenlive thing, it's more of a concept thing we need to think out.

Hi callmebruce,

I really hope you don't mind but I borrowed a few of your, as you put it, "nausea-inducing pan and sweep" clips and did a little work on them. Now, they're not great but at least watch-able and your stomach stays in place :-)

I put them on youtube in unlisted but the link is below.

Your clip comes first followed by the new one. Watch expanded (not full screen). Any bad jerks in the new clips is youtube's doing and not in the original video. I think they change the frame rate or something.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=E0STeYT5x2Y

That is really great! The clips look a thousand times better! How did you do that? Was it through transcode or something else? I'm going to snag those clips and use them - that makes a world of difference!

Thanks, glad I could help.

I'll get back to you a little later on with the info. At the moment I'm trying to clean up a couple more clips. The trail walking is a nightmare but it's obviously quite important to your video. Slowing right down irons out a lot of shakes but it's a bit of a snails pace. Trying a little experiment. Be back soon.

Thank you, that would be great!

The software I am using is called slowmoVideo and it was written by one the Kdenlive Developers who is call granjow on here. Unfortunately, it has one MASSIVE dependency. You have to have a NVIDIA graphics card and not too old. You can slow right down, speed up and even reverse render. Boy it can take some time but it is well worth it.

You can see or get it here http://slowmovideo.granjow.net/
(and example videos)
Back to the clips.

Walking is slowed right down but is a lot better. Best if you show a scene then fade to black followed by a fade from black to walking scene (but only a few seconds). Then move onto a different scene. You can do that as often as you like and it gives the impression of walking the trail.

Anyway, if the walking is Ok for you, I could knock out a few more clips.

See here: http://youtu.be/xphc7_iu-C0

Slomovideo sounds pretty cool! Unfortunately, I don't have an NVidia card. Used to have one in a desktop, and they have great graphics!

I appreciate all the work you have done, and will gladly snag the stable video! What my son and I did was transcode each clip, use ffmpeg to strip out the audio. My son recorded a voice over (we need to tweak it) and made a new video. It's much shorter - it's 48 seconds shorter in length, and two long sections are simply stills - so the actual video is maybe 2 minutes. Clipping it short helped get fairly stable video clips, but cut out a lot. I then ran it through Youtube's stabilization editor.

I don't like having the long still at the start of the video - it is way too long, but I did that to help match the audio clip. If you watch it and hear my son talking about the Red Trail with more traffic and more litter - well - that audio section is at one of the nicest, cleanest, hardest parts of the park to reach. I need to move that out, and move video around as I move that out.

We're going to re-edit it, to try and match up the voice over with the correct sequences in the film, and I'd love to get rid of the goofy still at the start of the project (it's obvious that it's about 10 to 15 seconds too long). I thought the hard part of editing a short clip would be technical, but planning each clip to match a voice over and writing a transcript took more thought than I had realized!

Anyway - I'll snag the clips you stabilized if you don't mind. They look great! And that might help me get the film clips back up to a decent length to match the audio. We'll also rewrite the audio to cut it down a bit.

Our new version is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob8ieVJAnzI
We'll mess around with it some more, but it's getting there!

It looks like Slowmovideo does not require nVidia anymore!