SmoothCam vs. some others
By S Simmons. Filed in Editing |
After my comparison tests on the new SmoothCam filter in Final Cut Pro 6 I saw a post on Splice Here wondering how long Avid’s Stabilize effect would take and what the results would be. I wondered the same thing so let’s give it a try.
Avid has a couple of different ways to stabilize a clip. I chose the most simple method called Region Stabilize. Drop the effect on a clip, position the wireframe over what you want it to track, choose appropriate zoom settings and render.
How long did it take?
20 minutes. That’s a far cry from the 53 minutes of analysis that SmoothCam had to perform to stabilize the self-contained Quicktime of the 12 second clip. What were the results?
snake shot w- Avid region stabilize – 670k —- that’s ssssssssssmooth
One mention on the Apple forums was that someone uses iStabilize. They have a free demo so let’s toss them into the mix as well.
snake shot iStabilize – 1.32mb — not a bad result but the downside of a third party app is you have to export a Quicktime, perform the task, export from the app and re-edit the stable clip into your edit. That’s a lot of steps and while the results were pretty good iStablize has kind of a clumsy interface that it took several trips to the help files and several exports before I got it to export the stable shot and not the original shaky one. But it was fast, only taking a few minutes to analyze.
Want to seem them all side-by-side?
snake shot ALL side-by-side – 5.7 mb — The link to the left is a high quality H.264 link. You can also see the You Tube upload below. It’s nice to see that these tools work pretty well. Of course there are a lot of different settings that can be tweaked depending on the kind of shot and how much shake and jitter that it has. All of these examples have been applied with their default settings with the exception of iStabilize which I tweaked one slider for the most stabilization possible. There are a lot of other ways to perform this same task (After Effects, Shake, Combustion) so whatever your tool of choice these days you can get a great result, especially if you have the time.
Saturday, June 2nd 2007 at 12:36 pm
Fascinating. Thanks for doing all this and posting it. Looks like Avid produced the most stable result. But Apple touts the natural quality of their effect, so it deliberately leaves in some motion.
Saturday, June 2nd 2007 at 12:45 pm
I agree with Steve. Avid was clearly better at stablizing. But in this clip, I kinda liked the organic Apple movements. That is not to say in another case I’d prefer the Avid effect.
Also, iStabilize result was also better than the Apple result. I think it is time Apple bought them out.
Saturday, June 2nd 2007 at 12:46 pm
One more thing…
I like the fact there is more of the image left in the Apple version. The iStabilize version is zoomed all the way in.
Saturday, June 2nd 2007 at 3:18 pm
It’s true that SmoothCam does have kind of a more organic feeling with the slight drift it leaves in. The Avid tracking methods have a lot more parameters to change and different “engines” that it uses so it might be possible to get that same kind of motion out of it as well. as for the iStabilize zooming, as I said I cranked it up to take out all of the motion which can be changed.
Sunday, June 3rd 2007 at 12:20 am
Scott, do you think it would be possible for you to try this test with a shaky panning shot? I’d be interested to see how FCP and Avid compare.
Sunday, June 3rd 2007 at 7:39 am
Jon, that’s a great idea but I can’t make any promises. There’s really an infinite number of problem shots that one could test and compare.
Sunday, June 3rd 2007 at 10:00 am
The new version of composer (2.7) allows you to increase or decrease the amount of stabalization (so you can leave some movement). you can also edit the motion tracker data if for one portion of the shot stabalizing one region and another portion of the shot stabalize a different region. there is even a high quality mode that goes beyond the typical stabalize amount which is great for fixing jitter. and the top of the line (symphony) version does even more.
Monday, June 4th 2007 at 3:22 am
hmmm. I’m not familiar with the parameters you have available on your avid version, but as far as my eyes can see, what it seems you are doing is tracking a few points on avid vs a much more complex track on optical flow technology of FCP. If you want to replicate avid’s version in AE, all you had to do would be to track a few, even one point. The same as FCP would be way more difficult. We are talking about tracking a few points against thousands. If you have a helicopter shot for example, and you want it stabilised, not freeze, you would much prefer smoothcam (FCP). Take a look at these examples over Dvxuser. After smoothcam (http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/20471/1171853554.mov) Before smoothcam (http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/20471/1171864536.mov) Cheers. Thanks for taking the time to evaluate those things, the community seems a bit lazy lately and you are the only guy I’m reading those evaluations from.
Monday, June 4th 2007 at 1:25 pm
also, I’d like to point out that Smoothcam’s function isn’t typically to fully stabilize a shot. For that you’d probably want to track a point and lock it down. Smoothcam is there to do the more difficult task of removing high frequency noise while retaining the original notion of the camera motion…
Monday, June 4th 2007 at 1:34 pm
Edd’s right-
The Avid stabilization is just taking the region you selected, affixing it to a location on the frame, and moving the rest of the picture to compensate. This kills any sort of camera moves you may have wanted in there, and makes the fixed object look superimposed. I don’t know what parameters are available in MC, but I suspect something like eliminating jiggle from a dolly or crane shot that don’t follow a fixed-in-frame object would be much harder to accomplish.
The Smoothcam is more sophisticated, tracking many, many points from frame to frame. if one tracker leaves the shot, it doesn’t affect it, because it makes new trackers with every frame. It’s kind of overkill for a shot like this one, but to me, its results are the nicest of the bunch anyhow.
Thanks for the tests! This blog is a wealth of information!
Monday, June 4th 2007 at 8:58 pm
All above comments are very good. As I mentioned in the post, I applied default parameters with no tweaking at all (with the exception of the iStabilize). Avid has quite a few settings and different type of tracking engines, one of which I believe is designed to keep some camera motion, especially in the case of pans and tracking shots, while eliminating bumps. some of those might give it more of the “smoothcam” kind of motion. There are of course many ways to tweak them all and this comparison was meant to spur some discussion.
Monday, June 11th 2007 at 1:38 am
Have you try to use the Smoothcam on Shake? It’s faster than FCP I think…
Monday, June 18th 2007 at 1:35 pm
smooth cam on shake is faster – if you run it w/ your proxy switch set to something other than base. Running it at P2 (quarter rez) actually runs incredibly fast w/ extremely good results – often better than base. A clip run thru at base that takes a few hours to run, may run thru in just a few minutes at P2. It’s very good and I’m surprised that capability has not been placed into the motion version.
Tuesday, June 26th 2007 at 6:52 am
avid mc has two stabilize effects, Region Stabilize (used here) which is good for stabilizing non moving shots and results, when used correctly, in absolutely smooth shots, and Stabilize which is a tracker based effect similar i would imagine to the apple effect. Stabilize has vastly more parameters than Region Stabilize and allows for multiple trackers running concurrently or at different times in the clip. The degree/type of smoothing is fully adjustable and the effect works with moving shots. the render time is of course longer than that of Region Stabilize.
The comparison really should be between the apple effect and Stabilize on the avid. Region Stabilize is a crude, but effective tool.
Saturday, August 18th 2007 at 2:08 pm
Wow, can you further elaborate on how you did it with Avid? I used the unsmooth clip and basically copied your instructions, but mine is definetly not that smooth. It only took a few seconds too, not 20 minutes.
Saturday, August 18th 2007 at 2:27 pm
Oh.. you use Avid Media Composer… I’m using Avid Xpress Pro
Saturday, April 12th 2008 at 8:58 am
Hi, I think that Jeremy’s said is right: why are you comparing a “stabilize effect” with a “camera smooth improvement effect”. You must to compare with the “motion stabilize” effect in final cut.
Best