As we continue exploring ways to stabilize footage, we’re going to take a look at a plugin for VirtualDub called DeShaker. I’m betting you never heard of VirtualDub, right? Unfortunately, it’s Windows only, but maybe it will run in a Windows emulator for Linux or Mac. I started using VirtualDub years ago for converting raw data from DVDs for my demo reel. If you look at the data on a DVD, the movie files are all .vob files. VirtualDub reads these just fine.
VirtualDub started in a dorm room by a guy named Avery Lee who just wanted to capture a Sailor Moon video to his computer. It’s very small and basic, and its main purpose it to capture footage and save it as an uncompressed AVI video file. The Wikipedia page says development stopped in 2013, and even the forums were shut down in 2015, so grab it now and hang on to it!
It can do basic editing/trimming, and people have written lots of plugins for it. The best of them, in my opinion, is DeShaker, which does exactly what the name says – deshakes your footage. Download assets from the links below, then check out the video to see how to get working in VirtualDub. The best thing about it is that it is fully automatic! Just choose a couple of settings and let it work its magic!
Before & After comparison:
Links to stabilize in VirtualDub:
I seem to recall the ability to use alternate frames around the border, this was to save excessive zooming after stabilise. Is that Deshaker? Also I found limited use for it due to the annoyance of transcoding in and out to vdub.
I’m not sure about the borders, but the only border options I see either leave black gaps or scale up in some calculated way to remove them. Mirroring would be handy. The transcoding hasn’t bothered me much, since I read in frame sequences and output frame sequences (vdub can output frame sequences). I only used the default uncompressed AVI when ripping things for my demo reel.
This was an increadibly useful tipp. Thank you so much. I’m using VDub since I first loaded analog video via my graphic card SVHS input onto my computer. But I never heard of this filter. Thanks again. I will definitly give this a try. And the first shots are a very good starting point so far 🙂
Glad you liked it! Yeah, this filter is just awesome. I’d love to hear more about what you use vdub for. Any other great techniques with it everyone should know about?
The site below shows a technique for avoiding black borders without zooming – as done using Mocha. However, I have experimented a little and believe the same technique can be done in Blender. I hope someone can try it and make the technique available to everyone.
http://mamoworld.com/tutorials/stabilize-motion-without-need-zoom
There might be a way using the Inpaint node in the compositor. Hmmm….
And here is the original developers page alluding to the previous and future frames in-fill http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm
“In pass 2, if you have also enabled Previous and future frames to fill in borders and Extrapolate colors into border, the pixels will get their color from other frames or from pixels around the masked area, in the same way borders are filled.”
Also you can make panos with it!
“Try using this feature on a clip with lots of panning, and zoom out by setting Extra zoom factor to something like 0.6. Then you’ll get a panorama like effect. It’s slow, but fun. :)”
Excellent features! I’m going to have to try these!
Have you tried using the vdub denoiser on cycles animations?
I haven’t. But denoising is a common practice in compositing, so I may have to investigate that feature in much more depth.