Motion stabilisation for landscape-based timelapse

[kingofmyrrh]

Hi there. I don't believe this has been covered yet but please do direct me if I've missed it.

It seems inevitable that when making timelapses of the kind of natural landscapes we (people who like snow) enjoy there is going to be some degree of wind effect, no matter how stable a base we try and put under the camera. I have tried using Adobe AE and Mocha to stabilise out this shake, but it really hasn't gone well. I am not experienced with using trackers but for whatever reason they don't seem to lock on too well, even when I feel I have an area with an obvious contrast gap, perhaps due to the "organic" nature of the landscapes. Mocha splines don't seem to "grab" planes too well (for example a patch of white snow on dark rocks) and the spline progressively deforms as the analysis moves forward.

Does anyone have any advice for this kind of thing? Would be very interested to hear how you go about it. Thanks!

[kidwoo]

Get your tripod out of the wind.


It's not that hard.

[gpcharles]

one thing ive done is align the shots using hugin. export the "pano" and make sure to output the remapped images. do a batch crop on the remapped guys. it's heavy on computation, but a ~200 shots took me 10 minutes on a quad core.

certainly takes the "nerves" out of babying your tripod...

[kidwoo]

You can also output to mp4 and run it through deshaker and virtualdub. Then there's a plugin called mercalli that works pretty well.

If you're on a mac, FCP has some sort of deshaker application. Trackhead speaks (or spoke) highly of it.

I still say just stabilize your setup. I've shot somewhere around 100 timelapses at this point and I can think of about two where stabilizing was an issue. And that was me being an idiot and not setting my tripod up very well.

[gpcharles]

i'll definitely defer to kidwoo. just take my option as an "open source" suggestion for hobbyists. if you are looking for pro results, follow his advice and stabilize the 'pod

[kingofmyrrh]

Thanks very much guys. It's totally fair to say that I could have done more with the tripod at times and with the results I've had will definitely look to do so in the future. I'm having a look at hugin right now and will also investigate the other ones that kidwoo mentions. Appreciate you taking the time to reply.