Anchoring with Warp Stabilizer

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 17, 2022
3 replies
4690 views

Is there a way to set an anchor point when using Warp Stabilizer?

I am using Warp Stabilizer to undo sporadic spinning/rotation I have in my original footage. Imagine having a camera hanging from a string, pointed down at the ground. The camera naturally spins in the wind which create the end result of continuously rotating footage.

By using Warp Stabilizer (set to No Motion; Position, Scale, Rotation; and Preserve Scale) I am able to reverse the spinning of my raw footage. The problem, however, is that the footage no longer has an anchor point and will fly all over the screen; sometimes even off the screen completely.

If there's a way to tell the Warp Stabilizer to move the footage only based on the anchor point, this would solve my problem.

This topic has been closed for replies.

FlyingFourFun

Inspiring

Is there a reason you can't use the Mocha Plugin for After effects?

Mocha Pro: The Stabilize Module - YouTube

At about 03:15 they start to talk about adding full frames, which combines with the other stabilization in the early part of the video, might, allow you to stabilize to the effect you're after? This would solve the 'fly all over' and 'off screen' comments you made.

I tend to only use warp stabilize for very specific type of shots that I need to get some bounce/jitter/shake out or smooth out abrupt motion. Anything more complex, Mocha is pretty powerful.

I look forward to your thoughts on this approuach.

5

5bravoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Funny you mention Mocha Pro; I was just looking into that plug-in to see if my company could expense it! I don't know if it would actually solv ewhat we're trying to do but at the very least, I'm confident it would speed up the current method's process time.

Fortunately, they offer a free trial version to test out but even at that, the software is quite expensive that it may be difficult to justify the investment 😞

In either case, I was going to give the trail version a shot after my current project is finished.

FlyingFourFun

Inspiring

I thought there was a version of Mocha already included with After Effects - After checking there is, but it seems to not included the stabilize feature... unfortunately.

I found this feature chart for what's included in the different versions:

Boris FX | Mocha AE (Mocha for After Effects)

The costs are $695 for a perpetual license, but I would not do that, as you only get upgrades for a year, then must pay for support anyway.

If I was buying it today, I would get the annual subscription, for $295USD which includes all the upgrades also. They have been doing some pretty decent worth while upgrades the last few years so I have not regreated the support payments I make annually (I purchased mine before subscriptions was an option).

Hopefully your business can find a way to approve the funding, there is some significant time savings for many different use cases with Mocha.

Aside from that, the

5

5bravoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Best method I've found so far is to do a first pass with the Warp Stabilizer, then use a Null Layer to Pre-Compose all footage as one saving the Warp Stabilizer effect so I can then use the Stabilize Motion with trackers to fix the X and Y positions. It's an incredibly lengthy process and all footage has to be broken into 5-20 second clips throughout each step otherwise the software gets lost.

Richard van den Boogaard

Community Expert

Instead of using Warp Stabilizer in PPro, consider using it in After Effects.

In Warp Stabilizer's Advanced menu, you can choose which points the tracker should use for stabilization and which ones it should ommit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nNy0gLwDT0

Alternatively, inside PPro, you achieve a similar result by applying Warp Stabilizer to a nested version of the clip where the moving parts you don't want the stabilization to happen on are masked out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJR0pET4Lfc

Hopefully any of these methods will help you in preventing the effect to skid off.