Stabilize video via single point tracking

[pedzsan]

I consider myself a novice at Premiere Pro and After Effects.  My attempts to use Warp Stablizer in Premiere Pro yeilds unsatisfactory results.  It may very well be pilot error.  But, I think After Effects can track single points.  I think I've done this in the past but I've not done it in a while and don't remember the details.

It seems plausible to do single point tracking and then tie that to the camera so that that point stays stationary.  This is a greatly simplified case of general video stabilization.  An example is a bird in a tree or bush and you know that its feet are stationary.  So it seems like I could track that point and then tie that to the camera's position (I may not be using the right terms here) and that point would stay stationary in the frame.

Before I dive in and start to re-learn how to do this I wanted to check here to see if I'm going to end up with the same results.  The problem I have with warp stabilizer is the result has moments where the subject is somewhat blurry and I'm trying to get rid of those moments.  I've also had cases where the warp stabilizer seems to just not understand what is happening and things (for brief moments) get radically distorted.

I've looked for simple tutorials on using single point tracking to remove camera shake but I didn't come up with any hits.  Everything wants to use warp stabilizer.  So, if anyone has a good tutorial, that would help too.

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

The easiest way to do what you are describing would be to use Mocha AE to motion track the bird's feet for Translation(position), Rotation, and Scale, add a null to the timeline, then apply the Mocha Tracking data to the null after you have checked the Invert switch in Mocha AE. Now all you have to do is Parent the original footage to the null, and the bird's feet will not move. 

I have an example somewhere. If I get a chance later today, I'll post it.

[pedzsan]

Thank you.  I found various YouTube videos and got it "working".  But the footage is so shaky that that's the reason it gets blurry sometimes.  So, the net effect is the bad problems that I thought were being caused by warp stablizier were actually just problems in the raw footage.

I was starting with 8K raw footage and tracking is super slow with that.  I tried a 1080p proxy file but it was still slow.  I finally rendered from Premiere Pro a 1080 version with the shake and then stablized it in AE.  It was rock steady but it still had moments when it would get blurry.

I need to either do this shots with a tripod or perhaps use a gimble.

Thank you for your time.