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Whistleboy
Participant
May 5, 2017
Question

Prevent Cropping When Correcting Lens Distortion?

  • May 5, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 7662 views

Hello, I need to remove the barrel distortion from footage recorded using a surveillance camera.  I would like to preserve every bit of information from the frame (it will look on the edges like there is major pin cushion distortion).  However, when I apply Effects > Lens Distortion > Curvature -18, the distortion is removed, but pixels are extended outside of my original frame size.  I tried first scaling the video down to 65%, then applying the Lens distortion to see if I could see the aspects of the image that were previously cropped out, but with no luck.  The image now gets cropped at the boundary of the scaled video frame, even though the "canvas" is the original size.

If this cannot be done with Adobe Premiere, I do also have After Effects and Photoshop, but am finding similar problems.  I can't seem to remove the distortion while being able to see ALL of the original pixels recorded by the camera.  Any help is GREATLY appreciated.  Thank you!

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4 replies

Turrican101
Turrican101
Participating Frequently
June 29, 2018

I don't understand why there's an option in AE to distort to the inside or outside of the content box, but in Premiere this is missing... I would like to distort to the inside and then crop to 21:9 format. So i could use the whole width of the original and only have to crop the irrelevant corners. In AE no problem, in Premiere not possible...

R Neil Haugen
R Neil Haugen
Legend
June 29, 2018

The code and structure of PrPro and Ae are quite different. And with the design feature of that Dynamic link between them, they don't see why every tool of Ae needs to be recreated in PrPro. As that is what the link is for.

In general I tend to agree. I'd rather have them working on extending their toilets rather than duplicating them.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
Turrican101
Turrican101
Participating Frequently
June 29, 2018

They don't need to recreate the tool, it's already there. But only one option missing, where you can set to distort inwards instead of outwards.

It wouldn't matter if i could resize the content, not just the box where the content is in. If i resize the video it stays cropped instead of showing the outer rest.

G
George Day
Participating Frequently
September 11, 2017

Hi All,

I know this is an old thread but I'd like to throw my solution to this in to the mix for others that stumble on it.

I hit the same problem - and I've fixed it in the past by taking it out to AE and then back in to Prem - but the Dynamic Link slows things down a little and it's just an extra messier step I'd like to avoid. Here's what I do now;

Say my source footage that I want to distort is 1920 x 1080 25p.

1. Create a new Sequence (e.g. Footage NEST), at a higher resolution to that of the source footage, say 4K, in my case 3840 x 2160 25p.

2. Place my source footage into the new sequence - leave scale at 100 - do not scale it up to fill the frame - just let it sit in there with black space around it.

3. Place the new sequence (Footage NEST) into my original 1920x1080 timeline and set the 'Scale' to 100. Now, it appears in the timeline without any black space or extra crop, as if it was the original footage.

4. Apply the 'Lens Distort' to the new sequence (Footage NEST) and set curvature as desired.

Now all the original data should be retained, so you can scale it and/or change position and use that extra image data.

Hope this makes sense/helps someone out!

    C
    creativeiq
    Participant
    May 10, 2018

    This helped me out - thank you!

    I'm correcting aerial footage from a drone and the distortion is massive.

    Don't know how you figured this out, but I'm glad you did :-)

    W
    WhistleboyAuthor
    Participant
    May 5, 2017

    I finally found a way to do this in Photoshop:

    1) Open the video > Layer > Smart Objects > Convert to Smart Object

    2) Filter > Lens Correction...

    3) Under "Auto Correction" tab on the right, uncheck "Auto Scale Image"

    4) Go to "Custom" tab and move "Remove Distortion" slider toward the right (pin cushion).

    Would still love to know if this is possible in Premiere...thanks!

    jacobr63846378
    jacobr63846378
    Participant
    May 16, 2017

    hello - did your solution make the image wider?  i am trying to figure out how to do barrel distortion without having the image cropped.

    W
    WhistleboyAuthor
    Participant
    May 16, 2017

    Hmmm, I just tried adding barrel distortion using the Photoshop method I described above and it definitely crops the image (top and bottom extend beyond extents of original size), no matter whether I have the "Auto Scale Image" box checked or not. However, I can scale the movie in the same "Lens Correction > Custom dialog box to ring the top and bottom information within the field of view.  So, yes, I'd say the Photoshop method would work.

    Ann Bens
    Community Expert
    Ann BensCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 5, 2017

    You will 'lose' the pixels even if its done in AE or Ps or Gopro Studio.

    W
    WhistleboyAuthor
    Participant
    May 5, 2017

    Thanks for the reply.  Do you mean from a recompression/reprocessing standpoint, or that I won't be able to "see" everything that was captured by the camera's CCD?  I understand that distorting will fundamentally change the pixel x pixel structure of the original video, I just want to keep the distortion within the original dimensions of the footage.

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