Warp stabiliser is introducing artifacts

Report · Jun 04, 2019

It's taken me ages to work this out but I've finally sussed why some of my clips are appearing pixelated, with fringing in the sky and other artifacts. It's every clip I have warp stabilised. This is happening on 10bit 1080 30p GH5 footage and it makes no difference if it's an adjustment layer or the original clip. I'm now having to run every clip through Neat and then add sharpening.

Has anyone else noticed this? How do I avoid it?

Thanks.

Report · Jun 04, 2019

How much is it having to upscale the clips to do the stabilization?

Are you using a GPU, if so, which Mercury Acceleration setting? And have you tried changing Mercury Acceleration to Software Only? Just to see if it's a GPU issue.

Neil

Report · Jun 05, 2019

Not a lot, Neil. Some are even static and so I'm just using No Motion. These are 10bit files and I can get away with cropping in quite a bit on them normally. I haven't tried changing to Software Only, I don't see how that could be the issue but I'll give it a go.

Report · Jun 05, 2019

It's a process error. Changing to Software Only changes the process used, basic troubleshooting 101. If a specific process is giving an error, switch processing to see if that process induces the error.

If the error continues, it's a deeper issue.

If the error stops, you have the location of the error nailed down.

Neil

Report · Jun 05, 2019

I kinda agree with Jim but sometimes you have to shoot hand held and maybe lean the camera and your hand on something to try and steady it more. I got out sometimes with a sandbag (like one's used on film sets ).. and you can put that on a table or ground and plop camera on it , stuff it down so it's level etc., and maybe get the shot you want.. but panning and tilting is limited that way.

If you got 4.2.0 (8 or 10 bit ) sometimes banding will happen and I'm not surprised if you got artifacts with stabilization... everything is sorta whacky … like you don't always know what will happen. A friend shoots 4k S log (same type camera as you) and sometimes gets banding ( he usually puts stuff into 1080p timeline so he can zoom in and reposition if he wants ).

You'll find what works best for you so just keep shooting and editing and don't get bummed out.

my friend shoots fast sometimes and uses SD cards, and he wants to have a lot of footage , so the S log comes out I think as mp4 H264 4k stuff.. I forget … most of the times it looks great.

Report · Jun 05, 2019

Software stabilization is often imperfect, and should be considered a last resort option. Better to stabilize when shooting using tripods, monopods, steadycams and gimbals.

Report · Jun 05, 2019

Hi Jim. Yes, I know this but let me explain my circumstances, just for fun. I'm a travel vlogger who lives on a sail boat. As you can imagine life is often at an angle. TBH the stuff shot from the boat is less of an issue as viewers expect some camera motion, although I've become a bit of an expert at countering movement.

The issue is going ashore. To get ashore we travel by dinghy, often landing it on a beach, so what we can travel with is limited. It all has to be packed into a waterproof bag. When we're ashore we're moving around, often to provision, so you can start to see how carrying extra gear becomes problematic. It's one of the reasons why I moved to m43, just to reduce size and weight. Tripods are out of the question unless it's a long talking heads or interview.

I'm satisfied with most of the footage I can capture handheld tbh but occasionally I feel I need to stabilise. That said, after posting this thread I decided to not stabilise my footage in this week's episode and for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the clip it doesn't look so bad. A bit of hand movement is ok. It's just a travel vlog, after all. Also the GH5 has a 'tripod' mode that 'locks' the scene which I've assigned to a function button. Sometimes I forget to use this, so there's a bit of user error!