Over the last few years Sony, Blackmagic, RED, GoPro, and DJI have developed cameras that automatically record gyroscopic motion information into the metadata of video files. This allows for FAR more accurate stabilization in post, ensuring you can smooth out the actual camera movements, instead of the movements that the software visually analyzed and predicted.
There are two primary softwares that areused to stabilize footage with gyro data:
- Sony's Catalyst Browse (and by extension the more feature-rich Catalyst Prepare)
- Gyroflow
There are several problems when using either of these solutions. For both, it is awkward and innefficient to do a round-trip just to stabilize footage. On top of this, Sony's own Catalyst softwares have issues. Catalyst Browse (free) has very limited export options, none of which maintain a 10-bit color space (despite one of the formats being labeled as such; the metadata says otherwise). This is obviously an issue. On top of these, even in Catalyst Prepare (paid) which has more available export formats, the exported footage is softened and does not maintain full quality.
GyroFlow does not suffer from the format/softening issues that Sony's programs do, but it is a much more hands-on piece of software. Camera/lens profiles are made by users, and often not accurate, causing issues in stabilization. If a user chooses to build out their own profiles, this can take hours if no reference profiles are available. This issue multiplies when dealing with zoom lenses - something Sony's software seems to navigate on its own.
All of this to say - I would love to see Adobe reconsider adding gyro stabilization to Premiere Pro, whether as an extension to Warp Stabilizer, or as its own tool. It is inconvenient, frustrating, and even damaging to footage to use pre existing softwares, and this feature would benefit many editors if it was found directly in Premiere Pro.
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