Stabilize a Zooming Shot: HOW?

[machardi]

Hi, I have a shot that zooms from close up, to not so close up.

It was shot hand-held so there is (naturally) a fair amount of shaking and jittering.

I know how to use AE to stabilize a stationary shot, or maybe even one that pans from left to right, but how do I stabilize a shot like this? I'm going absolutely insane.

My problem is that I don't have a conceptual understanding exactly of how it works: what data changes in an X-Y-Z camera move, and what exactly do the position/rotation/scale modifiers scan, aside from changes in position, rotation, and scale. Position=X/Y, Scale = X/Y/Z I guess and Rotation is X in relation to Y?

How in the world do I do this? I'm sure it's simple but I can't figure it out.

Thanks,

M

[Juanfordroad]

I'm no expert but if the footage is shaky, slowing it down by 25 or 50% tends to smooth out the bumps for me. Do you want to smooth out your footage or the ae camera moves?

[Scottdvx100]

Most motion trackers try to stabilize by locking the single tracking point (amoving image so the spot stays in the same point). If you have 2 point tracking then it takes the two points and can calculate scale and rotation relative to the start. If you have 2 points that spread out during the shot then the scale would change.

With a moving or zooming shot you don't don't want to lock it, you just want to minimize the bumps. Some other systems (Commotion, Shake) offer smoothing but I don't this AE does(?)

Try trackign a single point visible through the whole shot. Copy the tracker data (you probably have to apply it first)
Paste into text program. Import into Excel and try to smooth it there. Not sure if Excel has the tools or if you have to write some simple smoothign equation. (i.e. take 2 points on each side along with the current frame value and divide by 5)

[machardi]

what? ....keyframes are text data? i can just...import that into a excel? You just gave me about 4 paradigm shifts in a row. I wouldn't even know how to smooth data in excel, but I'll try to work on just copying the tracker data.

M.