4k workflow?

To me an excellent option would be to shoot at 4k when doing hand-held or non-tripod support. Then in post convert to 2k while stabalizing the camera or panning, zooming, etc. This will open some nice creative possibilities while uping the production value.

Of course there would be the huge storage and processing overhead so you could just do 4k when you want those kinds of options in post. I think a big part of the workflow will be in letting the computer grind overnite to "condition" the 4k footage to 2k - in prep for more intensive 2k daytime editing.
 
Digital stabilization will almost always result in messy almost unusable **** that can take hours by a trained compositor to stabilize. Footage which should have been should have and could have been shot smoothly in the first place.

I wouldn't start thinking about creating a workflow or shooting style which assumes that's going to work. I have a project right now I delivered where I had to stablize one shot and create a tilt in another from a completely different camera move. I cringe everytime I see them because it looks terrible. Better than it did before we did the digital restoration, but if I had had 2 more hours I could have done them all right in the first place.
 
Totally agree. Recently did some stabilization on a shot to remove unwanted camera wobble. I got rid of the wobble, but go some horrible motion blur in its place. It looked better with the wobble!

Gave up and used a different take.
 
ZaneIsNumber1 said:
Totally agree. Recently did some stabilization on a shot to remove unwanted camera wobble. I got rid of the wobble, but go some horrible motion blur in its place. It looked better with the wobble!

Gave up and used a different take.
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You got the motion blur effect because you are stabalizing footage at the same resolution that your output is in. If you start with higher rez and then "crop" down to lower rez while stabalizing you can avoid the motion blur.

So I'm not sure if you guys are understanding, I am not proposing this as a substitute for using a tripod, but for a safety net when you have no choice to shoot with out a tripod - or if you want to pan and zoom, even with tripod support. Then you can increase your creative options and yes with varying degrees of effort (depending on consistent details in your composition) you can use compositing apps to come up with significantly better results.

Keep in mind that stabalizing / locking on consistent details in your image can result in interesting composition and effects. Also these apps are evolving and will continue to become more intelligent and effective in these regards - so your 4k "wobbly" footage will be more easily and rapidly "upgraded" to better 2k footage.
 
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Hunabku said:
You got the motion blur effect because you are stabalizing footage at the same resolution that your output is in. If you start with higher rez and then "crop" down to lower rez while stabalizing you can avoid the motion blur.
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Wrong. If you look at your full resolution "wobbly" footage you'll see the motion blur was already there. The blur is a result of the motion of the camera. You *could* avoid this by shooting at about 1/500th of a second shutter. If that's the visual effect you want to achieve.

You'll also encounter other problems like: there'll be funny parallax effects as what is supposed to look like a steady shot has the background moving in different directions. Lens flares will wander around the frame and much much more.

Yes. You can reframe shots. Yes. You can add digital tilts, pans and zooms. Most of all I look forward to being able to shoot both a medium and a close up simultaneously from the same camera. There are hundreds of reasons to shoot at high res but unless the stabilization is relatively subtle I would take shaky over digitally stabilized any day.
 
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im.thatoneguy said:
Wrong. If you look at your full resolution "wobbly" footage you'll see the motion blur was already there. The blur is a result of the motion of the camera. You *could* avoid this by shooting at about 1/500th of a second shutter. If that's the visual effect you want to achieve.
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I stand corrected - I have done stabalization in AE with no cropping (resizing) and that created blur (albiet not motion)- obviously the issues you give are righton. Thank you.
 
People here are right. Problems with stabilizing motion in post are:
- Motion blur from shaking the camera if you're shooting with slower shutter (that we used to get that 'film look', right?) So some frames will be blurred which looks really weird if the camera itself seems to be steady.
- When using a wide angle lens your image will bend in strange ways because you're essentially zooming in on different parts of the lens that are differently curved. There's no way you can correct that.
- You need at least two steady points in you image. How about people on a boat at sea with a blue sky? How about people in front of trees that bend in the wind? Many times no two steady points.
- It takes a lot of time and processing power to get it right and I'm not even talking about 4k.

Can I bring up the subject of optical stabilization again? How about support for Nikon lensen with VR?

Zooming in on an image on the other hand works really well. Even when your original footage is not of a higher resolution than your output resolution it still works well because the human eye only needs moments of sharpness in a moving image to perceive sharpness. But your image still needs to be steady. Unless you're name is Lars von Trier of course.
 
- You need at least two steady points in you image. How about people on a boat at sea with a blue sky? How about people in front of trees that bend in the wind? Many times no two steady points.

Shake's Smoothcam does stabilization based on many point throughout the image (may be optical flow analysis). It does a good job, although it's a lot slower than more traditional 2-point motion tracking.

2- Yes motion blur will be a problem. When stabilized, it looks like the image is shooting out of focus for a split second. The solution is not to have jarring wobbling, or to shoot with a high shutter speed.

Sometimes image stabilization can be very useful when you can't get your dolly or jib shot perfectly smooth.
 
I would agree. If you want to stabilize a camera pan, or some other stabilized camera move, you'll probably be ok since it's going to be a very subtle effect.

One thing a number of people overlook though when stabilizing is if you have a distant background and a relatively close foreground, the background is going to really wander around the footage and it looks really funky, while the foreground is rock steady.

- I'm relatively certain you're right about smoothcam it is optical flow based, but you'll probably need to do a great deal of masking to isolate non-moving components of the image. Lest your optical flow get confused and start following several people's faces. ;)
 
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