How to stabilize many clips

Scripting.

If it were me I'd write a script for After Effects. But you can also build a script for something like AutoHotKey http://www.autohotkey.com/ (free windows scripting/macro playback engine) to automate the process you would do by hand. If you have a few dozen clips I'd say just do it by hand, but once you cross into the multi-thousand level a few days spent making a script can really pay off.
 
altarvic said:
ProDAD Mercalli has batch processing
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Thanks for tip. I have tried Mercalli but the batch processing is very limited. Batch uses only automatic settings and it crops too much with auto. It is very strange that you can not save any settings in Mercalli for easy of use. It also changes my GH4 videos color values ( levels 0-255 to 16-235) and ruins the shots by adding banding and reduces colorspace. I have reported these faults to Mercalli customer service. If they correct those I may buy it.
 
A few days ago ProDAD introduced Mercalli 4.0 (not released yet). Maybe in this new version they will fix it.
 
From the website Mercalli looks like it only exports as a MP4. I can't imagine that is what anyone on DVXUser would want.

Just because I was curious, I went looking and there is already a batch processing script for After Effects (at aescripts.com). Looks like it would let you load all the footage into AE, then use it to apply an effect preset (like stablize) and then render out using your choice of render method. Didn't like how it requires you load all the footage, that kind of would make processing a ton of clips a problem. But the fact they were able to do it, means a script is possible.

Premiere can run scripts as well, but it's documentation is near zero. Not sure you could do the batch processing there. What I'd like to see is something like the aescripts.com script but with a directory (and checkbox for sub-dirs) and have it output the results in another directory with the same directory tree structure. Only loading one piece of footage at a time. I think it could be done. Perhaps something will come up one day and I'll just do it. Been enjoying playing around with AE scripting lately, it's much more handy than most people realize. Wish the documentation was better though.
 
altarvic said:
Vegasaur for Sony Vegas Pro can batch stabilize clips, but it does not support Movie Studio versions.
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Thanks. That program with Vegas pro looks very interesting and practical. I just wonder why video editors has so little automation features itself. If Vegas or some other editor is in version 13 why nobody has thought these features yet. So you must pay for 100 $ more for batch features.
 
You will need to change the effect name from "Warp Stabilizer" to "Warp Stabilizer VFX" (Adobe changed the name) but other than that it does appear to work. But you have to let it sit there while it's stabilizing in the background and you have no way to know when it is done so that you can start the render. No expression/script magic I could do would give me the result of the background task stabilizing. Which is too bad, because it would be possible to change this script to process say a whole folder one at a time (and avoid the author's problems). But near as I can tell Adobe didn't hookup control of the stabilize background process to anything accessible by a script. Which is too bad really since a lot of newer things in AE are background processes like this.
 
Now I have tested the demo version of new Mercalli. It has good improvements. I can now stabilize many clips with assigning the same settings to all files. There is still not a possibility to save settings.


The luminance shift 0-255 to 16-235 is corrected (hurray). It is funny because when I asked them earlier about it (v3) they said that the issue not exists but they have now corrected it silently.


Rendering is still about the same than earlier and the bitrate goes easily very high with complex scene.
There are some new features like NR/sharpening and clip combining. There are also new stab features with very slow analysing but those are optional. I can not say much about stab IQ, I just started using it.

It seems now a usable program for me.
 
I have now tested Mercalli v4 auto batch setting and few own settings. It is time consuming to tweak so that my bad lens OIS (Pana 14-140mm v2) vibration goes away but it still crops as little as possible. I have used something like 35/35& pan and roll and 100% best stabilation but it is not very good still yet. Auto works fine but crops a bit too much. Advanced CMOS settings are so slow that I have not used those yet.


Own settings with batch are slow because I must first let the Mercalli analyze all the clips and then assign the own setting to all clips. So there is two long waiting time.


Very frustrating to mess with stab programs. I just watched my friends Nikon V1 handheld videos and those were very stable and no need for post stab.


The new Mercalli v4 still stabilizes GH4 videos nicely and without converting levels from 0-255 to 16-235 like the previous version v3. I found when I watched my same Gh4 0-255 nature videos stabilized by v3 and v4 the difference is quite big. When 255 levels are converted to 220 levels (v3) there seems to be some leveling and compressing of subtle color tones. The V4 0-255 stabilized result is more "photo like" quality and the fine color nyances of nature (greens in grass or reds of autumn) are preserved better.


I think the case is the same when shooting 0-255 vs 16-235. If the end product is 16-235 we loose the benefit.
 
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