Digital Video Stabilization? Ay Ideas
 

I do on board race footage for motorcycles.

My biggest problem so far is camera shake. As you can image the g forces, vibration, and bumps that the cameras take are BIG!.

I use bullit cameras though a switch to record to a sony SV-AV100 digital camcorder. (needed full solid state) because tapes die quick.

I have been working on mounting rigs for the cameras to try and get them more stable, but have been going no were fast. What works on one bike, fails on another. and so on.

But I ran into this..

http://www.ovation.co.uk/Video-Stabilization.html

The example of the race car on there is is spot on to my problem

And it looks really cool. Any body know of a price, or anything else like it.

I like the real time part, so it comes out done when recorded, no need to mess with it later.

Looks expensive, since it is market to millitary, Law enforcement, and other big Gov agencies.

Please help

Dan

If you have a Mac, you could check out Shake. It does a software version of that... presumably better quality, and slower.

There are other stabilization software (free and commercial) along the lines of that.

2- Perhaps a more ideal solution would be to stabilize the shot mechanically... maybe sorbothane to deal with vibrations, gyros, specialised mounts... unfortunately I wouldn't know much about that stuff.

MPEG 2 support de shaker
 

Any ideas on MPEG2 supported De Shaker?

Looked at the steady hand version, only does AVI

I recorde direct to MPEG2 for easier move to DVD.

I need something that can stabilize the video prior to burn to DVD

Dan

Dan, is the camera hard mounted to the bikes? I know for the race cars, you want a very rigged camera mount, since the vibration causes a lot of movement if the mount has any flex at all. After that, I'd use software to stabilize the image in post. That gives you the added advantage to trying different settings, fine tuning, etc. A real time system both adds to the complexity of the equipment you need on the bike and gives you only one shot at fixing the vibration.

I just had a look at the example race car footage from that site. The "problem" is 100% due to a camera mount that isn't solidly mounted to the car (roll-cage). Been there and done that!

mounting
 

When the cameras were solid mounted, they destroyed lenses in minutes.

Had to use some vibration isolation mounts. The rear is an articlulated 3 inch arm mounted to the sub frame/ Very solid, but still shakes.

Front is in the fairing, mounted good and solid, the fairing damps out the high freq vibs that destroyed the lenses, but the fairings shakes some at big speeds and corner loads.

I need to find a way to dmap out the shock of bumops, and the general shake of bikes on the race track!

what camera's are you using? We have not had any lens problems due to vibration. And I've not heard of anyone else having that type of problem.

Post-production or digital stabilization will still suffer from images softened with camera movement. Like what happens to a snapshot when the photographer shakes with a slow shutter speed. This can be compensated for with higher shutter speeds but the result might not look good due to the lack of speed-induced blur.

So the camera will need to be mechanically stabilized.

What fouls up a shot the most is anything that makes the camera pitch or yaw. Vertical or horizontal translations by themselves are seldom objectionable, especially with a wide-angle lens.

With a short camera body (2-inch lipstick camera) it's easy to make it pitch or yaw several degrees by moving one end or the other just a fraction of an inch.

However if you make that camera body a lot longer, let's say 12 inches, then a 1/4" deflection will mean a pitch or yaw of just a degree or less. So a possible idea is to have a lipstick camera mounted to a stiff extension, perhaps made of carbon rod or other stiff lightweight material. And then put that in a compact suspension system with silicone or other shock absorbing mount material.

The total package would be about a foot long and little more than 1" in diameter.

God's own Stabilizer
 

Have you tried mounting helmet cams? The rider is going to turn his head but 98% of the time he's looking where the bike is going and you'll get a lot less bumps and shakes.

Edit
Maybe attach it to his shoulder?