I use this for near 100% of my video projects at work (with Sony cameras) and it's absolutely amazing. Sony is not exactly class leading when it comes to stabilization (like Panasonic). There's a Premiere and Resolve plugin-in these days.
Fast guide:
* Be sure to turn off any in camera stabilization in Sony cameras.
* Be sure to take the added crop into account when composing.
* The faster shutter speed, the better. Forget about 1/50 for 25p. There will be the most horrible artifacts. For 25p, use 1/100 or preferably use 1/200. For 50p, use 1/200 or preferably 1/400 etc.
Normally you double the shutter speed compared to the frame rate to include a motion blur that looks good. But if you then apply stabilisation post processing, you end up with a shot that has motion blur yet isn’t moving. So you want to set a very fast shutter speed, and then you might introduce fake motion blur in post processing later that matches the movement of the stabilised video.
Interesting—and makes sense. (Perhaps motion blue becomes a post-process as well then, ha ha.)
Kind of a tangent: One of the remarkable things to me about the "Dykstra flex" cameras developed for Star Wars was that the dolly/stepper-motors moved the camera while the shutter was open giving those fly-by shots full motion blur. Freeze any frame where there is a space battle and it is obvious.
That small detail was not small at all in selling the effects of the film.
But one of the effects guys joked that some team had borrowed the camera for some effects they were doing for a TV show or film—and they used Dykstra-flex in sort of a "stop motion" manner. He was dumbfounded why someone would move the camera, pause to expose a frame, move again to the next location, pause to expose. Just walking away, leaving motion-blur on the table…
This is one of those things that pops up on fixed aperture cameras where the only way to control the exposure is with shutter speed. We used this when using GoPros in the early days of live action VR. We'd also run at 60fps. Any kind of motion blur would just become problematic when trying to stitch the footage together especially since the cameras were catching objects in different parts of the wide angle lenses.
ND filers slow down the shutter speed which will only increase the motion blur. When shooting in the sunny outdoors, you're going to be using the lowest ISO. The only thing left to control the exposure is the shutter speed. So with a fast shutter and 60fps also decreasing the exposure time the motion blur is going to be reduced as much as one can get.
If you're on the lowest iso you could use an ND filter and bump the ISO a little higher giving some room to move up and down the ISO values to match the conditions while keeping the shutter speed fixed. That's kind of the primary function of an ND filter.
For video ideally you want both the shutter speed and aperture fixed since having the depth of field fluctuate in the video isn't ideal either.
Sounds like someone that is used to running a single camera looking in a specific direction. Try running 6 cameras with one pointing in each direction so that every thing is seen. That's a small rig. Do the same thing 22 cameras running at the same time to make one image. You'll be just fine with allowing the camera to adjust the ISO for you.
I once thought similarly to you are thinking now. I quickly gave that up for the specific type of shooting discussed. You quickly realize that the software in post for stitching is really good at what it does.
Yes. It's confusing, which is why this is often discussed in terms of shutter angle, which makes this a litter easier to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehpdzt0JHUc
I wonder how this compares to purely vision-based systems which use nothing but the images themselves for stabilization. Here are some quite old results of stabilization using image-based 3d-reconstruction of the scene which I wrote more than 10years ago, compared with other stabilization programs of that time (Deshaker, Adobe After Effects, Youtube). With todays improved hardware and progress in 3d-algorithms you may not need any additional gyroscopic data.
I think gyroscopic data still can have the edge if it has higher sampling rate than the video: then it could be used for removing blur from individual frames.
I also expect purely gyroscopic approach to be much lighter compute-wise.
In my experience, what you call vision-based systems don't even come close to Gyroflow. After I started using Gyroflow I haven't touched the Ronin gimbal many times.
My friend built this which allows you to use Gyroflow natively within Final Cut, worth a look if that’s your NLE of choice:
https://gyroflowtoolbox.fcp.cafe/
So So useful <3
Stabilization = you have to zoom-in, loss of FOV. Depending on Action Cam and undistortion parameters, this can be different, sometimes too little, sometimes too much. Gyroflow allows you to dial it in. Lot's Stabilization in a particularly shaky spot and widest FOV everywhere else, smoothed between to be unnoticeable.
Haven't really used much other stabilization in post after modern gopros have gotten so good. Especially with the 360 variants (MAX and now MAX 2), it's buttery smooth (and infinite FOV means no cropping). Sometimes too smooth, I want to show how rough the cycling trail really was!
With very good daylight, Hypersmooth of Gopro is ok, but as soon as the conditions are a little bit less than ideal, watching the videos that we get out of the Gopro makes nauseous very fast.
Normal sensor stabilization only moves a tiny amount, It's more useful for photography for reducing micro jitters to get sharp photos. For video you need much more aggressive cropping and warping to undo the massive shake of walking with the camera.
There are external devices that can be attached to the camera to record gyro data, e.g https://docs.gyroflow.xyz/app/advanced-usage/using-external-... I just ordered one a few weeks ago and haven't received it yet, so can't talk about personal experience, but there's no technical reason it couldn't work well.
Some months ago I tested footage of my A7C2 on Gyroflow expecting to do visual stabilization, and found my camera has a gyro (didn't know about it) and automatically adds that info to the videos.
The result was pretty good and it was super easy to do it.
In the guide videos they show you just have to sync it up by pressing the record button and end record button on both the gyroscope and the camera at the same time and this is apparently enough to calculate the time difference between the two clocks.
Fast guide:
* Be sure to turn off any in camera stabilization in Sony cameras.
* Be sure to take the added crop into account when composing.
* The faster shutter speed, the better. Forget about 1/50 for 25p. There will be the most horrible artifacts. For 25p, use 1/100 or preferably use 1/200. For 50p, use 1/200 or preferably 1/400 etc.
(My ignorance,) is motion blur no longer a thing in modern digital?
(I'm also confused: 1/50 is the shutter speed and 25p the frame rate?)
Kind of a tangent: One of the remarkable things to me about the "Dykstra flex" cameras developed for Star Wars was that the dolly/stepper-motors moved the camera while the shutter was open giving those fly-by shots full motion blur. Freeze any frame where there is a space battle and it is obvious.
That small detail was not small at all in selling the effects of the film.
But one of the effects guys joked that some team had borrowed the camera for some effects they were doing for a TV show or film—and they used Dykstra-flex in sort of a "stop motion" manner. He was dumbfounded why someone would move the camera, pause to expose a frame, move again to the next location, pause to expose. Just walking away, leaving motion-blur on the table…
For video ideally you want both the shutter speed and aperture fixed since having the depth of field fluctuate in the video isn't ideal either.
I once thought similarly to you are thinking now. I quickly gave that up for the specific type of shooting discussed. You quickly realize that the software in post for stitching is really good at what it does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m3fwhx3Z5g
I also expect purely gyroscopic approach to be much lighter compute-wise.
At any rate if gyroflow obsoletes an actual gimbal it’s pretty close to perfect.
The result was pretty good and it was super easy to do it.
For context, the webpage: https://www.qtav.org/blog/new-sdk.html