How to improve footage "smoothness" ?

[Orestes Roumeliotis]

The answer is self explanatory and is two fold.

1. The standard frame rate for 8mm is 18fps.
2. Panning at 18fps is never going to produce smooth frames, there aren't even enough frames for fast moving motion at 24fps sometimes which is why with modern cameras if you have a panning scene like that you pan at 48fps and then change the frame rate to 24fps in post which will help with the motion issue and jerkiness.

There is another issue, scanning at 25fps for 18fps is not good. It forces the process when you digitise content for the Wolverine (or Premiere) whichever one it is, to have to create additional frames that don't exist. That in itself where frames are being created from nothing will lead to further choppiness.

For future reference if you intend on watching content at 24fps then you should record your content at 24fps. This will eliminate some of the issue. The other part of the issue is also self explanatory, if you recorded at 18fps then you should scan at 18fps and the rest of your workflow should be at 18fps.

If you rescan this content at 18fps you will likely get some improvement, it won't do magic but it will give somewhat of a better result.

As to "deshakers" I don't really believe in them... Crap in will mean crap out, quality in will mean quality out... It hurts to hear sometimes, but often the answer if you want better results is to "do better." This is also where I generally say if you want to record fast motion like a pan like that, or a fast moving car, choose a camera that can record at the appropriate frame rate. In this case a camera that could have recorded at 48fps would have been what would have helped most in this situation.

[Stan Jelavic]

OK back to the FPS discussion.
Here is a small experiment. I took a clip from Wolverine scanned at 20 FPS and exported the frames into pics1:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...lm?usp=sharing
Then I took the same clip that I ran on a frame-by-frame scanner and copied the individual frames from the scan to pics2.
And the result is 305 frames in both cases.
So Wolverine does not insert the new frames it just changes the time between the frames for 20 FPS. The people just walk faster in the clip.
Now if you want to change the FPS back TO 18 FPS then depending on the editor you can just change the timing between the frames.
In DVR you have to change the duration in oppose to speed...

Regarding the deshaker... I had very good results with the Virtual Dub script. It uses the sprocket holes to align the frames...

[Luigi Carniel]

Hi Stan (and all the other helpful guys of this Forum).
I am still after that footage (from Wolverine scanned Super 8, at 20 fps) which process used to have some issues. As you may recall, I had solved that initial issue causing choppy pans with Da Vinci Resolve and Optical flow function which is great. Still, I had some other issues that you suggested to resolve with DVR stabilization. Following your tips, on a particular clip I have achieved some kind of result, even not throughout that full extracted clip, and with reduced sharpness due to zoom. On other similar clips , the stabilization option does not seem to have any effect at all, whatever settings I set (perspective, similarity, locked camera, zoom etc, stabilizing before or/and after) : the problem still remains. Below are the links to download the problematic clips, all of them processed at 60fps, optical flow, enhanced faster/better. Weirdly, DVR is the only software which shows this kind of issue on these clips. I have tested Premiere Pro (this particular “stairway” issue is not there but other issues pop up which are even worse!), Power Director is fine too as far as “stairway” is concerned but no optical flow and therefore choppy footage, same with Pinnacle and Adobe Elements and a bunch of minor editors. I am kind of frustrated because none of the most reputable video editors can do the right job even if DVR is overall the one with best results. I have also tried many other editors with interpolation but I had to give up as they show many other problems and with dramatically long processing times. To me the only thing left to try is the “speed warp” function in DVR but it requires the DVR Studio version which, for my scopes, would be excessive considering that it is not free and with no guarantee that it would work. … I don’t know …If you or somebody else out there can provide any other idea or suggest settings tips…. It is not just a t of this footage but I am trying to find a way out because I will probably have to do with similar footages in the near future so I am wondering what to do.
What is weird is that the footage shows the issue as soon as I import the original into the timeline, no matter which timeline settings (resolution, aspect ratio, fps etc etc… I have tried them all). My idea is that it is something due to the file generated by Wolverine and the adjustment with the fps (20 fps) compared to the original Super 8 (18 fps) Probably the speed change does not solve everything and artifacts in DVR are unavoidable. BTW In one of your last posts, you made an experiment ref fps and duration. According to this, should the final file duration be shorter than the original (by reducing space between frames?) So far, after reducing speed, it has always been the other way around to achieve the regular footage motion… Please forgive me if my technical expressions may sound sometimes naïve , I am really not an expert but one who only likes this matter and learns as he goes …

Clip 1 (stabilized, no effect):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b3J...usp=share_link

Clip 2 (stabilized, no effect):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wEi...usp=share_link

Clip 3 (stabilized, no effect):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AEW...usp=share_link

Clip 4 (before stabilization):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18cq...usp=share_link

Clip 4 (after stabilization, partial effect):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Oac...usp=share_link

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Luigi,
Here is the steps I use.
1. Run stabilization with perspective selected
2. Crop.
You get this:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...usp=share_link
wolverine_clip_camera_shake_fix_crop_24.avi

Then you set the frame rate to 18 in VirtualDub or in DVR by changing duration.
wolverine_clip_camera_shake_fix_crop_18.avi
Or
run speed change with optical flow. Should work ok now since the video is stable.
Will try optical flow a bit later and let you know if it works.

[Stan Jelavic]

OK the optical flow did not work with the stabilized and cropped video. So I suggest not to use it on some clips. You can still slow down the clips without interpolation.
If using DVR import the clip and do not change the FPS during import.
Then right click on the clip and change the attributes and then frame rate to 18 or whatever you want the final rate.
Create timeline. Use custom settings and in format tab change fps again to 18 or whatever.
Confirm that the timeline fps is set by Right clicking on the timeline and opening up clip attributes and checking the fps.
Then run stabilization with perspective.

Make sure zoom is not checked off.
Make sure you hit the stabilize button.

If you play the video you will see that it is stable and running at 18 fps or whatever FPS
you set but the edges are jittering because the sw shifted the frames to
reduce the camera shake but the edges become misaligned. So you have to crop that.


Crop the edges. It does not need much.
Save the video...
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...usp=share_link
wolverine_stabilized_cropped_18.mp4

[Luigi Carniel]

Thank you Stan, I appreciate your help and patience. Let me make some more attempts and see outcome. Have a nice weekend .

[Stan Jelavic]

Hope it helps.