CONTENTS

Contacts and Copyright .......................................................................................................................... 2 Getting Started with SteadyMovePRO....................................................................................................... 3 System Requirements .............................................................................................................................3 Installing SteadyMovePRO........................................................................................................................3 Registering and Licensing SteadyMovePRO....................................................................................................3 Support for SteadyMovePRO .....................................................................................................................3 Video and Film Image Stabilization .......................................................................................................... 4 Mechanical Stabilization ...........................................................................................................................4 Electronic Stabilization ............................................................................................................................4 SteadyMovePROs Image-Based Stabilization ............................................................................................ 5 Feature Tracking ...................................................................................................................................5 Camera Motion .....................................................................................................................................5 Image Stabilization ................................................................................................................................5 SteadyMovePRO Controls ....................................................................................................................... 6 Smoothing...........................................................................................................................................6 Edge Handling ......................................................................................................................................7 Preferences .........................................................................................................................................7 Keyframing ..........................................................................................................................................7 Using SteadyMovePRO ........................................................................................................................... 8 Framing the Shot...................................................................................................................................8 Draft Processing Mode ............................................................................................................................8 Differences between Host Platforms ............................................................................................................8 Long Preview Times ...............................................................................................................................9 Control Combinations..............................................................................................................................9 Index ................................................................................................................................................. 10

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Contacts and Copyright

Copyright 1999 - 2003 2d3 Ltd. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. The software described in this document is furnished under a license agreement or nondisclosure agreement. The software may be used or copied within the terms of those agreements. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording for any purpose other than the purchaser's personal use without the written permission of 2d3 Ltd. 2d3 is a trademark of Vicon Motion Systems Ltd. boujou and SteadyMove are trademarks of 2d3 Ltd. 2d3 Limited 14 Minns Business Park West Way Oxford OX2 0JB +44 (0) 1865 811060 http://www.2d3.com/

Adobe, Premiere and After Effects are trademarks of the Adobe Systems Incorporated. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This software is derived from the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm. Copyright (C) 1990-2, RSA Data Security, Inc. Created 1990. All rights reserved. RSA Data Security, Inc. makes no representations concerning either the merchantability of this software or the suitability of this software for any particular purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty of any kind.

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Getting Started with SteadyMovePRO

System Requirements
SteadyMovePRO version 1.0.1 runs under the Windows operating system, as a plug-in for applications supporting the Adobe After Effects SDK. It has been checked on the following applications: Adobe Premiere 6, 6.5, and 7.0 (Pro) Adobe After Effects 5.5, and 6.0

SteadyMovePRO behaves slightly differently in each application; please check the section Differences between Host Platforms

Installing SteadyMovePRO
After purchasing SteadyMovePRO you will receive an email confirmation which includes information which you will need to register SteadyMovePRO. When you have downloaded the setup file, run it to start installation and registration. SteadyMovePRO must be installed within the plug-in directory structure of the application that you want to use it in. For Adobe After Effects 5.5, the default location for this is: C:\Program Files\Adobe\After Effects 5.5\Plugins

Registering and Licensing SteadyMovePRO

The registration program requires you to enter your User Name, Password and Order ID, all of which are in the Order Acknowledgement email. For registration to succeed your computer must still be connected to the Internet. Press Register. The Status field should then read Your copy of SteadyMovePRO has been successfully registered, if not there has been an error and an explanation will be given. After registration an email will be sent to you confirming your registration and the license key. If you continue to have problems with registration, please email 2d3support@2d3.com If the SteadyMove logo appears in the center of the stabilized image sequence, this means that the plug-in has not been registered properly. Each copy of SteadyMovePRO is licensed to run on a single machine.

Support for SteadyMovePRO

If you have problems using SteadyMovePRO, please check this manual to verify the correct way to use it. You can also check our web site which includes answers to frequently asked questions. If you do not find the answer to your problem there, you may email: 2d3support@2d3.com

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Video and Film Image Stabilization

Mechanical Stabilization
The moving camera is widely employed in the movie and TV production industry, adding interest to almost any shot. Complex mechanical systems are used to ensure that camera motion is as smooth as possible. For the great majority of video and film camerawork tracks, dollies and booms are not available. Mechanical stabilizing of hand-held cameras requires the use of heavy counterbalanced rigs and specially trained operators. Without such devices, professional hand-held shots are limited mainly to newsreel footage which viewers expect to be of lower quality. With the introduction of SteadyMovePRO many of these limitations are removed.

Electronic Stabilization
Many video cameras have built-in stabilization which works by shifting the image a few pixels up/down or left/right. However, this method cannot deal with rotations and is not suitable for stabilization of larger scale camera movement.

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SteadyMovePROs Image-Based Stabilization

SteadyMovePRO is based on technology developed for 2d3s Emmy award-winning product boujou, which is used to track camera motion for precise registration of moving images and visual effects. [For more information on boujou, visit http://www.2d3.com/ .]

Feature Tracking
SteadyMovePRO automatically detects features in the image and tracks them as the camera moves. It is able to locate features in a very wide variety of scenes and lighting conditions, including snowscape, desert, and water. It can also distinguish between moving objects and stable background.

Camera Motion
Feature tracks are processed to generate a complete analysis of the cameras movement, including translations (up/down, lateral, fore/aft), rotations (pan, tilt, roll) and zoom.

Image Stabilization
Stabilization involves two processes, filtering and correction. Fast, jerky movements are filtered out from the slower movements of the camera. The smoothed camera motion is then used to correct every frame by transforming the image. Image correction, however slight, causes border areas of the original image to move out of view and blank areas to appear on the opposite side of the frame. SteadyMovePRO includes a comprehensive set of tools for scaling and cropping the stabilized, transformed images to produce the best possible rendered output.

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SteadyMovePRO Controls

Smoothing
Smoothness
controls the amount of movement that is removed from the image sequence by setting the duration of a moving time-window over which camera motion is filtered. With a short smoothing window, only fast, brief spikes of movement are filtered out. With a long smoothing window, slower movements such as the vertical undulations of a walking cameraman or the suspension of a car are also removed. The maximum value of Smoothness is 100%, corresponding to a 2 second window bracketing the current frame of film or video, irrespective of frame rate. At this setting the apparent motion of the camera is smoothed to a level equivalent to the highest-quality mechanical camera tracking and stabilization systems.

Camera Motion
sets the type of camera move to be stabilized. Free & Pan is used when the camera was in translational and/or rotational motion for all or part of the shot. The level of Smoothness can be adjusted and keyframed. Static * is used when the camera was held static or near static throughout the shot. The Smoothness control is disabled, and SteadyMovePRO applies a degree of smoothing several times greater than the maximum setting of 100%, close to the level achieved by mounting the camera on a tripod. This feature is of particular value for stabilization of long zoom and telephoto shots. Any cropping mode (see below) may be used with a Static camera but Auto Slow is generally the most suitable, resulting in a good combination of stability and minimal cropping. Care should be taken to ensure that the set value of Max Correction is high enough to allow Static stabilization throughout the clip. * indicates that this control setting results in long preview processing times. management, see section Long Preview Times below For details on

Smooth Zoom
enables the smoothing of changes to lens focal length, using the same parameters as camera motion smoothing.

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Edge Handling
These controls allow you to adjust how SteadyMovePRO handles the edge of the image. Any stabilization will involve moving the image and this will reveal the edge of the image and black beyond that.

Max Correction
sets the highest level of correction that is applied when stabilizing the shot, as a percentage of the image width and height. The precise effects of Max Correction depend upon the current Cropping mode.

Cropping
There are 4 cropping modes for dealing with the edges of the image after stabilization correction: Fixed, None, Auto Fast and Auto Slow. Fixed applies a fixed level of scaling and cropping to the stabilized image, controlled by Max Correction. All blank border areas are cropped out of the stabilized image. Max Correction should be set as low as is required to stabilize the clip to the current level of Smoothness. If Max Correction is set above this level, some of the original image is needlessly cropped. If Max Correction is set below this level, stabilization correction is automatically reduced for a few frames. None leaves the stabilized image unscaled and uncropped. Blank border areas of the stabilized image appear black. Max Correction sets the maximum amount of stabilizing correction that is applied to the image. A preview or render using Cropping Mode None provides a very clear indication of the degree of stabilization correction that has been applied to each frame, allowing the setting and keyframing of other controls to be carefully planned. Auto Fast dynamically and continuously maintains the minimum level of scaling and cropping necessary for stabilization. On frames where stabilization to the required level of Smoothness requires only small corrections, very little cropping and scaling is applied and most of the original image is preserved. On frames when more correction is required for stabilization, scaling and cropping are increased. Max Correction option is disabled in both Auto modes as its value is automatically set. Auto Slow * functions identically to Auto Fast but with slower changes in the levels of correction, scaling and cropping. Zoom-like scale changes are less apparent but cropping is generally heavier. * indicates that this control setting results in long preview processing times. management, see section Long Preview Times below Max Correction option is disabled in both Auto modes as its value is automatically set. For details on

Preferences
Cut Detection
SteadyMovePRO is able to detect cuts within clips. Set Cut Detection to batch stabilize a series of individual clips that have previously been edited into a single sequence.

Keyframing
Settings of the Smoothness and Max Correction controls can be keyframed at any point in the clip, allowing the user to alter the level of stabilization applied to each frame. This feature can be very useful where a single shot contains several sections each requiring a different level of stabilization. For example, a popular shot opens with a wide-angle context-setting pan, followed by a long stationary zoom to telephoto. The pan may not require much smoothing but as the zoom increases more smoothing is required to stabilize the image.

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Using SteadyMovePRO
Framing the Shot
Camera stabilization inevitably involves some degree of cropping of the original image. provides a wide range of copping options. SteadyMovePRO

When taking any shot that may later require stabilization, frame the shot wide to avoid the risk of loosing important content. The shakier the shot, the wider it should be framed.

Draft Processing Mode

When processing in draft mode, effects packages often reduce the resolution of the images processed or make other optimizations such as processing interlaced footage as progressive. Measures such as these reduce the effectiveness of SteadyMovePROs motion tracking and may adversely affect the quality of the stabilized clip. To avoid this, SteadyMovePRO does not stabilize images when in draft mode (see differences between Host Platforms section for details on when this will occur on your host platform). To indicate that a frame has not been stabilized, a double brackets symbol is rendered into the top right corner. This will never be present on final output renders.

Differences between Host Platforms

On all platforms, the first frame of each "cut" may take longer to render or preview (over a minute if the * modes are active), after which subsequent frames render rapidly.

Adobe After Effects v6.0

1. 2. 3. Default footage interpretation is lower-field first (DV). Make sure to change this to "progressive" (right-click clip, "Interpret Footage") when processing non-interlaced material. Motion tracking data is saved with the project file. Once every frame has been previewed or rendered once, all subsequent rendering will be rapid. If the RAM preview resolution is set to less than half then SteadyMove previewing is disabled (frames are marked with the (( )) symbol). This may also occur if Dynamic Preview Acceleration is enabled,

Adobe After Effects v5.5

1. 2. 3. 4. Default footage interpretation is "progressive". Make sure to change this to "upper/lower field first" (right-click clip, "Interpret Footage") when processing interlaced material. Motion tracking data is saved with the project file. Once every frame has been previewed or rendered once, all subsequent rendering will be rapid. Cancelling (left-click anywhere) during the rendering of a preview frame does not work properly (due to an issue in AE), but simply causes the render to begin again. Repeated clicking does not fix this! If the RAM preview resolution is set to less than half then SteadyMove previewing is disabled (frames are marked with the (( )) symbol). This may also occur if Dynamic Preview Acceleration is enabled,

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Adobe PremierePro (v7.0)

1. 2. PremierePro has no progress indicator or rolling mouse-pointer, so may appear to have hung when performing time consuming preview operations with * modes active. Premiere Pro has no "Interpret Footage" setting, and assumes "progressive" for footage for which the true field mode cannot be determined (non-DV AVI and MOV files, MPEG ) . This can lead to suboptimal SteadyMove results. If users suspect this is the case, they should de-interlace, export, and reimport the deinterlaced footage. "Draft" mode causes SteadyMove previewing to be disabled (frames are marked with the (( )) symbol). Motion tracking data is NOT saved in the project file. Previewing will take longer when re-opening a previously saved project. This is particularly noticeable when the * modes are active (see Long Preview Times.) This may be avoided by selecting "Draft" mode BEFORE loading the project.

3. 4.

Long Preview Times

In order to stabilize the current frame, SteadyMovePRO tracks the camera motion at earlier and later frames. When SteadyMovePRO is first applied, or when scrubbing to a previously un-previewed part of the clip, motion tracking must be performed before the current frame can be rendered. In After Effects, you will see the monitor progress bar ticking along for a few seconds whilst tracking occurs. SteadyMovePRO caches the tracking data, so subsequent parameter changes may be previewed rapidly. The control settings Camera Motion:Static and Cropping: Auto Slow require tracking considerably more frames than other settings. If the required tracking data is not already cached, the generation of preview displays with these settings can take considerably longer to process while SteadyMovePRO analyses the camera motion. In some applications, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, there is no progress indicator during preview processing. The application is unresponsive to mouse clicks and may appear not to be performing correctly (see Differences between host platforms.) To avoid long processing times when using these settings, the Sequence Monitor should be set to Draft Mode, suppressing previews. If SteadyMovePRO has rendered the entire clip once (i.e. after a workspace preview or a full render), all necessary tracking data will have been cached, and all subsequent previewing/rendering should be rapid.

Control Combinations
Control settings Camera Motion:Free & Pan and Cropping:Fixed or Auto Fast will generate very adequate stabilization of most shots. The heaviest smoothing of a free or pan shot is obtained by using Camera Motion:Free & Pan with Smoothness set to 100%. If the camera was held stationary, control setting Camera Motion:Static increases the level of stabilization above 100% Smoothness. The Static setting can be used with any cropping mode. If the shot contains changes of zoom, use Auto Fast and Smooth Zoom. If there are no changes of zoom, use Auto Slow. Do not use Camera Motion:Static to stabilize pans or general camera moves. SteadyMovePRO will attempt to correct the motion to generate a static image, find this is impossible within the correction limits and jump to a new static correction, repeating these steps as long as the camera keeps moving. The stabilized result may be jerkier than the original. Cropping setting Auto Fast uses small, rapid adjustments to image scale, equivalent to constant adjustments of focal length. In many shots requiring only small amounts of stabilization, this effect is barely perceptible. But in shots requiring large amounts of correction, the stabilized image can appear like inexperienced camerawork with excessive use of zoom. To achieve minimal cropping of shots requiring high levels of correction, use Cropping: Auto Slow.

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Index
2d3................................................................. 5 Auto.........................................................6, 7, 9 boujou ............................................................ 5 camera.....................................................4, 5, 6 camera motion ............................................. 6 camerawork............................................. 4, 9 correct ............................................................ 5 correction .............................................5, 7, 9 Max Correction ......................................... 6, 7 cropping ............................................... 5, 6, 7, 8 cut.................................................................. 7 edge handling .................................................. 7 Emmy ............................................................. 5 Fast .........................................................5, 7, 9 film............................................................. 4, 6 filtering ........................................................... 5 Fixed............................................................... 7 focal length.................................................. 6, 9 framing............................................................8 Free ................................................................6 hand-held ........................................................4 keyframing................................................... 6, 7 None ...............................................................7 Pan .................................................................6 rotations ...................................................... 4, 5 scaling ......................................................... 5, 7 Slow ........................................................ 6, 7, 9 smooth smoothing................................................ 6, 7 Smoothness ............................................. 6, 7 Static...............................................................6 track ...............................................................5 tracking ................................................... 5, 6 translations ......................................................5 video ........................................................... 4, 6 zoom ................................................... 5, 6, 7, 9

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