I did a timelapse during a boat ride on the Huangpu river when I visited Shanghai earlier this year. When I had put it together on my computer I noticed that some parts seem "shaky" because the boat was moving up and down from the waves. I've tried stabilizing the video with Premiere Pro's Warp Stabilizer but that didnt have the effect I wanted. The problem is, that there isnt any reference point visible throughout the the video that one could use to align the images. I'd like the video to be smooth without the "bumps" and still keep the framerate at 25fps. Do you know of anything I could do stabilize the video?

Here is a preview of the video (sorry for the bad quality but rendering at full resolution would have taken years): https://vimeo.com/299234655

Thank you

  • Possible duplicate: photo.stackexchange.com/questions/79920/… – Eric Shain Nov 6 '18 at 15:21
  • @EricShain while there are some helpful suggestions at the proposed dupe question, they all center around having a reference frame that's common to the entire sequence. OP's camera is moving through the entire sequence, so there isn't one single reference frame. – scottbb Nov 6 '18 at 15:23
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    I think you want to look into hyperlapse tools or techniques. Basically a moving timelapse, which is what you have. Good hyperlapse tools try to smooth out the jittery camera movements to make the motion more fluid. – scottbb Nov 6 '18 at 15:26

I've had good results with running hand-held videos through ffmpegs deshaker.

eg. with commands like these (in a windows batch file):

ffmpeg.exe -i "%~1" -vf vidstabdetect=shakiness=5:accuracy=15:result="log.trf" -f null NUL
ffmpeg.exe -i "%~1" -vf vidstabtransform=input="log.trf",unsharp=5:5:0.8:3:3:0.4 -c:v libx264 -level 3.1  -c:a copy "%~dpn1_stabilized%~x1"

it runs through the video twice, first analyzing, then stabilizing to a new file.

You may have to play with the parameters to get smooth panning.

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