Video Camera Stabilization Master Class

1. Camera Stabilization Course Intro: So back in the day, if you wanted a steady shot on your camera, you actually have to spend thousands of dollars on bulky camera equipment. Or you had to spend hours upon hours learning how to properly use a steady cam. Well, fortunately for us, the future is now and you can actually get super smooth steady shots by just using hand-held camera work. There are literally dozens of additional ways you can properly stabilize your footage, whether shot on a professional camera or even just your smartphone. And the great thing is that you can combine many of these techniques to transform handheld footage into silky smooth video that looks like you spent a ton of money on professional camera again. And that's what we're doing in this course. We're learning everything we can about how to get smooth footage. We'll start with a few out-of-the-box, no budget options. We'll discuss the best types of cameras and lenses to use to get smooth footage. We'll go over some basic cheap gear that almost every video enthusiast already has. Also go over some professional equipment just so you know the possibilities of what's out there. And I'll show you the exact camera settings I use to get the smoothest footage possible. We'll even dive deep into the post-production process. Talking about video filters you can use to smooth things out and gyroscopic metadata and how you can use that to further smooth your footage. And I'll end the class by showing you 11 approaches that you can actually use in tandem. That's all 11 of these approaches combined to get the perfect footage. You basically learn how to transform completely handheld footage into something that looks super professional. So that sounds good. Let's get into it. 2. What Makes Cameras Shake?: Maybe silly, but before we jump into actual techniques on how to keep camera footage smooth, let's kind of figure out conceptually, an academically, what exactly makes camera footage shaky. So if you really think about it, there's six different ways a camera can move throughout space. So we can physically move left to right, up and down, forward, back. So it has three dimensions in space that it can move and you can also turn three different ways. So we think of pans and tilts, panning left to right, tilting up and down, and a third way rolling side-to-side. So if you think about it, there's really only six different ways a camera or any object really can move in space. And what we're trying to do to get cinematic footage is we're trying to limit the amount of ways that it can actually move. Most cinematic moves are only 123 of these moves, not all six. So when we think about a dolly move, for instance, the cameras just moving one direction in space along the z-axis for it back or along the x-axis, left to right. So that's only using one of these camera movements. And maybe we want to push in and get a nice tilt on our subject at the end to show a powerful subject. So that's moving forward and tilting up as we do, that is using two of these Movement methods versus the six possibles. So again, for cinematic movement, we're really trying to isolate all these moves down just about one to three. And that usually gives us the most cinematic footage possible. If we think about a movement that's associated with amateur camera work, we think about when we're going handheld, if we're walking up and down, the camera is moving along this y-axis up and down. And that kinda shows off the footsteps usually isn't what we want. And so instead, if we were to limit that up and down movement, now suddenly we're just walking forward and it's the same as a dolly. So we've limited the up and down movement. We've completely eliminated it, and now we're just moving along the z-axis in space. So, yeah, that's a little academic, but try to keep those things in mind while we learn all of these techniques. It's also probably worth saying that when it comes to stabilization, more points of contact the better. So if you're holding a camera with one hand, it's very easy for that camera to be moving around when you hold it with two hands, suddenly you've studied it a little bit more. If you were to able to add a third point of contact or even a third and fourth point of contact, you can get smoother footage that way. So typically, with stabilization, the more points of contact the better and a final guiding principle of camera movement is the camera wait. So the heavier the camera, the steadier the footage is inherently going to be. If we think about it in the real-world, we think of an elephant is large and moves slowly versus some sort of bug that's flying around, can able to pivot through space and move a lot faster. So a camera, just like anything else, the heavier the camera is, the more force is required to change trajectory, which means that it's going to inherently be more stable if you're shooting with some sort of like point and shoot or a phone, it's clearly going to have a little bit more jitters than some heavy, bulky camera when it comes to Cameron, move it. One other thing to understand is that the closer an object is to the lens of your camera, the more accentuated that movement is actually going to be. And when we think of like going on a road trip, we think of sitting in the passenger seat and looking out to the side. The mountain in the far background looks like it's just barely moving, right? The house in the midground is moving at a normal speed. And then street signs and things like that. Cars in the foreground are just moving by really, really fast. So it's the same with camera movement. If something is close to your lens, it's going to look like it's moving a lot more than if it's farther away from your lens. And that's just a concept that we want to know because some of these movements are a lot smaller. Some of these movements we're just moving the camera two or 3 ft or one or 2 ft. And for the camera to really pick up on the movement, we want to make sure that we place objects in our foreground. So we're seeing that movement. And if we don't do that, if we just move the camera very subtly six to 9 " to the side, we're not really going to pick up on any movement unless we have something in the foreground. So again, I like to keep things practical and pragmatic for you guys. That's just a little bit of academic information to have in the back of your brain while you're learning these actual practical steps. So with that, let's actually start to learn these techniques. 3. How to Hold the Camera: Before we get into anything that requires camera movement, Let's talk about different ways you can hold the camera. That just by holding the camera, you can already take out some of that shake. So as we said before, the more points of contact, the steady or your camera can be. Well, when you're holding your camera, your arms are able to freely move throughout space. And so essentially think of if you were putting your camera on a tripod, but that tripod is not locked to the ground. I mean, that's why your arms are so to properly hold the camera. In most situations, what you wanna do is actually kinda lock your elbows to your side. And so you're thinking kinda like T-Rex arms here. You're locking your elbows to your side. You're holding the camera with two hands here. And what that does is it allows you to now make really smooth pans and tilts. Because you're cutting out a few of those ways that the camera can move throughout space. So when your arms are locked to your side here, you're not going to be moving on the z-axis here, forward and back. You're not going to be moving up and down unless you're walking. So you've eliminated the y-axis as well because you're putting pressure on both sides, you're eliminating the x-axis left to right. And so really with this term, you're kinda just left to these pans and tilts. You're not even really going to roll unless you're kind of rotating to the side. You've kind of narrowed down to only two of those six movements that allow you to keep your footage really steady. So when you think about this stance, this is kind of a base that you can really use with a lot of these techniques to add just another layer of stabilization. With that said, another way to further stabilize your camera is to add a third point of contact. And so you have your two hands. Well, if you bring it up to your face here and with your eyebrow, actually have a third point of contact on the eyepiece. So now you're looking through the eyepiece and not the LCD will that adds a third point of contact. So you can actually use both of these in tandem. You can have your elbows to your side. You're going to have it up here for a third point of contact. And now you're getting much steadier footage. So adding that third point of contact really smooth things out. Another method to smooth things out. Again, we said arms are kinda like tripods and space. Well, you can always rest your arms on an object and that will take the movement out of that arm. So if you have something nearby that's at the level, you want it to feel free to rest your arm on that object. And that'll kind of help smooth things out and you can get creative with this. It doesn't necessarily have to be a steady object. It could be a friend, it could be a friend's shoulder. You can be resting your arm on your friend's shoulder to just basically take out the movement of one of your arms. So again, you can kind of combine all these things together. You probably wouldn't combine the elbows at the side, but you could rest your arm on an object and then put your eye against the eyepiece. And now suddenly you have three points of contact. And you've taken the movement out of one of your arms. So that's a great way to stabilize things. And this next one is actually one of my favorite ones that I use all the time. And that's actually adding a four points of contact by taking the neck strap and putting it around your neck and pulling it tight right here. And so you have one hand, two hands. And 3.4 where your camera straps are attached to the camera. So as long as you pull taught right here. And again, you do the elbows to the side. You have very smooth footage. Just by pushing pressure on your neck with the camera strap. What I love about this method is that it really does smooth things out, but it's also not a big, bulky glide cam or gimbal or slider. It's not something that if you're out somewhere, just maybe somewhere where maybe you shouldn't be or maybe it's questionable that you're there. Taking footage. You just look like a tourist. When you have the camera strap around your neck and your shooting, you just have your camera and the strap. No one's going to stop me and say, Excuse me, sir, What are you filming? Because you just look like anyone with a camera. And so this is a great technique to get great footage and also be a little bit stealth about what you're doing. 4. Camera Movement: So for the next part we're gonna go over camera movement. And I've actually broken it down into two different lessons. One, camera movement without any walking, and then the other can remove it with walking. And so first off, we will just go over the ones that don't require walking. So this is kind of leaning, lunging, kinda moving the camera through space without actually introducing footsteps, because footsteps at a whole layer of difficulty. And so we'll get to that in the next one. So the first one of these is the lunch. And so basically you're spreading your legs side-to-side or forward and back and you're doing a lunge with a weight shift side-to-side. And so to do this, you spread your legs out and you start with almost all your weight on one of the legs. And then you just slowly shift your weight to the other leg. And now this can be done again in tandem with those different ways to hold the camera. So you can do this with your elbows, glutes your side. You can do the lunge with the camera strap around your neck as well to further stabilize the movement. And so this will take a little bit of getting used to. Again, you can do it side to side or you can do it forward and back. And because this is a subtle movement, really you're just moving maybe a foot, a foot and a half. You want to try to do this with an object in your foreground. So it kind of shows off the camera movement that you're doing. Again for this, don't move your feet, make sure they're planted and you're just shifting your weight. You're not stepping for this next movement is pretty much exclusively in indoor movement. You can get a towel, a pillow, or even just a t-shirt lying around and put it under your camera. And from here, now what you can do is you can just pull on the t-shirt or the towel and suddenly you're mimicking a slider movement. So again, this is typically done on the z-axis four and back on the x-axis, you can be doing it side-to-side. And what's nice about this movement too, is if you want to introduce pans and tilts. Having it like this with your arms on the shirt or the towel, you can have the ability to pan and tilt as you're going. And regardless, we're still taking out all of the y-axis movement possibilities. So we're still keeping things very limited here. So again, this is pretty much exclusively indoors or outdoors. You could maybe do it on a picnic table, but it's a lot easier indoors. Outdoors. And then I said No walking, but we still can do some moves with movements. So if you think of things like a skateboard, a bicycle, a wheelchair, or a car, these are actually great low budget ways to move the camera further and then just a couple of feet and do it in a very smooth way. So with all of these things, I do want to make sure that you exercise caution, especially working with a car or bicycle or something like that, there is the possibility of you hurting yourself. So please, please be cautious with that when you're doing those movements. So if you haven't skateboarder before, you're a little bit nervous about it, feel free to just stand on the skateboard with your arms at your side or the camera strap around your neck at a different layer of stabilization there. And then have someone just with your hands on your back and slowly push you through space. And that'll allow you to get some really nice steady shots using the skateboard. The wheelchair is probably the safest one of these options, but it does kinda confined to a lower angle. So that is something to think about. The bicycle, it might be nice to have someone in front of you holding the handlebars, pulling and walking backwards as you sit on the seat, filming off to the side. And then finally in the car, the passenger seat, you're moving along distance. But with the car, there is some added bounce to it, right? And so, uh, thing that I like to do in the car is if you have a sand bag, you can actually rest the sand bag on the window and then put the camera on the sand bag. And what the sand bag does is it actually absorbs some of that bounce, some of that shock up and down. And it also allows you to kind of tilt and paying your camera as you're filling out the window. Those are all great ways to add some movement without breaking the bank and buying a dolly or buying a jibber or process trailer, anything like that. 5. Camera Movement with Walking: Okay, so now we're stepping things up a little bit and we're talking about a concept that's actually a little bit difficult and need some practice to do. And so when we're talking about walking with a camera handheld and trying to make it not look like handheld footage. The technique used here is walking heel to toe. So if by chance you are in marching band in high school or college, this is what marching band students do to really keep a steady movement throughout instead of up and down walking. And so basically walking heel to toe and just walk real slow and keep your feet pretty close together. So when you walk heel to toe, 1 ft is heel to toe. The next foot comes down, is really just a few inches in front of the other foot. You're not taking long strides here. You're trying to keep a slow, consistent movement without a lot of up and down. So again, this is a technique that people use on film sets and it takes practice. It's not something that you can just do overnight and so yeah, so spend a few days with your camera walking heel to toe, trying to keep out any y-axis movement. And do that, you know, you'll, you'll figure it out within a week or so, but it will take a little bit of practice. So now that we've gone out there and figured out our heel toe movement, another camera movement that includes walking that I like to use, that was created by this YouTuber who he calls it the cradle. And what you do is you take your camera strap and you actually put it under your lens. And now I have a lens that has so much focus, movement, Zoom movement, that when you do this, you want to make sure that the strap goes in a place where it's not touching anything that could it could adjust a focus or Zoom. But you hold your camera like this. The strap is under the lens and what this is doing now we have three points of contact, so we have the camera strap here, 12.3, so we have three points of contact. And technically this doesn't need walking. You can kinda just like hover this through space. But it isn't nice movement walking. And what's nice about it too, is you can actually get it low to the ground. And so you can get it right off the ground. Make sure you're walking heel to toe, but you go right off the ground and you can get a lot of grass blades and leaves and bugs and things like that. So this is an interesting way to hold a camera. Again, this is right out of the box. You're just using the camera strap that came with the camera. And this is a great way to further stabilize your footage. 6. Working Out: This is a funny little section, but it might be worth saying to make sure you work out regularly when you're on a professional film set and you look at the steady cam operator. And steady cam operator is also always a large person with a lot of muscles because those cameras are heavy. And if you think about it, when you're holding the camera, the camera shakes because your arms get a little tired, right? And so the stronger arms you have, the more stable you'll be able to hold a camera. So it's definitely worth saying that it's a good idea to work out. And the great thing is, is you can still skip leg days so you can just work out your upper body. Obviously. It's good to work out your lower body for those lunges are walking heel to toe. But when it comes to arm strength, holding the camera, hit the gym once or twice a week. It's always a good idea. 7. Camera Selection: Okay, so now let's dive into the cameras and lenses that you can use to further your stabilization. So I love these Sony cameras and there's a lot of other cameras out there that have this, but there's this thing called ibis. Ib IS, which is in body image stabilization. And basically these cameras have some sort of gyroscopic technology that as the camera slightly shakes and moves, and your smartphone probably has this as well. But as the camera shakes and moves, the sensor itself actually kinda compensate for some of that movement. And so these ibis cameras do a great job of stabilizing in the body itself. Sony, you can turn it off, you can have it standard or you can set it up to active. An active kind of crops into the image a little bit and does a great job of stabilizing it. But there are some drawbacks with active as well. So actually keep mine on standard and I'll discuss what those drawbacks are a little later. So you definitely want a camera with in body image stabilization. Another way to stabilize your camera is to get a heavy camera. As we talked about earlier, heavier objects require more force to change and shift and move. And so the heavier the camera, the inherently more stable it'll be. And then finally with the camera, if you can get a camera that has some sort of gyroscopic metadata that will allow you to further stabilize your image in post. And so again, these Sony cameras, these Sony Alpha cameras do have that gyroscopic metadata that you can use later. So I'll include a list, a complete list of some great cameras for you guys. But those things to think about, something with in body image stabilization, a heavier camera is always great. And then something with gyroscopic metadata. 8. Lens Selection: So besides cameras, let's talk about our lenses and what lens choices we can make to create a more stable image. Well, first off, the wider the lens, the more stable and image is going to seem. And that's because when you zoom way in, if you had something like a focal length of 100.105 here, I'm zoomed way in and I'm trying to hold it steady, but every little movement is going to be picked up within that shot. Whereas if I zoom way out, if I have 35 on this lens, it's going to be a wider shot and it's going to feel more stable even if I'm still moving the camera or the same amount, those jitters are gonna be picked up a lot less. And so I recommend for a nice steady shot. You something 18-35. That's a great focal length. That is a wide shot. It's not super fisheye. That's not going to distort your image a lot. But it's wide enough to not pick up those small jitters that you may be making with your hand. And besides the length of the lens, these lenses also have some of that stabilization that I was talking about that the camera bodies do. So you can actually buy lenses that have a stabilization feature in the lens itself. And so if you have a camera with in body image stabilization, and you have a lens with some sort of optical stabilization. Now you're really adding things on top of each other and you're getting a great smooth image. So again, that Cameron lens combo had a camera with stabilization, have a heavy camera, have a camera that has gyroscopic metadata. Use a wide lens, something 18 to 35, and use a lens with stabilization. 9. Camera Settings: Okay, so let's talk about the camera settings that I like to use to give you the most stable footage possible. Now this first thing is a little controversial because it goes against what many people have been taught with some old-school camera theory. But stick with me a little bit. I've seen a lot of research online to help confirm this, but I actually like to use a higher frame rate when I shoot and I really want something stabilized. Now I'm not talking about slow motion. I'm just talking about shooting in 60 frames per second versus a standard 24 in the US or 25 elsewhere. And most people like to follow the 180 degree rule. So if they shoot with a frame rate of 60, they like to have a shutter of 12125 or something like that. I'm of the belief that only your shutter speed affects how your image actually looks. And so when I shoot with a, with a frame rate of 60, I like to have a shutter speed of 50, if that's possible on my camera. Sometimes their cameras don't allow that. So then I would have a shutter speed of 60, shooting at 60 phrase what this allows me to do when I do my post-processing later and I use these filters or these softwares, it used the gyroscopic metadata. It has more frames to pull from, so it allows me to create a more stable image. If you think about it, a standard frames per second of 24, you only have 24 frames of information to gather from. However, if I shoot 60 frames per second, That's more than double the frame. So it has a lot more information than it can use to further stabilize my footage. For instance, the whole time you've been watching these videos, you haven't thought twice about what shutter speed or what frame rate. I shot this project at. The truth is all the footage that you've seen of meat in the field doing all this camera work was actually shot at 60 frames per second. And you probably never even thought twice about that when you were watching the footage. And this project is at a frame rate of 30 frames per second. Again, this is probably something you haven't thought about and maybe you just assumed it was a typical 24 frames sequence. And again, this is a unique approach that not too many people do. So if you are shooting a project with other people involved, you might want to just stick to normal 24 because that's kind of what's expected. However, if you have more creative control over the process, if you're, if you're editing it yourself and you're the only one touching the footage. Maybe just go with the 60 frames per second because it really will allow you to get the smoothest footage possible. 10. Slow Motion: So shooting at a high frame rate will get you smooth footage. Another way to cheat smooth footage is to shoot in slow motion. So this is actually shooting at a higher frame rate, but slowing it down, so we get slow motion. And now for this, I do adhere to the 180 degree rule. So if I'm shooting something and I know I'm going to slow it down. If I'm shooting it in 60 frames per second, I will be using the shutter of one-twenty or one-to-five. And if some of these things about shutter speed and all that are a little too advanced for you. I do teach other courses on camera basics so you can actually learn kind of what all that means. So as long as your shot doesn't contain people or animals or vehicles or anything like that. If your shot is completely static images, it's building as landscapes or anything like that. You can actually slow things way, way down and no one's going to notice. Now if you shoot 30 frames and your sequences at 24, that's only an 80% slow motion. It's still helps and it does make the footage look natural. And I've actually gotten away with filming people and slowing it down to 80%. And it does seem a little off if you know what you're looking for, but a lot of times people don't even notice it. I wish more cameras have the option of shooting 48 frames a second, because that would be a perfect 50% slow motion. And that would be great. But a lot of these cameras actually don't do that. Now, 60 frames per second is probably ideal for any kind of slow motion that you're going to do, that you're not going to present as slow motion. And what you need to do when you fill in 60 frames per second is you have to remember the footage is gonna be slowed down 40% or whatever. So if you're trying to do your slow subtle camera movements and it's gonna be slow motion. That footage itself is going to be so, so slow when you're shooting slow motion and you want to use it to get smooth shots, It's actually a good idea to do your movements a little bit faster. And I recommend trying to do your movements at various speeds. So when you get back and editing, you can actually pick the best one. So just keep that in mind. If you're shooting slow motion, you want to move faster than otherwise you'd think. Now we'll get into post-production and the gyroscopic metadata stuff a little bit later. But I have seen online that some softwares actually prefer if your footage had a higher shutter speed, it can capture the image without the motion blur and better kind of interpolate the footage and give you artificial slow motion. So if you do know that you're going to do some sort of artificial slow motion and post, you want to shoot at a higher shutter speed. Typically, I don't like to do this because it does give the image a different quality than you're used to. But if the circumstance calls for it, go ahead and do that. And finally, a great setting to choose in your camera is just shoot at the highest resolution possible. Some of these stabilization techniques will kind of punch in on your image and you don't want to lose resolution. And so because of that, if you shoot as high as possible and you only punch in, you know, 8%, 10%. It's not gonna be as noticeable. If you know you're going to master to 1080. Definitely don't shoot 1080, shoot for k. And so those are some of the cameras settings I like to think about when trying to get the smoothest footage possible. Shoot high frames per second. If you can get away with it, maybe shoot slow motion. Think about shooting higher shutter speed if you know that's going to be right for you. And always shoot in high resolution. 11. The Tripod: So let's go over some of the basic gear that you might already even own. The first is obviously the tripod. The tripod is the most essential piece of film equipment besides a camera and a lens. So when it comes to a tripod, you put the camera on the tripod. If you don't touch it, that is the most stable your shot can possibly be. It's not moving at all with the tripod. You also have ways of panning and tilting. And that's pretty much the only movement of the tripod. We've cut all three of the movements in space and there's no role on a tripod, maybe some of the more expensive ones, but you're really just talking about panning or tilting. Now, we don't always have to use the tripod exactly as it's intended. One of the ways I love using a tripod is if you actually rotate the base and so that one leg is directly pointed at you and the other two legs are away. You can shorten the leg that's close to you. And you can use the front two legs to kind of pivot the camera. This kind of emulates a little bit of a jib movement. And you can even tilt the camera up and down. So with this movement, what you're doing is you're moving in space on the z-axis forward and back. You're moving in space up and down a little bit. You're also tilting the camera up. So you're using three of the six methods of movement. And it's a shot that's designed to show off the power of a person. And it's a great way to use a super cheap piece of equipment to emulate something that's a bit more expensive. And you can always use a tripod as a mono pod. And really what you're doing here is you're giving the camera more weight because you give them more weight, the shot is going to be more stable. Again, feel free to combine the monopole approach with these strap around the neck approach. And now you're giving the camera more points of contact. Like with many of these techniques, you can stack one on top of the other. 12. The Monopod: Another basic piece of equipment is the mono pod. The pod is a great piece of equipment because it's super easy to pack. It's super easy to take with you. And it allows you to give the cameras some weight to add points of contact. And because the points of contact are so spread out from the monopole, one on the camera body and one on the monocot itself. Because of those points of contact are spread out, it gives the camera a more stable approach. And mana pods are versatile. You can use them to crane up, you can use them to Dolly side-to-side. You can do a lot with them on a pod. 13. The Shoulder Rig: A lot of filmmakers love to use the shoulder rig. Now the shoulder rig, what's nice about it is it still does allow you to have some of the handheld feel, but it's like a professional handheld feel. It's not a hand-held field where everything is super shaky and out-of-focus and all that stuff. It is kind of a subdued handheld feel because it's on your shoulder, you're adding a point of contact, but it will pick up your walking movements. And so you still wanna do the heel to toe. But even still as doing a heel to toe, you're gonna get a little bit of up and down. And it's a lot more subtle of a camera movement than just a typical handheld. And it's a great approach. 14. The Battery Grip: This is probably a piece of equipment you didn't think about when it comes to image stabilization. But if you get a battery grip on your camera, it's going to do a lot to stabilize your image. And that's because you're adding the grip urine, you're adding the batteries. And so because of all that additional weight, now suddenly your camera is more stable, it requires more force to pivot. And so because of that, you're gonna get a great steady image. 15. The Glidecam: Now let's go into some of the more professional gear. This gear that maybe you haven't heard of before, maybe you don't have experience with, but I want you to know what gear is out there. And so eventually when you get to that point, we're going to purchase some gear. You'll know exactly what's right for you. The first piece of equipment here is a little bit more of an old-school piece of equipment and it's called a glide cam. Glide cam was kinda the poor man's steady cam before Gimbels were introduced. And what a glide cam does is you properly balanced the camera on top of this kind of axis. And then there's weight added to the bottom. And so what that does is it adds weight to your camera. But also when you hold it, it makes sure that the image is stabilized as well. So again, this is before gambles were introduced. I don't see too many people shooting with glide camps these days, but it's something to know about. And if you see it at a garage sale or something like that for cheap, maybe it's worth pick it up. 16. The Gimbal: So next let's talk about Gimbels. Gimbels really have revolutionized things in terms of image stabilization. Gambles have basically replaced steady cams on any sort of lower budget film production. And Gimbels are amazing. They're only a couple of hundred dollars and they really make you have a professional quality product and have all the professional camera gear that we're covering in this class. I do think Gimbels are the best bang for your buck. If you do a gimbal on top of some of these other things we've talked about with the camera image stabilization, that lens image stabilization, a wide lens. If you do a gamble on top of these other things, you're going to have amazing professional video. 17. The Easy Rig: There's nothing called an easy rig. And an easy rig is a great piece of equipment that does take some of the walking, the y, bounce out of your image. And so it's kind of like this harness, this shoulder strap thing that has a thing come from behind and it holds the camera basically on a string that you're kind of It's like a tripod up in the air almost. And so because of this easy rig, what it does is when you walk, it takes some of the shock off with you. And so you get a lot less of that. Why image balance? And it's also nice, it distributes the weight kinda more equally among your upper torso. And so it's a little bit of an older piece of equipment. It's a little bit expensive for what it is. I would rather up for the gimbal over the easy rig, but it is similar to a shoulder rig and that it allows you to get a handheld look while still feeling professional. 18. The Slider: Sliders were very popular piece of equipment back around 2005, 2010. And that's basically a mini dolly that just moves two to 4 ft side-to-side or forward and back. Now you get motorized sliders and those are pretty nice. And you get sliders that kind of just operate completely on their own. So it's a good piece of equipment if you want a moving camera as a second camera, that you don't even want a man. So if you're doing interviews, you have multiple cameras. You want to give some movement to one of the other cameras. Feel free to pop it on a motorized slider. 19. The Steadicam: Now, steady cam is something that has been around for decades and it is something that takes a little bit of learning. It is an old school thing, although they have modernize them now. There are now expensive steady cams that use some of the gyroscopic technology that Gimbels have. Kind of combining the two steady cam usually requires you to be kind of fit, be strong because it is a lot of weight to your body and a bigger films, they still use steady cams because a lot of times the cameras they're working with are so heavy that it doesn't make sense to hold the weight like a gimbal. And so City, Kansas still in play. But you do see less and less of them on smaller budget stuff. 20. The Dolly: And then pass slider, we have a dolly. Now there are a few different types of dollies, ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. But dollies are essentially big carts that you put the camera and tripod on and you can kind of push along in space. Some of them use track, some of them don't. This is designed for a move that's maybe five to 20 ft or something like that. You could go a little longer, could go a little shorter. But what's nice about a dolly that you don't necessarily get from a gimbal is that it will be a perfect forward movement or perfect side-to-side movement. If you work with a gimbal, you might get a little bit of a pan or a tilt or something like that. And so because the dolly has a tripod on it as well, you're getting just perfect movement down one axis. And it does have a slightly different feel than if you try to do the move with a gamble or with a steady cam. 21. The Jib: Let's also talk about the jib. Now the job is actually a specific type of movement and so it does stabilize the camera, but it's not quite something that you would switch out. Oh, a gimbal for a steady cam or or an easy rig for a shoulder mount or anything like that. The jib is actually on a long arm. The camera moves through space. So it kind of has, this is great for concerts and things like that. So it has kind of a swinging, swooping kind of camera movement. I wanted to include it here because it does keep things steady. It is essentially a tripod that moves through air on a single arm. And it does have a distinct look as well. 22. The Drone: I know that drones are their own thing when it comes to cameras, but I figured this section makes a lot of sense and a camera stabilization course, that's because drone footage is so steady. That is a lot to do with the gyroscopic technology that they use, but also the fact that they're so high above land and they use really wide lenses. And we currently live in a time where the camera's on. Drones are actually getting really, really good. In fact, the drone that captured most of this footage is the DJI mini two, which is currently $450. Knew I'm sure you can buy one used for 300, 350 bucks. And I will say that while the typical drone shot is high above land looking down, I do think that not enough people utilize drones with the camera low to the ground, moving more similar to a dolly or some sort of camera vehicle. Some of these newer clips are shot on the DJI, maverick three. And the cameras so good on that drone that up close to subjects, it actually looks like a mid tier camera. And what this allows you to do is it allows you to create dynamic shots. Shots that maybe start as like a medium shot of a subject and then it flies away to some extreme wide shot. So it's a good idea to get creative with drones. Everyone's seen the typical travel drone shots. I think it's a great idea to really vary up your drone shots. And I do teach another course on drones. If you do have the interest in learning those, I will say that DJI is currently the top brand when it comes to drones and the cameras that are on the drones. But other brands like sky DO have really, really good obstacle avoidance systems. Dji is getting better at that. And if the camera quality is your number one priority, the DJI is definitely the way you want to go. 23. Sony's Catalyst Browse: Okay, so let's go over our gyroscopic metadata software options. If we're filling with a Sony camera, those are gonna be catalyst browse or catalysts prepare. Now Browse is the free version and prepare is the paid version with a few more bells and whistles. But catalysts browse Should be good enough for us today. So let's go ahead and open up kettles browse. And on the left here, you'll see all of our folders. In the middle will be our media. So go ahead and navigate to where you have your files. And then from there you can see this little shaky film icon. So that means that there is gyroscopic metadata on that clip so that can be used to stabilize. It is worth noting that the AVC HHS clips require online activation and other formats such as the x, a, b, c, s do not. So if you don't want to do online activation, make sure you're shooting in the proper format. So we're going to go ahead and find the clip that we want to stabilize. We're going to go to this 830 here. If you have a towel and a folding table, suddenly you have a small slider that you can kinda take anywhere with you. Once we've found the clip that we want to stabilize, Let's go down to adjustments and then stabilize clip. From here, we see this window. And let's go ahead and we can go ahead and click Analyze. Then as you noticed, it punched in a little bit there. Now the stabilization mode, we can have either auto or manual. And I prefer Otto because as you see as you adjust the minimum cropping ratio here, we can go back to 100 and it'll scale out for us. It'll zoom out. There we go. But once it gets to the certain threshold which you can no longer stabilize the footage anymore, which on this clip is about 92. If we go below 92, were not zooming in anymore, which is great. We want to be as wide as possible with the biggest resolution we possibly can. Now if we go to manual, it allows us to overwrite that and suddenly we can zoom way in. But now our resolution is dropped a ton and we're degrading our image. So that's why I like auto. I just put it below the threshold and it keeps it as wide as possible with the highest resolution that it can still stabilize, which is great. Now another thing to note is that you can either stabilize the entire clip or you can stabilize just a section of the clip by adjusting your in and out here. Now, personally, I like to stabilize the entire clip. And that's because sometimes I like to replace the media in the project. That's the original media that's shaky. I like to replace that media with the new stabilized version. So to do that, we need to make sure that the duration is the same. So it's kind of a one-for-one replacement and it's not going to cause any issues. And so because of that, I like to stabilize the whole thing. It does take a little bit longer to render, but I don't consider that a huge downside. So once we get all our settings where we want it, we're going to click this icon right here. And we're going to set a destination folder. And basically I like to create a folder that's where all my other footage is. Just labeled catalyst prepare catalysts browse outputs. Then from there, that's where I saved my file to. Now we have our source metadata and as you can see, it defaults to same as source for the format, the size, the frame rate, the codec, etc. Which is great. We want to just keep it as same as source for now. And then from there we can click export and it shows the clip that we've made changes to were checked and we hit Okay. And now catalysts Browse is rendering our file. And when it's done, it will spit out a nice stabilized version of our clip. 24. Replacing Footage in Adobe Premiere: Okay, so we now have our clip here and Adobe Premier, this is our original clip. It's a little bit shaky, but still not too bad considering it was just a towel on a folding table. So for this, we're gonna go ahead and replace our media with the stabilized version that we've created in catalyst browse. So we want to right-click or control-click on our clip and then scroll down to make offline. Now, make offline, it's very important. Many files remain on disk. I have no idea why they even give you the option to delete files here. I've seen one too many horror stories from that, so just make sure media files remain on disk as you do that. Now we are offline or media. So again, we're going to right-click or control-click, scroll down and right by where we had make offline, we have link media. Now we're gonna go ahead and locate our media. And it defaults to the original clip here. And now I'm going to click on my catalyst prepare outputs, and now we have the new version. Now it's worth noting also that if you did want to change the filename instead of having two identical filenames. Maybe you want to add an underscore stabilize to the end or something like that. Um, if, if the filename is different, we want to make sure that we unclick this display only exact name matches. If we unclick that. And now suddenly we see everything in the folder and not just the one with the exact name. I didn't do that, so I don't need to worry about that. And it auto populated right there for me. So I'm gonna hit okay. And now we've replaced the clip with our new stabilized clip using the gyroscopic metadata looks a lot more stable, which is nice. So this works whether it's the entire clip laid out like this or if it's just part of the clip. Now, it is worth noting also that when you replace the media in this sequence, it's going to replace that same clip throughout the entire project. So any other instance of that clip in other sequences will now be the more stabilized version. If that's not something you wanna do, then instead of replacing the media, go ahead and just import it as normal. 25. Warp Stabilize in Adobe Premiere: Okay, so let's go over the Warp Stabilizer effect here in Adobe Premiere. Now it's worth saying that the Warp Stabilizer effect is really good, but there are definitely times where it fails miserably. So you kinda have to know which clips you're able to use it on and how to adjust some of the certain settings. And that's what we're going to go over right now. So this first clip I have pulled up in this sample timeline is shot with a longer lens, something around 100, 110. And it is used with the active stabilization on, in the Sony body of the camera itself. So let's just watch this clip real quick and see how shaky it is. To be honest, the active stabilization has done a pretty good job. We do notice a little bit of shake because of the long lens used here. But I do believe that this is a clip because it is so static. This is a good clip to use the Warp Stabilizer on. Now, Warp Stabilizer isn't great on clips with fast pans are a lot of reframing, a lot of camera movement itself. But when you have something like this, it's pretty stable. It should do the trick. So two effects here in the bottom left. And you can just search for warp stabilizer and it will quickly come up. And then we drag and drop the clip on right here. Now, you'll notice that it takes a little bit to analyze the frame. And you also, this is a good time to point out that it's it's a good idea to go ahead and adjust the clip from the exact endpoint to out point that you want to use. So you don't want to be using the Warp Stabilizer on a full clip and then adjust it later. Because in Premiere itself, it actually forces you to re-render every time you adjust the length of the clip. So make sure you have the clip placed in exactly how you want. And you notice that cropped in a whole lot more, then I thought it would. So let's go ahead and play this version of the Warp Stabilizer. And as we can see, what's going on here is that because it used such a long clip, this is 12 s right here. It had to take a lot of the different frames and it tried to stabilize it, but it punched in way too far. Let's go ahead and real quick, we can just go ahead and delete this effect. So it wasn't quite doing what we wanted it to do. And like I said, we want to use the part of the frame that we think we'd actually use. If this clip was in an edit itself and not a standalone clip like it is right now. I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of watch it and just kinda give a hypothetical duration of the actual clip. We're watching it now. Let's say that's all I want of it right there. That's probably enough time to kinda take in all the information of the shot. We're looking at almost 3 s here. So that's definitely closer to the proper runtime than a twelv second clip. So again, let's drag and drop the Warp Stabilizer on this. And it'll render it a lot faster because it only has 67 frames to analyze this time. As you can see, it barely cropped in at all. So let's go ahead and play just this component of the clip here. And you know what, there's some slight rotation, which I don't love. This shot itself is really trying to reproduce a tripod, right? We're not doing any slow moving pans out or tilts or anything like that. So what I'm gonna do and warp stabilizer, we actually see that warp stabilizer has the option here of smooth motion or no motion. Well, given that this shot, we're just trying to emulate a tripod. I'm going to click No motion. And since it already analyzed the frames, anytime I adjust any of the settings, it does it rather quickly. So now we can watch. And it looks completely static. Which is awesome. Now this image or this video clip would be a whole lot better if we had a lot of wind so we can see the grass moving or some sort of movement in frame because right now it's so still. It just looks like we took a single still image, which is pretty crazy. So as you can see, the Warp Stabilizer completely stabilized this image when we did no motion. Now if you put warp stabilizer on a clip with a lot of movement to it, you'll notice a lot of times the Warp Stabilizer kinda gives it a little bit of a jello field. And this is why Warp Stabilizer really isn't a silver bullet of a filter. Here. I'm actually surprised with how good it did with the lack of the jello movements. But if you do notice that your clip has a little bit of a role to it. A little bit of a jello type of movement where you can do is in the Warp Stabilizer effect itself, you can set the smoothness, so it defaults to 50. You can drop it down to something like 15. And then I'll feel a little bit more natural even though it will have a little bit more motion to it. So I would definitely play with the smoothness here. I usually do keep it to subspace warp. Sometimes I'll change it to position, scale and rotation. But honestly the one that I'm finding myself adjusting the most is the smoothness. And then the difference between smooth motion and no motion if you're trying to replicate no motion. 26. Combining Warp Stabilizer with Slow Motion: So now that we know the basics of the Warp Stabilizer, one important thing to know also is that you cannot use warp stabilizer and speed on the same clip. So this timeline right here is a 30 frame timeline. And I shot this right here at 60, is with a gimbal walking upstairs. I thought walking upstairs would be the ultimate shaky test for us. So I'm gonna go ahead and slow this down to 50%, since it was shot at 60 frames with the shoulder of 125. So I'm going to right-click Speed Duration and drop it down to a speed of 50. Already, since there's no people or cars or anything that our eye expects to move at a certain speed. We realized that this kinda still-life walk through here is already a lot steadier, but we want to go ahead and add warp stabilizer to it. So let's go ahead and take the part of the frame that we want to use, maybe starting here with the steady movement and ending. Let's go until we completely stop right here, right before we completely stop. Okay? So let's say this whole area, I want to smooth out the way to use both the warp stabilizer and the speed. And the same effect is you want to right-click and you're actually going to nest the sequence. So the best way to do this, you right-click and then go to nest and you name it, whatever you want to name it. Slow motion, Oklahoma side. Now what you'll notice is it's already nested the sequence and replaced the clip in your sequence with that nest. This method of right-clicking and then hitting nest is so much faster than trying to create a new sequence dragging and dropping the footage into it, changing the sequence settings and all that. It took me years before I realized that this right-click nest was an option and it's a great thing to now, it is important to note you want to slow motion before you nest, and that's just because you slow motion first. So you get all the 60 frames spread out over the 30 frames. As you can see, I'm moving frame by frame and each frame itself is a new image, which is what we want. So we did the slow motion first and now we'll put the Warp Stabilizer on the slow motion. And now let's go ahead and play the clip and see what we have. That's really not too bad. So again, this is Gamble moving up the stairs. There's a little bit of a movement right there. But if we take up the clip from here and walk through, I mean, that is a perfectly steady shot. We see no jello in which is great. We have 3 s of perfect movement up the stairs. It's great. So again, just to quickly recap with the Warp Stabilizer, you want to find the endpoints and out points, the exact duration of the clip that you're going to use. And if you want to do any sort of gyroscopic metadata adjustments, make sure you do that before you add the warp stabilizer. So when he's sort of gyroscopic metadata adjustments, any sort of speed adjustments, you wanna do all your adjustments first and then the Warp Stabilizer is always the last thing added. If it doesn't and if it doesn't quite look or feel natural and makes sure you adjust the smoothness setting in the effect itself. 27. Stabilizing in Davinci Resolve: Okay, so now let's go over the stabilization in DaVinci Resolve. I will say from the offset that the stabilizer individually resolve is better typically than the warp stabilizer in Adobe. Adobe Premiere, oftentimes will give you a strange Ge, Eloise, surrealist output that you often have to adjust a lot of little settings to try and make it look more natural. However, Da Vinci Resolve does a lot of that for you. Here in DaVinci Resolve, we have a clip kind of going through this little overgrown grass hay stuff outside the house and it's moving, but it's also kind of panning in space. So what we wanna do is open up our inspector here and we scroll down to stabilization. Now, DaVinci Resolve has three different modes of stabilization. They have perspective, similarity and translation, and those are just three different algorithms that the app tries to use to determine how to stabilize your footage. Perspective typically is a little bit better with wider lenses, with pans and tilts. Similarity is typically a little bit better if you're trying to do a static image and translation is typically better trying to do a moving image. Again, those are just kind of rules of thumb. With every clip I honestly run through all three just to see which one will look and feel more natural. Now if you have Camera Lock checked on here, that's trying to replicate a static tripod shot or a shot that's moving through one axis. So if you're trying to do a dolly forward or anything like that, That's also possible to use with camera lock because my image is kind of panning and moving. That's probably not what I'm going to use. And then zoom actually refers to your field of view. And so if you don't click Zoom, you could get an image with those black bars that are kinda moving around your image. So I pretty much always have Zoom on. From there you have your cropping ratio, smooth and strength. So if I'm going to adjust those, I typically do those at the end of the process, not at the beginning. So what I'd like to do starting off is just go through one by one and put the stabilizer on and see what mode is best for me. With perspective, we've noticed that now the image has punched way in. More kind of losing what this clip wasn't the first place we get a lot of Horizon adjustments. And so perspective is probably not what we're going to want to use. So we'll go next to similarity. And now Similarity looks a whole lot better. We still get a little bit of Horizon movement, but it's not awful. It's a wider field of view which is really nice and it's pretty stabilized. So this is a pretty good option. But we're still going to go with translation and see if that's any better. Now translation still pretty wide. I'm seeing a little bit more Horizon wobble than I would like though. It looks like the base stabilization mode for similarity is probably our best bet. And now from here we can adjust some of the more nuanced parameters. I typically keep cropping ratio as is. And sometimes I'll rise the smoothness just a hair and lower the strength to make it a little bit more natural. So this is always gonna be a dance depending on what clip you have. And it's just a process of adjusting these parameters with your best mode. And then from there you'll get the smoothest output. And just a little side note, I do think DaVinci Resolve is the superior editing software. I typically edit in Adobe Premiere, even though I can realize its limitations. I'm just so familiar and so fast with it. That's where I'm at right now. But if you're starting out and you're not sure which editing software you want to use. I definitely recommend learning and Da Vinci resolve. It has much better color. As you can tell, it has much better stabilization. And even for bigger projects, if you're working on something with a ton of footage and you need to automate your dailies or anything like that. Davinci Resolve, even though being free it has so much more bells and whistles and could do a lot of things better than Adobe Premiere. In my opinion, it takes all the best things from Premiere, from Final Cut Pro and puts them into one software. So if you're just starting out, definitely sink your teeth into DaVinci, Resolve. 28. Gyroflow: So if you're working with a camera That's not a Sony camera, and you want to use the gyroscopic metadata, assuming the camera has some, I would recommend the software gyro flow is a free software that you can donate to, which I would recommend is a great little software that does a whole lot for you. And it has a whole lot more camera types that it is compatible with. The one thing to know about gyro flow is that the software can get pretty complicated if you're using a camera with a detachable lens. So if you're using something with a fixed lens, like a GoPro DJI, instead 360 or anything like that, should be a pretty simple, straightforward software. It has the support you need, and it has some of these have the lens profiling and synchronization that you need as well. However, if you're using a camera with detachable lenses such as Sony, a black magic, or read, you're going to have to use your own lens profiling. And if you don't get that right, it can be a bit complicated. So if you are shooting on a Sony, I do not recommend gyro flow. I recommend using catalyst browse or catalysts prepare. But if you're on a black magic or read, you're going to have to go through these lens profiling steps that can be a little bit complicated. And so if that is your situation, I recommend going to the homepage and going to docs. From docs go-to lens calibration. And it has a very lengthy explanation of how exactly you need to calibrate your lens. But if you scroll all the way down, you see they have a 45-minute video tutorial here on the definitive gyro flow tutorial. This 45-minute guide is really good in-depth on this software. It tells you exactly how to calibrate those lenses and everything else you need to know because this software is intended for more than just your standard cameras. They also have some flight controllers run cans, so they have some more industrial use cases here. And so if that is your situation, this is probably not the class for you. But again, if that is definitely check out this definitive gyro flow tutorial, it'll go through all the steps. This is what gyro flow looks like. We'll go ahead and drag and drop our video into there. Now that we've dragged and dropped or a video, we see that the lens profile is not loaded. Results will not look correct. Please load a profile for your camera in our gyro Flow app here. One thing that's kinda nice, That's not super straightforward is that you can search your lens profile in this little tab here. And what's nice is these are user-created profiles and they have these star ratings. So if you know that they're any good, you can type in exactly your lens that you're using and you can see if there's anything that matched. Now I was using my sigma 24 to 70 on my Sony A7 for, but unfortunately, it looks like the only ones we have right here, or one at 24 mm, that's five-stars. We have one at 35, another one at 24. So I was shooting this at 70 mm with an APS-C crop. That's no one's situation here. So I would have to go ahead and go through and create my own lens profile there. But if you're shooting with something that's already been established by someone else, if it has five-stars, That's great. You click on it, you load it in, and you should be good to go. So we wanna go ahead and set up our lens profile to do that. We want to hit Create New over here. And now we have the lens calibrator that opens up. And basically what happens is you see this little open calibration target. When you click on that. When you click on that, you'll get a screen that looks like this. This is the screen that you want to record using the lens that you used on the clip. Now if it's a zoom lens, I would recommend trying to use the same focal length. When you record the screen. That'll just help results. And if you click, how do I calibrate my lens? It'll take you to a website page not found. But if we come over here, we can see lens calibration. And it'll show you this video basically where you record the calibration image. I'm sure you can also use a chess board or checker board or something like that. It looks like he's kinda panning the camera around and putting it in all four corners. And he's placing the camera at different lengths away. So he's doing what? He's doing one up close. And that just any kind of fisheye distortion or anything like that will also be calibrated into it. So take a second and go ahead and try to emulate this video right here. Now, as you can see, this software is a pretty in-depth software. You have a lot of low-pass rotation, gyro bias, you have a lot of jargon here. Field of view smoothness. So you have a lot going on. So again, the software can start to feel a little bit overwhelming. But the main things to know are your lens profile and then your lens profile. Once you set your smoothing to default, your field of view, you want to adjust until you have no more black bars around your image. You're going to play your image and then you're going to adjust accordingly. Again, this software works great with fixed lenses. If you're on a higher end, red or black magic, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult and I definitely recommend checking out that longer tutorial put out by gyro flow. But once you get your image to where you like it, You go ahead down here and click Export, and it will render the clip. And it also is worth noting that if you use DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro, Jericho has plugins for both though. So that'll make things a little bit easier for you. 29. A Full Culmination: In this final class, let's just put together everything we've learned and figure out how to make the most stable cameras setup possible. So it starts off with a heavy camera. So these little Sony Alpha cameras, they are lighter than ideal for steady footage. So if you had something like a black magic camera or a Sony fx three, fx seven, f x nine, something like that, something bigger and bulkier that would allow for steady or footage. So let's grab a big camera. Let's make sure that camera has some sort of internal body image stabilization as well. So a big heavy camera with some sort of stabilization built in already. As far as our lens choice, let's make sure that we get a wide lens, something 18, 35. And let's make sure we get something with optical stabilization in the lens itself. We're not quite done with our setup yet. Let's go ahead and get a battery grip for our camera to add additional weight to it. And then before we go out and film, Let's make sure that we're working out a few times a week. Get our muscles nice and big to be able to hold the camera without fatiguing to easily. Once we get onset, we need to adjust a few things in our camera. Let's make sure we're shooting at a high frame rate. I like to shoot at 60. If you're working with a bigger team, it might be good to go ahead and just shoot a 24 unless you've already talked that out with the producer. But a high frame rate is going to allow for better stabilization in post. That high frame rate could also be done in the place of slow motion. If you don't want to do a high frame rate and you know, you're shooting something without a noticeable moving subject, you can shoot slow motion. For some of you, you might want to shoot it at a higher shutter speed. That way when you throw an imposed and do any sort of stabilization there, the higher frame rate might be better for that. Now that we've set the settings exactly how we want to go ahead and pick any stabilization method. So it could be something just right out of the box. You can do the elbows to the side, you can do a lunge. You can actually go out there and buy some equipment and different shots will call for different things. Maybe you want a nice pushing, but you don't have space for a dolly. Maybe a Gimbal would be better suited for that. So think of the shot you want to achieve, and think of the best way to achieve it. And go out and shoot with that method in mind. Once we go out and get our footage and we come back and we download that footage. We wanna go ahead and run our footage through the gyroscopic metadata software. This is before we've actually taken it into our editing software. So we want to smooth out that footage through the gyroscopic software. For Sony, this is catalysts browse, or catalysts prepare once we've exported that stable version through our gyroscopic metadata software, we finally take that clip and we throw it in our editing software. And then from there we can add extra stabilization. In Adobe Premiere, this is with the Warp Stabilizer effect. And for DaVinci Resolve, This is with the stabilizer. You can find it in the inspector menu. So if you enjoyed this class, I hope you realize that there are so many techniques out there that you can actually stack them on top of each other and create amazing footage just by using hand-held, just knowing a few camera tricks, a few settings, some post, and then some onset tools as well.