Timelapse: Dusk to Dark

[shuggins]

This was done on a Phantom 3 Pro. It's a timelapse, one picture shot every two seconds. Stitched together into a video. My beef is...no matter what I do, I cannot get the shakiness to go away. I tried to use Warp Stabilizer...and you shoulda seen it before I tried to stabilized it! It was a mess. It was windy and the P3P was getting pushed around a bit.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make this a lot less shaky?

Thanks!

 

[Deleted member 62848]

Wow that's cool,I know nothing about editing but does slowing it down just a bit change it,,never done this before or that stitching thing,but must be hard cause you metion the wind, if it was still I say that would be premo without that shakiness cause the drone would be level at all times and not fighting to stay level with the wind which in turn would move the camera angle...........ps...hope I write this ok cause it confuse me writing it lol.......yeh with no wind the time lapse pics should stay the same instead of moving,,

 

[SouthTexas&RioGrandeFlyer]

Dunno...........really cool video!

Maybe you’re too close to the Jerry Dome.


San Antonio Bushwacker

 

[David_Cambridge]

There are a number of stabilizers around, for both Mac and PC. Some are better than others under different conditions. Try some different ones, and if they have any type of control settings, try them out. What has worked best for me is Coremelt’s Lock and Load. (MAC).

The only reliable way to get steady time lapse footage is from a fixed tripod. Drones are very difficult. Hyper lapse is convincing only where there is enough drone movement that the eye accepts, to mask the fact that the drone can’t maintain a perfect camera position.

 

[shuggins]

Thanks for the replies!

Ianzone - what you said made perfect sense. I am going to try a Hyperlapse and see if that gets things smoother.

LOL... Jerry World? Well, that behemoth of a football stadium is 8.2 miles away.... But, heck, maybe you're on to something.

David- yea, I am thinking Hyperlapse and a day that the winds aren't 18-22 mph with gusts might yield some good results.

I will post more when I get something a bit more solid and then share how I managed to do it.

 

[SouthTexas&RioGrandeFlyer]

Gotta love shuggin’s enthusiasm!

 

[davedoc]

Forgive me if this is not correct since I use FCPX almost exclusively but won't Warp and Adobe Premier remove the shakiness?

 

[RobH2]

It's still pretty nice even with the obvious movement. One thing that might help is to have the aircraft slowly move laterally as you shoot. Put it in Cinematic Mode and move as slowly as you can to the side and it may minimize the apparent misregistration. Also, it's a common pro technique, like being on a rail and slowly tracking the camera.

Nice work though.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

It's still pretty nice even with the obvious movement. One thing that might help is to have the aircraft slowly move laterally as you shoot. Put it in Cinematic Mode and move as slowly as you can to the side and it may minimize the apparent misregistration. Also, it's a common pro technique, like being on a rail and slowly tracking the camera.

Nice work though.

This is my favorite recommendation. If you are moving, that would go a long ways towards masking the un-even state of the craft in wind. You could make a waypoint mission in LITCHI, with just two points, very far away from each other, with a slow rate of flying between the two. Take the captures while it moves.

Hyperlapse is most of that, but I didn't know that mode was on the P3P.

Chris

 

[GeneM]

Nice timelapse. You won’t get the results you are looking for trying to stabilize your video after the fact. The problem you are having is with the alignment of the source images. You need the source images all aligned to the first reference image BEFORE you create the timelapse. You might try programs like Hugin, AVIstack, Registax, or AutoStakkert! . Haven’t had great results using Photoshop to align the number and size of aerial timelapse images. Astrophotography alignment software is great for this.
Once your source images are aligned and cropped, your timelapse should be rock solid. You might need to process your images in batches. Just make sure the reference image for batch 2 is the last image from batch 1. The same for successive batches. You’ll have to do some experiments to find a workflow that works for you.
Post an update with your results. Love to see how it works for you.
Fly safe.

 

[shuggins]

Awesome replies, thanks to all!

davedoc- I wish I could afford Adobe Premier...but the monthly cost (as opposed to outright buying it) is weird and I'm not too interested in that....so I must use something else. However, I've heard the Warp effect in Premier is pretty awesome.

RobH2 - I think what your are describing is Hyperlapse as opposed to Timelapse. The drone moves ever so slowly (you achieve that using the TapFly flight mode) towards the horizon (1 mph) while you take a single picture once every 2 seconds. I am mixing down a version I did today of the same path, but with Hyperlapse. I'll post here in a bit...but you were right, it's a lot smoother.

Not a Speak of Cereal (lol!)- Yep- litchi is a program I wanna try (I own it), because in Litchi you can set the drone to go slower than what DJI Go 4 will allow. On a side note, Litchi kicks a**.

GeneM- nice idea! I will def try that. I got all night tonight to play with all this (I have no life). Of the 4 programs you mentioned, which do you think I should try first?

This time around, I am using my Phantom 4....wow, much, much more stable (although there's no wind at all today).

 

[GeneM]

Try Hugin. Lots of info on all of them online. Some are easier to use than others. Results will also vary based on the lighting in the images and the amount of movement.
If you have a few images that are way out of alignment, because the drone caught a gust of wind at the time, it is sometimes better to cut them out of the sequence rather than trying to align them.
You can also add a neutral density filter to your camera to allow for a slower shutter speed if you want longer light streaks. In calm winds, you can shoot a 1-2 sec exposure without motion blur. I will suggest keeping your ISO at 100 to reduce noise in the images.

Good shooting and fly safe.

 

[shuggins]

Here is a Hyperlapse from the same area as the video in the first post above. It's a lot less shaky, but now it's way overexposed! Dangit. I'm going to keep trying.....

 

[shuggins]

Maybe I'm slowly getting the hang of this. This one seems to be exposed right and the shake is mostly gone. Now, to try again and make it about 5 seconds longer. The clouds are scootin' by because it was pretty windy last night.