I Obviously Have a Deshaker Fixation

I know I write about deshaker way too often, but I accidentally skipped a step in processing some video with it, and ended up with a neat result. Deshaker works by looking at video in two passes. The first pass compares each frame (my videos have 30 frames per second) with the previous one and maps how far certain pixels move. The second pass compensates as best it can for those movements if they don't make sense based on various criteria you can set.

Well, I forgot to run the second pass and got this instead, the results of the first pass in "real-time", instead of the 10 minutes the first pass actually took to process. Looking at it shows much better how deshaker works than my trying to explain it...

I know. Fascinating. To me alone. I know.

R A N T W I C K

Encounters with Rantwick, episode six: Visions Divine and Deshaken

This instalment of Encounters with Rantwick will make sense if you have already read my posts about Cruise Night and Deshaker. If you haven't, it won't compute, so read 'em if you like, or watch the video and go back to them, or just skip it altogether and go ride your bike in what I consider the very best season for it! The WTF factor on this video is pretty high, so it won't be like you'll be missing anything.

I know it looks like I was swaying from side to side in some sort of freakish ecstasy in the video, but that was just how the camera panned on the handlebars while I was stopped there.

Thanks for reading and watching! Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

Deshake It, Baby, Deshake It

As you may be aware, I've got a digital camera attached to the handlebars of my bike that I use to take video. Most of the time nothing interesting happens, but sometimes there's good stuff I can work with. Now, I have seen good video shot from bicycles, usually mountain riders for some reason. Fat Cyclist has started making videos of some rides, and they look great. When I look at my own stuff or on youtube for commuting / street footage, however, it is often very shaky, and sometimes bad enough to give one a headache, especially with "first person" perspectives using cameras mounted on the bike.

Here are a couple of representative examples:

I think better cameras and helmet mount systems can remove a lot of shake... but I don't have any expensive gear. I also think there is a reason that the best cycling videos are not shot from the first person perspective. There are, however, FREE (I am incapable of typing the word 'FREE' without capitalizing it... hmmm...) after-the-fact remedies for all the shake and vibration inherent to inexpensive setups like mine (and theirs). The remedies I speak of are two bits of FREE software; VirtualDub and a plugin for it called Deshaker. I forget where I got them, but just google 'em up, they weren't hard to find. What was hard to find was a mix of deshaker settings that worked well with the moving camera on my bike, which I finally found after much trial and error. This stuff isn't perfect. The edges of the video get weird. The improvement, however, is remarkable. I'm going to show you some before and after video now, of course! Watch the whole thing... there's a 'happening' near the end that's kind of funny.

First, the bad:

Please know that when I was riding by, that kid was laughing her head off over something, so no worries on the shove. Now, the deshaked version:

Crummy wind-noise and camera-rattle audio on both, I know. Normally I would replace that with some music, but didn't bother for this quick demo.

I don't want to bore everybody with the details of setting up deshaker. If you have an interest, email me and I will send you screenshots of the deshaker configuration screens and try to explain the process.

Shake It Only When You Should,

R A N T W I C K