Baselight stabilization

[JonR]

Hello Baselighters,

So lately I've been having a conversation about the best stabilization tools. I've done tests and seen tests of Adobe (AE&PR) and Resolve's capabilities. It kinda depends on the footage.

Now, I've been having this conversation with a friend/client I'm working with. He is not an editor (or VFX) but he thinks that Baselight has the best stabilization.  I personally did not know Baselight even had stabilization, they don't really seem to advertise it either.  I have never used Baselight and am not a colorist, I do VFX, Mograph and editing.

I did tests with Premiere and the footage I received from Baselight and tbh I think Adobe does it better, plus I hadn't even dialed it in yet.

I'm curious to know what Baselight users think about the stabilization. I want to do the best job possible on all my projects so it's important to me.

Thanks!

P.S. Sorry, I can't share the tests, TOP SECRET PROJECT!

 

[Tom Evans]

Can I ask why you don't go to a post house with flame/Nuke artists of you want to pull of complicated stabilizations? Baselight is a colorist tool and it's highly unavailable for the regular man on the street. Over the top expensive and hard to learn for doing a single shot once in a while. 

[JonR]

It's not my call. The client wants Baselight stabilization so he's having the colorist do it. I'm not bringing Nuke or Flame into this project, not budgeted.

Edited September 1, 2020 by JonR
wording

[Christian Berg-Nielsen]

I really like Baselight’s stabilisation. It really depends what you mean by best but I’ll try to describe what I like about it.

1. Most advanced stabilisers like warp in AE and the stabilisation in Resolve does lots of fancy stuff under the hood. It seems to corrects skew etc. in addition to x, y and rotation (and warp can even fill out the image so no zoom is needed). I guess it does some sort of 3D tracking for its stab. But in my opinion the result of these “advanced” trackers is that it’s removes the DOPs intended motion to much (talking about smoothing motions here not complete locked camera stab). It makes a new, in my opinion, digital motion. For me that can really stand out from the rest of the images.
Baselight’s stabilisation is simpler but it has a very nice function of keeping the larger frequency motion but to remove the smaller frequencies. I have had many DOP’s loving this stabilisation because keeping the larger movement will not ruin their “camera language” [emoji4].

2. Keyframing. I find it so useful to be able to keyframe in and out of the amount of both larger and smaller frequencies of motion. I have used this so many times with long moving shots where it’s only a small part of the shot that has a “bump” or other not intended motion. So to be able to not touch the part that’s is good but to keyframe in that stabilisation (and needed zoom) for only the part that needs fixing is fantastic. I have never been able to this in Resolve. I earlier had a expression in AE to dial in and out of stab. But it was not a thing I could do with clients in the room because it was too slow to implement.


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Edited September 7, 2020 by Christian Berg-Nielsen

[JonR]

On 9/7/2020 at 12:03 AM, Christian Berg-Nielsen said:

I really like Baselight’s stabilisation. It really depends what you mean by best but I’ll try to describe what I like about it.

1. Most advanced stabilisers like warp in AE and the stabilisation in Resolve does lots of fancy stuff under the hood. It seems to corrects skew etc. in addition to x, y and rotation (and warp can even fill out the image so no zoom is needed). I guess it does some sort of 3D tracking for its stab. But in my opinion the result of these “advanced” trackers is that it’s removes the DOPs intended motion to much (talking about smoothing motions here not complete locked camera stab). It makes a new, in my opinion, digital motion. For me that can really stand out from the rest of the images.
Baselight’s stabilisation is simpler but it has a very nice function of keeping the larger frequency motion but to remove the smaller frequencies. I have had many DOP’s loving this stabilisation because keeping the larger movement will not ruin their “camera language” .

2. Keyframing. I find it so useful to be able to keyframe in and out of the amount of both larger and smaller frequencies of motion. I have used this so many times with long moving shots where it’s only a small part of the shot that has a “bump” or other not intended motion. So to be able to not touch the part that’s is good but to keyframe in that stabilisation (and needed zoom) for only the part that needs fixing is fantastic. I have never been able to this in Resolve. I earlier had a expression in AE to dial in and out of stab. But it was not a thing I could do with clients in the room because it was too slow to implement.

Thank you, you make some great points. I agree with you 1000 % about intended movement.

On 9/7/2020 at 12:03 AM, Christian Berg-Nielsen said: