Dealing with Camera Flashes in Smoothcam'd Footage

I wanted to post a quick video editing tip that I discovered while trying to stabilize some wedding footage in Final Cut Pro. The "easy" way to do this is to apply the Smoothcam filter to the clip. However, if the footage includes frames with camera flashes going off, the optical flow analysis used by Smoothcam frequently has problems analyzing the footage, and usually winds up adding sharp jumps right around the time of the flashes.

Here's the workaround I've found. I'm assuming you've already got a FCP sequence with the Smoothcam filter applied.
1. Right click (Ctrl+click) on the clip in your FCP sequence.
2. Choose "Send to -> Motion" from the menu.
3. Choose the filename and directory to save the new Motion project as.
4. When Motion opens up with the new project, go to the Motion Layers window and select the clip (which will be underneath a 'Group 1'). Make sure the current time is set to the beginning of the clip.
5. Go to the Inspector tab, and then the 'Behaviors' tab under that. You'll see the "Stabilize" behavior listed.
6. The key to this workaround is to add "trackers" to specific points the scene background that retain their contrast even during a camera flash, and also don't get obscured by foreground objects during the action. Click the "Add" button next to the Tracker label.
7. There should be a "Tracker 1" listed below in the Stabilize behavior's inspector. Click on the "Tracker 1" line to make sure you can see its location.
8. Drag the tracker's crosshairs to a place in the image where there's a high-contrast intersection. If you change "Auto-zoom mode" to "Edge", you'll be able to better see the places that Motion considers "high contrast". It's best if they are an intersection of two somewhat perpendicular lines.
9. In order for rotation and scaling smoothing to work properly, you'll want to add at least one more tracker, using steps similar to steps 6-8 that you used for Tracker 1. Even more trackers wouldn't hurt at all.
10. When you're done adding trackers, click the "Analyze" button next to the "Movement" label. Motion should start analyzing the whole clip.
11. Save the Motion project and exit back to Final Cut Pro.

That should do it! Hopefully Apple will eventually fix their optical flow algorithm to ignore camera flashes.

LinuxConf Australia 2008 Talk: Virtualization Tools

As part of the Virtualization Miniconf at LinuxConf Australia 2008, Ragavan Srinivasan and I are going to be giving a talk on the Open Virtual Machine Tools as a set of technologies and a project, at 1:30pm on January 28, 2008. If you'll be at LCA 2008, please stop by for the talk, or just to say hello!

SVLUG Talk about Virtualization Tools

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm going to be helping give a talk about the Open Virtual Machine Tools project at Silicon Valley Linux Users Group (SVLUG) next Wednesday evening, January 2, 2008. Join us for an interesting discussion on one of the active fronts of virtualization technology. The SVLUG link has details of when and where...

All Kinds of Pictures

Just a couple of spare-time projects to mention:

1. Finished the trailer for a friend's wedding that I shot recently. Apple's Color software has substantial issues, on top of the bugs inside Final Cut Pro itself... But they're also really powerful tools that are (sometimes) fun to work with. It was also neat learning about high-definition workflow for the first time. On the editing side of things, it's basically the same as standard-definition, but a lot slower. The harder part is probably on the shooting side, where you have to worry more about keeping things focused properly... Autofocus and video just aren't perfect, which is why all the pros use manual focus. (Every shot in every Hollywood movie you see is focused by a dedicated assistant called a focus puller, who walks alongside the camera and turns the follow-focus knob.) Oh, I'd also like to take this opportunity to flog my video production blog aggregator, for anyone interested in video/film tools and techniques who'd rather get it all in one place.

2. Over a year ago I went to Peru, came back, and posted pictures from the second half of the trip. I promised the sightseeing pictures from the first half, but never delivered. Instead of waiting for an infinite amount of free time to come along so I could polish everything up, I'm just going to post the sightseeing pictures in their semi-edited form, and see if anyone complains... Oh, and check out the panoramas too - half-baked, but still pretty cool.

• 2006 Peru sightseeing pictures from the first half of the trip


• Two spherical panoramas of Machu Picchu

Next spare-time project coming up is likely to be finishing up my brother's wedding video. It's getting close to a year and a half since that event - sorry, Martin & Sarah!

Work is going well; no news is good news. If you're interested in working on new ways to integrate host & guest OS's in a virtualization environment, feel free to join the open-vm-tools open source project that VMware is starting.