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Stabilizing Elements

Stabilization is the process of removing motion - camera-shake, for example - and locking down the element for your composite. A one-point track provides enough information to stabilize horizontal and vertical motion along the image plane. A two-point track lets you stabilize horizontal and vertical motion, and remove rotation in the image, as well.

To Track and Stabilize

NOTE:  This example uses auto-tracking, but the stabilizing principle is the same for keyframe tracking.

1.   Locate the node tree labeled Stabilizing Elements.
2.   You’ll see a copy of the same LondonEye Read node that we’ve been using for the other examples. Click on it to select it.
3.   Choose Transform > Tracker and then attach a Viewer to the new Tracker3 node. Double-click the node to open up the Properties panel.
4.   In the Properties panel, click add track twice to create two tracking anchors.
5.   For each track in the Tracks list, check the boxes for T (translate), R (rotate) and S (scale).
6.   In the Viewer, scrub to the end of the sequence and adjust the size and position of each tracking marker for the features shown in the image below.

7.   Select both tracks in the Tracks list.
8.   At the top of the Viewer, click the track backward button to generate the tracks.

Now you have positional data for two tracks, and you can use this information to remove the unwanted movement in the image.

9.   In the Tracker3 Properties panel, click the Settings tab and open up the Auto-Tracking sub-menu.
10.   Set the warp type to Translate/Rotate/Scale so that Tracker expects all three transforms.

NOTE:  If you’re using keyframe tracks, there’s no need to set the warp type.

11.   Click the Transform tab and choose stabilize from the transform list.

NOTE:  When you’re tracking simple translation using a single track, you can use stabilize 1-pt for faster calculation.

12.   In the Viewer, click play to see the results.

As the clip plays, you’ll see the features remain locked to the same position within the compositing frame.

TIP:  After you track and stabilize footage, you can add a Transform > Transform node after the Tracker3 node to adjust the position and the rotation of the stabilized image for a final composite.