Google Photos Can Now Stabilize All Your Shaky Phone Camera Videos (theverge.com) 54
In early August, Google announced a feature for the Google Photos mobile app that would automatically stabilize videos in your camera roll. That feature is now rolling out via Photos v2.13 on Android. The Verge reports: A lot of flagship smartphones offer optical image stabilization when shooting video, a hardware feature that helps keep footage smooth. Others, like Google's Pixel, use software to try and stabilize jerky movements. Putting stabilization inside the Google Photos app could enhance results further if you're already working with hardware OIS, or improve recordings significantly if your phone lacks any means of steadying things out of the box. The stabilized video is cropped in a bit, as you might expect, and the original clip remains in your Photos library; there's no overwriting. Here's a side-by-side demo someone else made of the app's latest trick.
So tired (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
God, I am so tired of jiggly, bouncy,
I'm not!!!!
Re: (Score:1)
It makes it look "edgy".
Like some of those cable news reporters who have those jerky footage in war zones even they actually videoed that segment in some compound protected by a Marine division miles and miles away from the front lines and and shooting.
People are suckers for that shit.
Re: (Score:2)
I am so tired of TV news programs that show jiggly, bouncy, shaky video clips
OK, reason #759 to not watch television 'news'.
What is your excuse on the first 758? Obviously you have an Internet - make a news tab set and set up a smart list on your podcatcher.. Stop wasting your time/life on their ancient propaganda mechanism where they decide what you will know.
Throwback news consumption (Score:2)
God, I am so tired of TV news programs that show jiggly, bouncy, shaky video clips from some "witness's" cell phone.
You watch the news on TV? How quaint! I haven't seen a TV news broadcast in years since they're typically well behind the actual news cycle.
And the TV producers think it is news! More often than not, I have been quite happy to wait until next morning to read all about the event, whatever it was, in the newspaper.
Oh and you read a paper too! The next day even. You're quite the anachronism. The rest of us just found out about it on the internet a few minutes after it happened.
Re: (Score:3)
What you get a few minutes after the event is less that 5% of the story and is based mostly on rumours and speculation. What I get the next day in my newspaper is almost 90% of the story and the journalists (if they are any good, depends on the newspaper) have already eliminated most of the speculation and rumours. Anachronistic a newspaper might be, but depending on the paper it can certainly deliver a more accurate,
Limiting your news sources (Score:2)
What you get a few minutes after the event is less that 5% of the story and is based mostly on rumours and speculation.
What I get is all the available information at the time. As that information becomes available I get it basically immediately. You're assertion that just 5% of the information is available immediately is made up numbers not based on any actual evidence.
What I get the next day in my newspaper is almost 90% of the story and the journalists (if they are any good, depends on the newspaper) have already eliminated most of the speculation and rumours.
Even if we stipulate that "speculation and rumor" have been magically eliminated within 24 hours (rarely true in practice) it still is well behind the news cycle and an unnecessary delay. While you are waiting 12-24 hours for your paper, the rest of us hav
Re:So tired (Score:4, Insightful)
If Google could find a way to stop people from making vertical videos the world would be a better place.
If the subject won't fit in horizontal video (Score:2)
Say someone is recording video of a subject that will not fully fit into the frame if the device is held horizontally. The camera's zoom feature is already at its widest. The person holding the camera cannot step back. Does it benefit the public more for an event to be recorded as vertical video or for it not to be recorded at all?
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In the few cases that I watched (before I decided vertical video wasn't worth my time) a proper landscape video would have shown more of the action.
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Sorry, it would have to crop out 95% of the picture to have something stable to show.
Good start (Score:4, Funny)
Let me know when it can convert the video to landscape mode and then punch the person who recorded it.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me know when it can convert the video to landscape mode and then punch the person who recorded it.
You can watch a vertical video on a landscape screen if you have to, but complaining about it instead of watching it on a vertical screen is just a sign of neuroticism.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're lucky that the vertically video wasn't letterboxed already, so that watching it on a vertical screen results in letterboxing on all 4 sides. I saw that the other day. Good thing I'm not neurotic.
Stabilize (Score:4, Funny)
I'll be impressed when it stabilizes the middle east, and my meth lab
ffmpeg vid.stab repackaged (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
ffmpeg has had the vid.stab filter for several years. The only news here seems to be another cloud service.
YouTube's stabilization is better than vid.stab, and the new Google Photos stabilization is better than YouTube's, so I'd say there's something new here.
You Tube has done this for years (Score:3)
I've used the stabilization feature a few times in the past 3-4 years. It works very well in my opinion.
Surprised it took them so long to apply it to other services.
Re: (Score:2)
They specifically mention the YouTube feature in other articles [androidpolice.com], along with comparison videos. The feature added to Photos is far superior to the implementation in YouTube.
Re: (Score:2)
This might be helpful [youtubedoubler.com]. On the left is YouTube stabilization. The right is Photos stabilization. They are not the same.
It is using parallax (Score:5, Informative)
One possible bug: If a moving object approaches the camera at the same bearing, parts of it would be marked as "inifinity" and create weird effects.
Parallax based depth determination is one of the reasons for birds striking aircraft. Aircraft might escape with minor damage or a major disaster, but the bird almost always dies! It is in its interest to avoid hitting the plane. But birds have eyes on the side, not overlapping stereoscopic field of vision. The determine depth by parallax, they are constantly moving, and unchanging parts of the image on the retina are at infinity and changing parts are closer. That is why birds sitting on branches constantly cock their heads back and forth to get depth perception. When a bird approaches a plane such that the plane is at constant bearing, it things the plane is far way at inifinity.
Would very much like to test this "app" by approaching the camera at a constant bearing to see what it does.
Demo (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The demo is interesting, but the results look bad to me. Cropped for sure, but also looks blurry and lots of parallax. I'd rather watch the original, but it is interesting.
Youtube has had image stabilization for some time, and I always prefer the original video. The added blurriness is too much to justify it. You could argue that removing the shakes alters the artistic character of the film as well (for better or worse). In the article's example (following a skier), removing the shakes makes the video feel like it was shot from a drone. The original video is more realistic representation of a first-person view.
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably not added blurriness, but original blurriness that is now out of context.
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The added blurriness is too much to justify it.
Motion in photography creates blur. [wikipedia.org] The blur was always there, you just didn't notice it while the video was shaky. Your brain expects it to be there. Once all of the motion is gone, your brain will notice the blur.
Basically, it's all in your head.
Re: (Score:3)
Aliens, Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster (Score:3)
Finally, I'll be able to see clear professional photos of Aliens Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster once Google takes away the shakes and blurs.
oh hell no (Score:2)
ffmpeg/vidstab (Score:2)
See also the vidstab filter for ffmpeg - open source goodness that does about as well: https://github.com/georgmartiu... [github.com]