I have a 20 year old video where the camera was so heavy I could barely keep it on the subject. I realize I will get the black bars and need to crop and was hoping Topaz Stabilizer would help. Sadly I didn’t see any difference.
Could it be my footage is too poorly shot? I get ok results from AE stabilizer but it is very tedious and often loses motion tracker when the camera and subject move too abruptly.
Any suggestions?
pleae upload a stippet so we can test it too!
Hi! For very shaky footage I’d also recommend trying the ‘Auto-Crop’ mode in the Stabilization menu, this will cut off the edges of the frame but allow for more stabilization since the app will be able to shift the center of the frame around to compensate for motion.
Here is the file. When you see it you will realize my challenges. First note it was shot while I was young and unable to carry such a big video camera.
I’m trying to stabilize on a still shot. Yes, I know that I will get blank areas where I went completely off frame.
Boris FX has an interesting stabilizer but no luck with that either.
Let me know your thought after reviewing the footage
Also I tried cutting up the file to have the model focus on the consistent person in each stabilization shot. Still no dice.
This didn’t do anything.
Here is my attempt: Desktop 2023 05 11 07 55 56 02 - YouTube
One thing that you can try is to attempt an iterative process.
First stabilize just a little, the whole frame (5% or so).
Then get the result and stabilize it some more.
Keep doing that until you get stabilization artifacts at the edges, at which point you can introduce cropping appropriately.
Your footage is not that difficult to correct to a satisfying degree.
Cutting the footage to segments and treating them separately is also a good idea, since you can control the iterations for each one separately.
In general TVAI is not exactly plug and play, at least it is not yet. It requires some work and experiment but eventually you can get good results.
Also do not use motion deblur at the same time you try to stabilize because you are introducing one extra thing that you have to worry about. You should attempt motion deblur /upscaling and so on, on the final stabilized footage.
I like the stabilizer function of the (“new”) V3 version more and more.
I guess the most considerable competitor for Topaz on stabilization is proDad Mercalli. They make since many years a very good job for that.
So I was since V3 very sceptical, what Topaz would add to Mercalli.
In the last weeks I tested always stabilization of Mercalli against Topaz.
Actual I work on an old footage with a lot of wobble. I use her again Mercalli against Topaz.
Topaz has here the big advantage, that you can use stabilization and Frame Interpolation together.
So the above named footage has better results overall in comparison to Mercalli.
I will make further tests also with other/normal footage.
thanks for the insight. let us more about your further findings.
I couldn’t see. Can you repost?
oh that s quite some tine ago. i do not have the file anymore. 
Have there been any improvements to stabilizer since 2023 that make the upgrade worth doing?
not that we are aware of. Topaz did not communicate any changes on that module in their change log Since v3.x
No, I don’t think so. 
When you tested stabilization alone, without frame interpolation.
Which one you found does a better job/quality? Topaz or proDAD?
