Using Larger Sensors to Dramatically Improve Video Stabilization.
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Staten Island, NY Posted: 11/9/2014 1:00:00 AM
Here's how larger image sensors will lead to amazing video stabilization.
Today's idea is going to sound a bit complicated, but it's actually quite simple, once you get the big picture. The first step in understanding the "big picture" is all about starting with a big picture.
Camera resolutions keep getting higher and higher, but as many people know, once you get past a certain size, those extra megapixels don't make your prints any sharper. In fact, for prints under 8x10, anything over 2-4 megapixels doesn't make the photos look any better. Not only that, if you only want to show them on your computer or iPad, you can actually get great results with as little as 2 megapixels or less.
So, if all those extra megapixels don't improve your photos... what good are they?
Higher resolutions give you the power to crop... and still have plenty of pixels to spare
Think of it this way. Let's say you shoot with a typical 14-15 megapixel camera and you plan on putting the photo on Facebook. Since your original photo is about 4000 pixels wide, but Facebook photos are only about 800 pixels wide... if you cropped out everything in the photo, except your subject's face, odds are as long as the face is about 1/4th of the photo, it's not going to be distorted.
So, by having a very high resolution camera, you can ignore distractions that may get in the way, knowing that as long as they aren't too close to your subject, you can crop them out and still have a high resolution picture.
So, what does does cropping stills have to do with improving video stabilization?
In a word. Everything.
Since HDTV is based upon a resolution of only 1920x1080, that's much smaller than the typical sensor inside of today's mainstream cameras. This means that as you shoot video on most cameras, the camera itself is cropping almost everything in the shot, except the innermost 1920x1080.
This gives us two ways to take advantage of the larger sensor to stabilize the video... One is while shooting... the other is by cleaning it up after it's done.
1. Stabilization while shooting.
If the camera has an option to determine the subject within the video, it could use real-time face or object tracking to follow that subject within the larger sensor, moving the cropping area in real time to keep the final image stable.
For example, assuming you were on a pogo stick while you shot a video of a sleeping cat. Without drastic image stabilization, the final result would be a mess. But, with a high enough resolution in the camera, it could move the crop window in the shot up and down as you jumped, but the sleeping cat would actually be completely still. This method would require a very fast CPU inside the camera, so it would be more expensive.
2. Stabilization AFTER shooting
If you shot the same scene using a camera that shot the entire scene in high resolution, let's say about 8 Megapixels... that would be about the same resolution as a 4K video. Most consumer cameras today shoot at 15 Megapixels or more, at 15 MP, that's 5K video. The resulting videos would be as many 4-7 times higher resolutions than a 1080 video.
Are you starting to see the "Big Picture". All that's left now is to crop... just like still photos, at any given second, picking out the 1920x1080 part of the video that you want in the final video. As your camera bounces, if the crop window moves with it, your final 1080 version would be rock steady.
Most video editing software can do this automatically, but because most people shoot in 1080, the software ends up cropping that down to a much lower resolution. So in a nutshell, if your camera shot in 4K, you would have the ability to crop out 75% of the video at any given time and still yield a pure 1080 result. With a 5K video camera (14.7 MP still), that's 7 times more resolution than 1080... meaning the potential crop window has a huge amount of slack that can be cropped.
Sound like something way into the future? Not anymore. In October, GoPro released a $500 camera that can shoot 4K video. While it does have it's own image stabilization, you can easily use the larger canvas of the 4K footage to get drastically better 1080 results.
Not only can larger originals eliminate camera shakes and other distracting motion, but coupled with an internal gyroscope, you could hold the camera at any angle and always have a perfectly level result.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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