Good day! Today I'm going to demonstrate a free video stabilization software package
called Gyroflow. Gyroflow's a gyro-assisted video stabilization software developed by Elvin Chen,
an aerospace engineering student, during his "free time." Links to his Gyroflow site,
Youtube channel, and Patreon if you'd like to show your support are all available in the video
description below. Gyroflow can be used with any camera as long as you have a gyro log file source
which can be either internal to your camera, as with a GoPro or Insta360, or it can also be
external to your camera such as with flash or SD card memory on your flight controller, or even
an open log Blackbox flight data recorder. Elvin has just come out with Gyroflow version 0.3.0 Beta
and it has a lot of new features which make it much more user friendly than the alpha version.
So, the purpose of this video is to show you just how easy it is to use
this free Gyroflow video stabilization software with its new user interface
and features. We're going to download what you need to run the Gyroflow software and process
a demo flight video using it showing you the side by side before and after results. So if you're not
using Gyroflow yet, by the end of this video you should be because it works and it's free. Go, go
Gyroflow! All right, we're going to start by downloading the things we need to run the Gyroflow
software. To do that we go to this site up here Elvinchen.com/Gyroflow. Go to the download page.
On this site there are two things we need to download. One is the executable application itself
and the other one is the camera presets down here. First, we'll start with the Windows
executable. I'm running Windows 10 so I'm going to get this one that works with Windows 8 and above.
Here's a list of all the changes that Elvin's put
on this new version 0.3.0 compared with the Alpha version. Let's download this.
It's downloading over here. Once it's done, I'm going to cut and paste it
into a folder which I've already made on my hard drive called Gyroflow. I'm going to paste it here.
Now we go back to the Gyroflow site and we download the camera presets. Downloading
over here and we're going to put that in the same location that we did the executable file.
We're going to unzip that
then we're going to delete the zip file.
Under these camera presets are a bunch of different calibration presets for
different brands of cameras. Let's just open up the Caddx one as an example.
Here you see all the different types of Caddx cameras that currently have calibration presets.
Now these are just made by different individuals that have already calibrated their specific
cameras. So, the list of camera presets grows over time. You can check back on the website to get the
latest version of camera presets. If you've got a camera that does not have a current camera preset
available through these downloaded folders, then you'll have to calibrate your own camera
and there's a process for doing that which Elvin Chen goes over in his in-depth video tutorial on
Gyroflow. I've got a link to that in the video description below.
Now that we've got the camera presets and the Gyroflow executable downloaded, there's only one
other thing that we need and that's an ffmpeg file. So, let's go ahead and download that.
To download the ffmpeg, we go to this site which I'll also link to in the video description below.
Let's take note of this: "Unless you have a specific requirement, download one of the get
builds. Unlike many software, releases (for the ffmpeg) are primarily made for the convenience of
OS distributors and package managers and don't signify greater stability or maturity." So,
we're going to download one of the git builds. To do that, we go down here to git version and
this link and we're going to download the full one here. Then I'm going to cut and paste that
to the same location of my previous two downloads. I'm going to unzip it. I'm going to delete this
then I'm going to open this folder and I'm going to get this ffmpeg.exe
and I'm going to cut it
and I'm going to move it to the same folder location as my camera presets and the Gyroflow.
So now I've got the Gyroflow executable, the camera presets, and the ffmpeg.exe
all in the same folder which I've labeled Gyroflow. That's all we need to download
to run our Gyroflow software. Let's go ahead and double click on this.
This pops up. I'm not worried about it so I'm going to click on more info and say run anyway.
Then this window pops up for the first time and after a few seconds you'll see some things pop up
here. Here's the launcher window that we'll be using to run Gyroflow. We click on Video
Stabilizer and then this is the window that we'll be using for these different tabs – Input, Sync,
Stabilization and Export. We'll start with the Input tab. I'm going to open
a short flight video clip that I've previously captured for the purposes of this demonstration.
For the flight video I've captured, I've used the Caddx Tarsier V2 camera onboard one of my Rattler
builds. Since the Tarsier camera doesn't have an internal gyro, I'll be using the gyro on my
Rattler's flight controller to save a Blackbox log file to flash memory. So, before we start
our Gyroflow video stabilization I'll go through a quick refresher on how to use the Blackbox log
file. Make sure to check out this video for more information on how to set up your flight
controller's Blackbox capability. All right, now that we've captured our Blackbox data file to our
flight controller's onboard flash memory all we have to do is connect our quad to Betaflight,
go to our Blackbox tab,
activate mass storage device, and then go to our file directory for our onboard flash memory.
Grab our latest Blackbox file, copy it and put it in the same folder that we have our
flight video in (which just happens to be the same as the folder we've got our Gyroflow
executable program in). Paste. Now when we use Gyroflow we don't want our Blackbox file to be a
bbl file. We want it to be a csv file. So, all we need to do is open up our Blackbox Explorer,
open the log file which is this Betaflight Betaflight002.bbl.
The only thing we need to do with it in Blackbox Explorer is just export it as a csv and I'll keep
this name for now. Put it in that same folder and we're done with Blackbox Explorer! So, now we go
to the folder that we've just saved it to and here you see we've got the bbl.csv. Now what we want to
do is give it the same name as our video file for Gyroflow. So, I'm going to rename this loop0246.
Now when we use it in Gyroflow, when we upload our video, it's automatically going to grab this
loop0246.csv as our Blackbox data file. So these are the two files we
need with Gyroflow along with one of the camera presets that we're going to use
and we're ready to start Gyroflow. We're going to open our video file which is this loop0246.
You see since we've named our csv file loop0246 it automatically uploaded that
for us which is really nice! So the only thing we need to do now is grab the lens
preset for the camera which we used which was the Caddx Tarsier V2. I had it set on
2.7 k 60 fps 4:3 mode so I'm going to browse the lens presets and go to Caddx. The one I want
is this one right here. I'm going to grab that. Now what Elvin has done is . . . similar to how
Betaflight . . . if you hover your mouse over some of the options that you have in each of the fields
he's created some notes: "FPV drones typically have the HD camera tilted from
the flight controller positive equals upward." Now if you're not familiar with how to judge
what your camera angle might be, I'll give you a quick tip. Just connect your quad to Betaflight.
Here in the setup tab you've got your 3D model of your quad. When you move your quad around
the model moves. So, with your camera set at the angle you want during your flight all you
have to do is pitch your quad forward so that your camera angle is parallel to the ground.
In my case, it's right at about 25 degrees. So, that's what I'm going to put in that
field in Gyroflow. So I'm going to go to the camera angle and I'm going to put 25 in here.
Then we're gonna go to Sync. Once again, you can hover your mouse over the
different fields and there may be some notes that Elvin's put in there for you.
This is how far off your video file starts from your gyro log file. In my case it was probably
just a couple seconds. So, I'm gonna put about two in here. This is the sync search size window. So,
if I start at two seconds it's going to go plus or minus 10 seconds and that should be plenty.
From here I'm going to keep everything else the same. I'm just going to attempt Auto Sync.
Then we open up this window and we can watch what happens when it's running its Auto Sync.
It's analyzing nine slices. For each of the nine slices it'll analyze the frame and give
you some information down here - the estimated offset, and if it's calculated the better offset,
and what the cost is. This "cost" over here - the lower the number the better,
because we're going to curve fit to the points that it's analyzing. When it's done it'll tell
you how many points it actually has used and how far off the points are from its estimation.
You'll actually see a graphical representation of it. Sometimes if these numbers for cost are
high like above 5 or around 10 or something like that it'll throw the point out. That's okay,
as long as it's using enough points to do a curve fit to it. Now you get a bunch of graphs. Don't be
overwhelmed by this stuff! This just gives you an idea of how well Gyroflow has estimated the
movement of your camera along with the gyro motion itself. So, you can see across here that the
estimations are fairly good. Here's the different points it has used one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight and how well the line fits these points. Over here in this other window . . . one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You'll see each one of the points that's used as well as
the offset and the error. Now if you don't like it using one of the points based on these numbers or
this graph . . . for instance, if I wanted to I could throw this one out just by clicking on this
"X." I'm going to keep them all for now. We don't really need to do anything with those graphs. So,
from here we just go to the Stabilization tab and Elvin's given us a few different smoothing
methods to choose from - the Plain 3D smoothing which is used for normal cinematic flight.
You can also lock the horizon which requires an accelerometer enabled. For normal type freestyle
flight he recommends this 3D smoothing with smooth angle limit and for more snappy rolls and
quick maneuvers this 3D smoothing with sharp angle limit. The difference between
these two right now that I'm aware of is the default angle limit is 10 here and 15 here.
Since I did a couple flips and a power loop I believe I'm going to go ahead and use this
3D smoothing with smooth angle limit. Here you see that rotation limit in degrees is 10.
I'm going to apply smoothness settings and then I'm going to select export. Even though
my camera setting was at a 4-3 mode "for action cameras try exporting to 16-9 if recorded in 4-3"
and that's because Gyroflow stretches the field of view horizontally more than it does vertically. So
I'm going to select a 16:9 aspect ratio, 1920 by 1080. You can hover your mouse over these things
and it'll explain what options you have for each of these options that it has notes for. However,
since the purpose of this video is just to show you how easy it is to use Gyroflow,
I'm just going to leave everything else at its default and export the stabilized
video. I'm going to go to Gyroflow and I'm just going to call this loop0246 stabilized.
Click save. Then we can open up our command window and watch its progress.
It's rendering. What I do here normally, if i wanted to synchronize the video with the Blackbox
data file in Blackbox Explorer is I arm the quad in front of the FPV camera by flipping my switch.
That way, I know exactly when I arm the quad and I can synchronize the video and the Blackbox data
file precisely. As previously demonstrated with Gyroflow, that's not really a necessity because
you've got that "Sync Search Size" window that you can play with along with the "Initial Rough
Gyro Offset" in seconds. So, we just go back up here and watch the progress of our rendering.
All right, now that the rendering's finished, it should have saved the stabilized video
in the same file folder as our original video. That's really all there is to using Gyroflow!
We go to our file folder and we see that we have our original loop0246 video and now we
have our stabilized loop 0246 video in the same file folder as the original.
So, we'll wrap things up by showing you a side-by-side comparison of the "before and
after" Gyroflow stabilized flight videos. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to give it a "thumbs
up" below. Share your thoughts in the comments section and subscribe to your TMac FPV channel!
Enjoy the flight videos. Thanks for your time. We'll see you next video. Clear skies
friend!