- Hey guys.
Have you ever had shaky footage,
and of course you go to fix it in post,
add on Warp Stabilizer, and it does just that:
it warps the crap out of it, and it just looks terrible.
So what can you do to stabilize your footage
when Warp Stabilizer just isn't working?
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All right, because we get into this quick little pro tip,
we gotta celebrate two, two, two,
250,000 subscribers. (children cheering)
That's how many people are part of this community,
and it's insane.
So glad there's so many positive, talented people
that are just part of this community.
And again, I love it that we can just learn together.
So, one down.
Three more to go.
One mil here we come.
All right, so shaky footage.
You didn't use a gimbal, or a Steadicam,
or anything like that,
and your footage is a bit shaky,
so of course you slap on Warp Stabilizer,
and it's just not working.
So what are your options when Warp Stabilizer doesn't work?
And if you don't know what Warp Stabilizer is,
it's basically just Premiere Pro's plugin
that kinda of analyzes the whole scene
and tries to stabilize it.
And it's a really good plugin,
but it doesn't always work well,
especially with shallow depth of field.
If you have a subject in the foreground
and the background's kind of blurred out,
it's just not gonna be able to do it at all.
So you get this crazy, wonky, weird, wacky, wobbly,
just not-so-good-looking footage from it.
So what can you do when Warp Stabilizer doesn't work?
So this way it's a little bit more complicated,
and it involves After Effects,
so a lot of you are already gonna be scared,
but it's actually not that bad of a program,
and this workflow is really easy
once you've done it a few times.
Now it is a bit of a different look,
and this is actually kind of a camera technique
that you can do in post to your footage.
So not only does it stabilize it,
but it's also a different technique
that you can use in your videos
to create this really cool-looking,
almost hyper-realistic camera movement.
And what it's doing, it's basically tracking onto an object,
and the camera is moving where that object is moving.
So in this case, it's Peter's face.
Wherever Peter's face goes,
that's where the camera sticks to.
I've seen Hollywood films,
and other people use this
just 'cause it's a really cool look on its own.
Forget the stabilizing, it's just a cool look,
but it also stabilizes your footage,
which is really awesome.
To get this going,
you're gonna take your clip in Premiere Pro,
you're gonna right-click on it,
and you're gonna choose
Replace With After Effects Composition.
This is gonna take this footage
and bring it into After Effects.
And don't worry.
Don't be scared.
It's just After Effects.
It's not gonna bite.
It's fine.
So here's your footage,
and what we're gonna do is use the Tracker.
Now if the Tracker doesn't show up for you,
you can go into Window and select Tracker.
So go to the beginning of your clip, click on the clip,
and then go into the Tracker, and choose Track Motion.
That's gonna bring up this little target thing.
And we're gonna choose a contrasty part
that's kind of unique to this footage.
So we're gonna choose Peter's eye here.
And the first, the smaller box,
is choosing what you're tracking,
and then the bigger box is where After Effects is gonna look
for that thing that you're tracking.
You don't wanna make the second box too big,
because then it's gonna really slow down your computer.
It's looking through so many pixels.
But also don't make it too small,
especially if your object is moving really fast,
you're gonna have to make it a little bit bigger.
Here Peter's moving pretty slow because it's in slow motion,
so we don't have to make it that big at all.
Then we hit the Play button, and we just let it track.
Then we need to take that track information
and add it to a null object.
A null object is basically just a placeholder
for information in After Effects.
So right-click, choose New and Null Object.
Then choose the Edit Target,
make sure it's your null object, and then hit Apply,
and that's gonna put that track information
onto that null object.
Then we need to add a new camera,
and then we're gonna parent the camera to that null object.
So anything you do to the null object
is gonna affect the camera.
So we're just gonna choose this little pick whip thing,
and we're gonna drag it onto the null object.
All right, so nothing is happening,
and that's because we need to do one more thing,
and that's to make the null object and your footage
into a 3D layer in After Effects.
So you're gonna toggle the switches
until you can check the box under the 3D cube,
and then you're good to go.
Boom, it's tracked to Peter's face.
So it's stabilizing it,
and moving the camera exactly perfectly to Peter's face.
Now some of the frame is being cut off
because of the tracking,
so we're just gonna scale up the footage
and move it around a little bit so it fits just right.
Easy as that, now your footage is really stable,
and it's doing this really cool effect.
I really actually like this effect.
I think I'm gonna start using it in some of my videos.
It's just something really different.
I've seen it in some Hollywood movies and stuff like that.
But it's a really cool effect.
I like it.
And sometimes it doesn't track quite perfectly.
There's kind of little glitches
where it just didn't work properly.
So you can just go into the null object,
into the position,
you can just click P,
and then delete those key frames
that are causing that glitch,
or that just weren't tracking properly.
So this is a really nice way to stabilize your footage
when Warp Stabilizer just isn't working,
especially with these shallow depth of field shots.
And I know After Effects is scary.
I've been there.
But hey, if you wanna learn more about After Effects,
it's the perfect opportunity
to check out the sponsor of this episode, Skillshare.
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mostly out of my office here at home,
are reaching so many people.
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