My first experience with viewing jerky, handheld filming was the award winning TV series, Homicide, in '94. I didn't care for it much then and it's gotten more prevalent: the shaky, quick panning from one point to another, rolling the camera 45 degrees, quick zooming in and out, etc. Instead of risking seasickness, I look away or change the channel.

Some smart programming in a black box should be able to stabilize the jerks so one could watch a favorite program without feeling queasy. For example, if the received picture is quickly tilted, the picture displayed stays horisontal though maybe with a diamond shape. A sudden closeup would be shown about the same, just the outside size of the picture would momentarily be smaller, slowing down the zoom-in. Fast camera pans would be braked by concentrating on the the elements that are in common during the pan. The unit could do all this by sampling each "frame" and comparing the image with the earlier image; thus cutovers to new scenes would not be effected.
-- FarmerJohn, Jun 03 2002

DV Stabilizer Software http://www.5star-sh...vid-stabilizer.html
This particular one's for home video use. [jester, Jun 03 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]

There is already software that does this, and i'm pretty sure they used it on the famous big foot film in order to guess his height and other vital stats.
-- [ sctld ], Jun 03 2002


Technology exists, at least. Now, fold together with a set-top box and bake. [see link]
-- jester, Jun 03 2002


There would have to be quite a large delay in order to process the frames correctly. I would guess at something like 30min, just to be safe.
-- [ sctld ], Jun 03 2002


How about building it into a TiVO (personal video recorder) and having "stabilization" (or "stabilisation," as you may prefer, [sctld] :) as an option only for recorded programs.
-- jester, Jun 03 2002


Odd. Homicide was one of my favorite shows. I thought the way it was filmed added to the show and gave it a distinct "feel".

On the other hand, I have viewed some *home* movies that seriously needed this feature turned on....

So, I will offer a croissant. But not for direct TV programming, only for recorded programs/home videos as brettjs says.
-- runforrestrun, Jun 03 2002


except, bliss dear, they were in Baltimore....
-- runforrestrun, Jun 03 2002


Perhaps if you perfect this enough you can remove all cinematic style from productions.
-- bristolz, Jun 03 2002


you're talking about a town that has a theft rate soooo bad they've been known to steal *whole* a football team...

Seriously, it's a pretty gritty place although the Inner Harbor is very nice...and shopping there is a lot of fun....
-- runforrestrun, Jun 03 2002


I, too, cannot stand the herky-jerky camerawork that's become popular on a number of televison shows today and refuse to watch them. It doesn't add anything for me (just the opposite, in fact).
-- phoenix, Jun 03 2002


[forrest, bliss] The series I really liked in spite of the jerkiness. [bristolz] Just think what you could do to music videos.
-- FarmerJohn, Jun 04 2002



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