How to straighten the horizon?

Get answers to your questions about color grading, editing and finishing with DaVinci Resolve.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline

Daniel Rivers

  • Posts: 54
  • Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2017 11:34 am

How to straighten the horizon?

PostTue Nov 05, 2019 5:07 pm

I often shoot hand held and have wobbly horizon. Can I somehow track it and automatically correct with davinci stabilizer? I can do it manually with keyframing but it is a PITA.
Offline

RCModelReviews

  • Posts: 1225
  • Joined: Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:39 am
  • Real Name: Bruce Simpson

Re: How to straighten the horizon?

PostTue Nov 05, 2019 5:26 pm

The stabilizer should do a decent job. I find that translation or similarity often works better than perspective in such cases -- the latter giving a kind of wavy distortion when correcting some footage.
Resolve 18.1 Studio, Fusion 9 Studio
CPU: i7 8700, OS: Windows 10 32GB RAM, GPU: RTX3060
I'm refugee from Sony Vegas slicing video for my YouTube channels.
Offline
User avatar

bobosola

  • Posts: 165
  • Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2018 10:09 pm
  • Location: Southampton UK
  • Real Name: Bob Osola

Re: How to straighten the horizon?

PostTue Nov 05, 2019 10:35 pm

If you have no tilt or pan in the shot then try the Resolve stabiliser with the “camera lock” option checked. This works really well with fixed handheld shots. It’s almost like using a tripod.
Offline
User avatar

Marc Wielage

  • Posts: 10901
  • Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:46 am
  • Location: Hollywood, USA

Re: How to straighten the horizon?

PostWed Nov 06, 2019 12:29 am

You will have to try the various stabilization modes to determine which one introduces the fewest number of artifacts in the image. I find sometimes the Classic Stabilizer works best (with Point Tracker), but the new tracker has surprised me on occasion and did a fine job right out of the box... sometimes. It does require trial & error to determine which will work best -- it is not a purely automatic function.

I just finished a 100-minute documentary feature last week, and one trick I had to resort to is, we occasionally had a series of long shots (say, 1 or 2-minutes) of continuous footage, and we sometimes had to break them down into shorter clips and just stabilize the short clips, because there isn't much you can do with a frantically moving camera going through a crowd or something. Once it stops on a person's face for an interview, then you can stabilize it, and if you do it carefully, you can make the transition imperceptible.
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood
Offline

Daniel Rivers

  • Posts: 54
  • Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2017 11:34 am

Re: How to straighten the horizon?

PostSat Nov 09, 2019 8:44 am

I still wish there were a mode to select a horizon and prioritize is to be as leveled as possible.
Offline
User avatar

Uli Plank

  • Posts: 21281
  • Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:48 am
  • Location: Germany and Indonesia

Re: How to straighten the horizon?

PostSat Nov 09, 2019 11:08 am

Well, one can always wish, but for now you could rotate the image after stabilization.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

Studio 18.6.5, MacOS 13.6.5
MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and iPhone 15 Pro
Speed Editor, UltraStudio Monitor 3G, iMac 2017, eGPU
Offline

Michael_Andreas

  • Posts: 1672
  • Joined: Sat Jan 05, 2019 9:40 pm
  • Real Name: Michael Andreas

Re: How to straighten the horizon?

PostSat Nov 09, 2019 3:02 pm

In the DR Manual Chapter 65 on the Tracker Node is a section "Steady Angle". Perhaps you can set a tracker on a horizon feature and use its output to adjust just the angle of the footage. As I've never done this, you'll have to investigate further for yourself if interested.
_________________________________________________
DR Studio 17.4.1 Win10Pro 21H1/19043.1320 - i7-6700K@4GHz, 32GB RAM
RTX 2070 8GB, "Studio" driver 472.39
OS,Library: 1TB SSD - Project: 1TB SSD - Cache: 1TB NVMe
Offline
User avatar

Marc Wielage

  • Posts: 10901
  • Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:46 am
  • Location: Hollywood, USA

Re: How to straighten the horizon?

PostSun Nov 10, 2019 5:05 am

Daniel Rivers wrote:I still wish there were a mode to select a horizon and prioritize is to be as leveled as possible.

I do that by eye, just in the belief that this is part of our job.

Uli Plank wrote:Well, one can always wish, but for now you could rotate the image after stabilization.

That is also a very good suggestion. A lot of this boils down to creative choice and a subjective opinion, neither of which can be done by software. (Yet.)
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood

Return to DaVinci Resolve

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], dcolivares, Google [Bot], Kilin3110, panos_mts, peeceful and 183 guests