I own a Panasonic HC-V130. Recently I've read an article about image stabilisation in a computing magazine. Can this be achieved without a special camera?
I am using too much zoom to hold the camera still - causing the image to bounce up and down. Can I correct some of this shaking using software after? If possible can anyone suggest a few pieces of software that can achieve this - if possible a free one.
I use windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04 (Linux).
Adobe premiere and After effects have a stabilizer plugin with that does what you want. These are commercial applications.
The free Da vinci resolve lite also has a "stabilize option" (but I have never tried personally)
FFMpeg's vid.stab filter works well. You have to run it as a 2-pass process: detect, and then stabilize. If you're going to do more with the video later, after stabilizing, output to a lossless format and then point your other tools at that.
Adobe warp stabilizer, Mercalli pro, Mocha AE, Vegas Stablize, these are all either part of the NLE or separate plugins that work to stabilize a shot. In my experience, Mercalli is by far the best, and has simple options that you can customize depending on the type of stabilization.
With that in mind, I've found its really important to shoot at a higher frame rate and higher shutter speed to minimize motion blur as that is usually what makes post-processed video stabilization look wobbly among other things like shear. Up and down movement is probably the simplest to correct, but any footage that involves movement forward/backward / pans will have to be broken up into sections, or may not be stablizable due to the motion (will look weird) and too much would be cut off in the crop.
