Google has announced that it has acquired a Dublin firm "specialising in motion based manipulation of film and video" – with an eye to improving the quality of YouTube videos. Down at the YouTube blog, Google Video Technology big cheese Jeremy Doig says of the sometimes less than top-notch YouTube footage: "What if there was a …

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Wednesday 16th March 2011 14:08 GMT Anonymous Coward

How the...

...do they do that? I say it's witchcraft.

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1. Wednesday 16th March 2011 14:36 GMT Jerome 2
  
  Not witchcraft
  
  They have licenced technology from God, who was peeved at his decision to make magnets open source and decided to turn a tidy profit this time.
  
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  1. Wednesday 16th March 2011 14:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Trimming
    
    They trim the edges of the video so the view you see is just a box in the middle of the frame that moves to keep it steady then trimming off the excess.
    
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    1. Wednesday 16th March 2011 14:50 GMT Absent
      
      previously......
      
      There's been steadicam plugins for After Effects etc for donkeys years. I never liked them much in production work 'cos the zooming meant you lost resolution and ended up with a fuzzy looking picture, but that was back in the days of SD. I guess with HD to Youtube this isn't really an issue.
      
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      1. Wednesday 16th March 2011 16:42 GMT Annihilator
        
        ... on 24
        
        "There's been steadicam plugins for After Effects etc for donkeys years"
        
        Yup, and for the free/opensource world, I've been using the VirtualDub plugin for years, well, since at least 2005 according to the metadata on my copy. Just Google deshaker.vdf and drop it in the plugin folder.
        
        Had the same output as you though - namely that it's a neat trick, but no substitute for hard or soft steadicam techniques built into cameras.
        
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    2. Wednesday 16th March 2011 15:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Ah...
      
      ... that explains it. I'm disappointed now. That basically means their "before" and "after" is actually a lie. If it were a proper before and after then the "before" would show the zoomed out version. I wondered where they got the extra edge data from.
      
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2. Wednesday 16th March 2011 14:50 GMT Gerry Doyle 1
  
  Easy...
  
  They just travel back in time and stop your man from going out the night before - no drink, no hangover, no shakes.
  
  Easy.
  
  Off up to Dublin meself this evening.
  
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 15:07 GMT TeeCee

YouTube videos - now sharper and less shaky.

Did Google blow their entire "lipstick for pigs" budget on that?

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Wednesday 16th March 2011 15:12 GMT stu 4

stabilization

yeh, nowt special. even imovie has it.

with HD, and uploading to youtube anyway, it makes sense to do it somewhere if you have shaky footage

Doesn't help much with rolling shutter stuff though (imovie, final cut, etc have different filters for that)

I suppose for your general unwashed phone uploading utube muppet, it could make their happy slapping more watchable....

what would be interesting is if it does any magic if the stuff has titles, etc on it - I would assume not... hence why you stablise BEFORE editing....

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Wednesday 16th March 2011 15:33 GMT Tigra 07

A trifle is required and must contain either custard or jam

Looks like the same video before and during an earthquake.

Good though.

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Wednesday 16th March 2011 18:57 GMT Anonymous Coward

Cloud based?

Deshaker etc already do this, what would make sense is if they simplified it so the uploaders computer did the processing saving Google the money.

It should be possible to reshake as well for archival purposes.

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Thursday 17th March 2011 10:40 GMT Ginolard

Not the only reason...

Most of the videos I watch online end up being shaky and blurred.

Paris because she'd know what I'm talking about

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