Improving POV Cam Footage with a few Tricks in Adobe CC

PVC by Jeff Foster

Stabilizing, Lens Correction, Camera Filters and more...

Whether you've strapped your GoPro to a car, motorcycle, boat, plane, snowboard, skateboard or a UAV, chances are you will need to stabilize that shaky footage, do some quick color correcting or do some lens correction to eliminate the wide FOV inherent with these POV cams. I'll share with you some tips on "fixing" your footage and images, including links to additional online video tutorials from my colleagues at Adobe.

I recently did a presentation for the SF Cutters group at Adobe SF to show some quadcopters and POV footage with the workflow in post-production to make it look better. Besides the obvious questions about the quadcopters themselves, it was obvious that everyone was struggling with getting better results from their GoPros, so I thought I would share some of those tips here with the PVC readers.

Normally, if I've done a good job of mounting my GoPro Hero camera or stabilizing my quadcopter in advance, then all I have to do is a quick edit of the footage or images and do some color correcting in Photoshop, Premiere Pro or After Effects CC. But when things get shaky, loose or just need a little help, there are some go-to procedures I use to get me useable footage. I'll share a few examples and techniques with you here...

Some Basic Adjustments & Corrections

Starting with good footage may only need a little stabilizing and color correction and you can do this easily in Premiere Pro CC and Adobe SpeedGrade CC.

• Stabilize Footage: a little camera shake is normal whether you've got your camera mounted or hand-held and if it's not too crazy, you can apply the Warp Stabilizer in Premiere Pro CC or After Effects CC. The Warp Stabilizer is an effect, so once you've stabilized your footage you can make further tweaks and adjustments to it or disable it altogether if you wish. In this example, I've chosen to apply it inside of Premiere Pro CC and left the default settings. Keep in mind that the footage can only be stabilized in a sequence that matches the original footage clip exactly. That sequence can then be placed inside your master project sequence for editing with your other footage clips. read more...


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