Look-Ahead Trajectory Smoothing for Stable Video Capture
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Solution Overview
Problem
Videos captured by an image capture device in motion often appear shaky due to the device's motion during capture, leading to undesirable jerky footage.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that stabilizes videos by determining the trajectory of the image capture device during capture, smoothing this trajectory to reduce abrupt changes, and using a viewing window to generate stabilized visual content by cropping out appropriate extents, thus minimizing jerky motion while preserving intended user motion.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the image capture device moves during capture, then the user can capture intended motion and dynamic scenes, but the video appears shaky and jerky
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by capturing position information throughout the entire capture duration and determining the complete trajectory before generating the smoothed trajectory. This allows the system to use future position data to inform past frame stabilization, ensuring that intended motion is preserved while removing unwanted shake. The viewing window is also determined in advance based on the smoothed trajectory, enabling proactive correction rather than reactive adjustment.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary smoothed trajectory that acts as a mediator between the raw device trajectory and the final video output. This smoothed trajectory serves as a reference path that filters out high-frequency jitter while preserving low-frequency intended motion. The viewing window then uses this intermediary trajectory to selectively crop and stabilize individual frames, effectively decoupling the stabilization process from the original shaky footage.
2Stability of the object's composition
If the trajectory is smoothed to reduce jerky motion, then video stability improves, but abrupt changes in intended motion may be reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The smoothing process is made dynamic by using a look-ahead approach where the degree of smoothing applied to any given frame depends on the actual device motion that occurs in subsequent frames. This allows the system to adaptively preserve abrupt changes in intended motion while still filtering out jitter. The viewing window dynamically adjusts based on the smoothed trajectory, ensuring that stabilization parameters are optimized for each frame's specific motion characteristics rather than applying a uniform smoothing factor throughout the video.
3Stability of the object's composition
If the field of view is reduced to a viewing window for stabilization, then jerky motion is minimized, but the extent of visual content is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary determination of the viewing window based on the smoothed trajectory before generating the stabilized video output. This allows the system to identify and preserve the maximum possible extent of visual content that remains stable throughout the video. By calculating the viewing window in advance using the smoothed trajectory, the system ensures that only the necessary portions of each frame are cropped, minimizing loss of visual content while achieving stabilization.
Data Source
AI summary
Visual content is captured by an image capture device during a capture duration. The image capture devices experiences change in position during the capture duration. The trajectory of the image capture device is smoothed based on a look ahead of the trajectory. A punchout of the visual content is determined based on the smoothed trajectory. The punchout of the visual content is used to generate stabilized visual content.