this blog is not an indepth tutorial but it will show you a first attempt using the new warp stabilizer that comes out with the new version of after effects CS5.5. i also show you that the warp stabilizer will save you so much of your time. in the video below you see a stop motion / timelapse sequence we´ve shot in winter last year. my thoughts to shoot this shot were how good can i stabilize a handheld stop motion sequence with after effects and mocha.

at first – this first try without the warp stabilizer cost me 2 hole days for the stabilizing process.

first i´ve tried it with mocha. but mocha was NOT able to handle this extreme shaky footage. after this i jumped over to after effects where i´ve spend the most of the time for a frame by frame prestabilization by hand so that mocha could handle it. after this prestabilization i´ve renderd it out as a new jpeg sequence and imported it back into mocha for the “second pass” tracking. this time mocha made a good job. i´ve copied the tracking data back to after effects and the shot was stablized. not perfect stable but ways better as the original sequence. the skulpture was smooth but the background was bad and shaky cause of the large perspective changes that cames from the handheld shoot. at this time there was no way to fixed that.

now the jump to the new AWESOME warp stabilizer.

at the time i´ve first heard about the new plugin and saw some first previews on this – my first thoughts were … WoW this is the solution for stabilizing stop motion shots ! …
after the tryout version of the adobe cs 5.5 software came out i downloaded it to make some test with the stabilizer. i´ve imported my sequence and applied the warp stabilizer on it. the first instance of the stablilizer was to stablize only the movement of the position, scale and rotation with a crop but with no rescale to keep the image quallity. i´ve precomposed the shot and resized the comp with the new dimentions of the shot after the crop. on this i applied a new warp stabilizer and this time i´ve stabilized the perspective also with crop but no rescale. again precomposing and rescaling the comp to the new dimensions. then i applied a third warp stabilizer on this new comp and did it again. this time with the subspace stabilization. and because the subspace stabilisation doing the job by warping and repositioning the frame and pixels, at this time the background was also stablized as much as it could and the overall look was much smoother as on the stabilizations without the new warp stabilizer. and now hold on …. it only takes me under 2 HOUR´s of my lifetime to track and stabilize this shot.

Adobe CS5.5 Warp Stabilizer stop motion Example from Maik Thomas on Vimeo.

yep – i´m realy impressed about what you can do with this awesome new plugin.

if you have any questions. use the comment field below or write me an email and i will answer as soon i can.

Commercial ” Albrechtsburg Castle ” (English Version) from T-Recs (Timelapse Recordings) on Vimeo.

The Albrechtsburg in Meissen, the cradle of Saxony.

In 929 King Heinrich I of Germany laid the foundations with the construction of a defensive wooden fortification. During the middle ages the castle hill was the most important residence of the Margraves of Meissen. However the area was divided between burgrave and bishop. At the end of the 11th century the most powerful rulers in central Germany were the Wettin family. In 1471 two brothers, Elector Ernst and Duke Albrecht, ordered the construction of the first residential castle in Germany. The master craftsman Arnold von Westfalen conceived a new type of stylistic vocabulary for the building. Large arched windows were placed between the wall pillars. This window and the cell vaulting became the hallmark of late gothic style in Saxony. The castle was designed and built as a place for holding court, for representational purposes and as an administrative centre. The private apartments with living rooms, bedrooms and toilets can still be seen today. After the discovery of European porcelain in 1710, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, ordered production to be housed in the Albrechtsburg in Meissen.Manufacture of porcelain was carried out in the gothic rooms for more than 150 years. These rooms with murals portraying a romanticized 19th century view of the history of Saxony and the Wettin dynasty are full of drama, symbol and narrative power.

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we´re only had one day for shooting the film. not enough time to make realy big things. we shoot the big hallways and the big wallpaintings with motion controlled timelapse technique to get brilliant highres images. we made this to capture these images noisefree with the available light situation. the RAW format gave us the dynamic range in the images we´ve needed for the postproduction.

Client: Schloesserland Sachsen
Directed by: Kathleen Biermann
Produced by: T-RECS Timelapse Recordings
Archive Footage ( 01:48 – 02:10 ) by: Adhoc Film
Speaker English: Michael Halstead
Speaker German: Andreas Jung

shot with:

Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF-S 15-85mm
Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye
Sigma 30mm 1.4
Kessler Crane Cineslider, Revolution Head, Oracle Controller
Glidecam HD-1000
Zacuto Z-Finder
Ikan V5600 Fieldmonitor

Impressions reopening of the Technical Museum in Dresden from T-Recs (Timelapse Recordings) on Vimeo.

this is a short overview of the reopening event from the technical museum in dresden. we also had a booth there, on which we have presented our timelapse gear we´ve got from kessler crane. many people visited the event and we had some great conversations. the event was totally awesome.

some facts about the museum:

Technische Sammlungen Dresden“ (Technical Museum Dresden, TSD) is a public museum, which is located in one of the most famous industrial buildings of the last century. Well known companies of photo and movie industry where situated here. Nowadays you can find exhibitions in former production halls that show how the history of photography and media technology, science and high tech got developed and produced for two centuries in Dresden. Special exhibitions are showing contemporary photography , themes of photohistory as well as scientific phenomena. In a unique experimental environment of mathematics and physics you can find out many things by yourself. Young and old get fascinated and regain a sense of wonder. Educational offers of the museum are transmitting knowledge and practical experiences. Educators are accompanying young visitors as they hear, see and experience.

The TSD is more than a museum. Milestones of Movie history are performed on original Ernemann Projektors in the museums cinema.

shot with:
Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF-S 15-85 IS
Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye
Zacuto Z-Finder
Glidecam HD-1000

read more on – http://tinyurl.com/6xpa5mw (german only)

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visit our website http://www.t-recs.org
follow us on http://twitter.com/T_recs
connect with us on http://www.facebook.com/trecsdd

Things which happens on a Shoot #001 from Maik Thomas on Vimeo.

i think it can be a cool new video series on my vimeo account. showing you short videos from great things which happens on location on shoots.
today on our real first hands-on testshoot with the panasonic lumix g2 we were visited by an awesome white buddy.

shot with
Canon EOS 7D
Sigma 30mm 1.4
Zacuto Z-finder

Solar Eclipse over Dresden / Germany 04-01-2011 from Maik Thomas on Vimeo.

a little short edit of the patial solar eclipse we had this morning over dresden in germany.

shot at 09:40am – 10:52am

shot with:

Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF 75-300mm

Music: all from http://freemusicarchive.org

Nonima – Bit Encryption ( http://tinyurl.com/2uovnu3 )
Nest – Trans Siberian ( http://tinyurl.com/358fqyl )
Nest – Marefjellet ( http://tinyurl.com/39os89u )

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Some facts about my Edit because some people ask me how i made this.

i´ve shot several clips. the complete footage is ca. 1h15min long. i grabed all the footage in aftereffects in a sequence. then i precomposed the composition and set the timescale to 2%. than i rendered it out.  no color correction and no special cuts are on the final clip. all flicker an moves i´ve created simply by panning and tilt my tripot and for the flicker i played around with my fader nd filter. for the sound editing i searched on freemusicarchive.org for the right music. then i edit these 3 music tracks without the video in premiere pro. after that i put the videoclip over the sound and than i made the title sequence. title sequence is simply made by animate the scale and a animation of the directional blur effect. that was it. i´ve tried to keep it simple as possible and for me it looks great.

so thanks for watching and feel free to tell me your thougts about the video in the comments or talk with me on Twitter about it.

Also falls Ihr noch Fragen habt oder sowas dann einfach das untere Formular bemühen.
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update 14-10-2010

Download Dampfer HDR Wallpaper

How to build an fader ND Filter on a Fisheye Lens. ( German ) from Maik Thomas on Vimeo.

this is a little tutorial video that show you a technique to build a filter on your fisheye lens. in this video i use the tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens. i´m speaking german. but i think that all of you who not speak german, you will understand what i want to show you if you see the pictures. i hope

this is a technique you can use with all similar lenses and filters. hope i could help somebody.

Impressions of Photokina 2010 from Maik Thomas on Vimeo.

a little picture mix from the photokina 2010 in cologne. (rough cut)

shot on canon eos 7d
EF-S 15-85mm IS
Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye
Zacuto Z-Finder

music freemusicarchive.org:
Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers – Pinetree Boogie