Camera stabilizer - Steadicam - Blogs

Garry Qualls June 19, 2010 at 8:58pm

Even with all the high-tech, high-rate servo compensation, they still sometimes run video frame stabilization in an onboard graphics card where they shift each frame of video in real-time to make it smoother and easier to watch. Basically you can take something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSItWT2PrP0

and turn it into this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnDIrkxaxNc

...before you broadcast it to the ground. The more you want to zoom in, the more tricks you have to use, of course.

They also have to solve all these problems when they film sequences for movies from helicopters, boats, etc. On those systems, and on many steady-cam rigs, they will attach gyros to greatly increase the rotational inertia of a gimballed camera. Not gyro sensors like the ones usually discussed here, but flywheels spinning at around 22,000 rpm so that you can't hear them. The brochures say it takes them 10 minutes to spin up to full speed and 15 minutes to spin back down when you turn them off.