The Latest on Rolling Shutter Solutions and Fixes

The Latest on Rolling Shutter Solu​​tions and Fixes

After all the big updates to DSLRs this year it would seem they are still the only choice for the filmmaker on a budget.  And it seems none of the manufactures have done anything to help the distortion (also known as skew, or temporal aliasing) from the rolling shutter.

So, since it looks like it's hear to stay I decided to do a little research into what all the new post production software is doing to fix it, and how you can get rid of the rolling shutter skew with what's out there. Here is what I've found.

Adobe After E​​ffects CC 2014

After Effects CS5 can still fix the rolling shutter distortion pretty good with the Warp Stabilizer however, After Effects CS 6 now comes stock with a rolling shutter plugin. 
Check it out on the Adobe Learn After Effects Tutorial. It's a pretty cool plugin.

Here are a few other solutions I've seen.

Final Cut Pro X

If you're one of the people who thinks Final Cut X is cool, then good for you. It has a nice build in Rolling Shutter plugin. It works decent, but not as good as After Effects. 

Here is a clip from Casey Baker who does a pretty good job going over what rolling shutter is and how to fix it with Final Cut Pro X. 

iMovie

Philip Bloom shows you how to do it here with iMovie.

Foundry Plugin

Foundry seems to still have a ridiculously priced plugin you can check out at their website http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/rollingshutter. It's $400 or something. Might as well spend a few more bucks and just get After Effects. So I probably wouldn't bother even looking at that. 

After Effects CS5 Warp Image Stabilizer

If you don't have AE CS6 yet you can always use the warp image stabilizer. Check it out, it's not that easy but effective.

Now which one is the best? After everything I've seen here, it looks like After Effects CS6 is the winner. 

Check out this video here to see a comparison between AE CS5 and FCPX

In this video he's only using Adobe After Effects CS5 with the warp stabilizer. So I'm going to assume that CS6 will achieve similar and faster results. 

I also recently saw that Adobe Premiere CS6 also has a built in plugin for this. But I've yet to actually see it or test it. 

Hopefully you can find an adequate cure for your Rolling Shutter issues with one of these solutions. I personally like After Effects, but if you're only dealing with simple pans, FCPX or iMovie will probably do the trick.

So there you have it. How you can fix the distortion from the rolling shutter skew with the latest technology.

If you know of other techniques feel free to share in a comment.