Fixing Bad Camera Pans

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Here’s an example of a camera pan that has some pretty inconsistent camera motion throughout:

With After Effects, we can fix shots like the one above so that they move much more smoothly and consistently.

How To Do It

Import the bad pan footage into After Effects and drag it onto the New Comp button to create a comp with the footage as the sole layer:

Make this layer a 3D layer.

Track Motion / Stabilize / Repeat

Then, select the layer and do Animation > Track Motion. (This is the most basic of the various tracking tools in AE.) If the Tracker Panel is open you can simply press the Track Motion button.

Important: In the Tracker Panel, change the Track Type from “Transform” to “Stabilize”.  (FYI, this is how to access the original stabilizing feature of After Effects that was used prior to the Warp Stabilizer. So, somewhat hidden now, but still useful to know about.)

In the footage, find a distinguishable tracking point that stays on screen for as long as possible during the pan. Track this point using the Tracker Panel until it is just about offscreen.

In the Tracker Panel click the Apply button. 

Now, making sure that the time slider is on the last keyframe of the last tracking pass we did, (and with the layer selected,) click Track Motion in the Tracker Panel again.

This will add a new tracker property group to the layer. Repeat the steps above with a new tracking point that similarly stays on screen for as long as possible during the pan. Apply the stabilization and repeat until the pan is complete.

Add and Animate a 3D Camera Layer

If you look at this 3D layer in one of the Custom View cameras, you’ll see that the footage moves through 3D space almost as if the pan was unwrapped and laid flat in space-time.

If we now add a 3D camera and animate it to smoothly follow the footage as it moves through space-time, we can effectively re-shoot the panning shot in After Effects.

First, add a One-Node 3D Camera layer to the comp. The preset doesn’t really matter, and depth of field should be off for better rendering speed.

At the beginning of the comp, the camera should be looking squarely at the footage. But, as you scrub forward, the footage slides away out of the 3D camera’s view. In order to keep the footage within the camera’s view, we need to animate the camera’s position.

Next, at the beginning of the panning movement, enable keyframes for the camera’s position property. This will create a new keyframe for us, too, at the playhead position.

In one of the Custom View perspectives, find the end of the panning movement by sliding the timeline playhead until the footage stops moving in space. (You might need to zoom out a bit and/or play with the Custom View’s camera controls.)

Move the camera by sliding it on its x-axis until it roughly lines up with the final resting spot of the footage. At this point the camera is roughly in sync with the original camera.

On the camera’s position property, apply Easy Ease Out and Easy Easy In to the beginning and end keyframes, respectively. (e.g., Animate > Keyframe Assistants > Easy Ease Out.) This will make the motion of the camera layer have a smoother, more natural start and stop, and be a little more in-sync with the original, real-world camera.

Go back to looking through the 3D camera layer’s perspective. Scrub the timeline to see where the big problem areas remain — where the footage strays far out of the camera’s view. Add keyframes to the camera’s position to compensate. Doesn’t have to be perfect; we’ll fix minor deviations in the next step.

Nest the Comp, Use Scale to Fix Small Problem Spots

In the Project panel, drag the comp you’ve been working on onto the New Comp button to create a new comp that has our original comp nested within it. Open this new comp.

Scrub through the timeline to find the largest of the minor deviations from the original, nested comp. Increase the scale of the nested comp layer until the deviation is pushed offscreen.

At this point, the final shot should be pretty smooth!

Further Improvements

You can experiment with the Effects > Blur & Sharpen > Camera-Shake Deblur effect to minimize any motion blur caused by sudden jitter in the original footage.

You can also experiment with increasing the motion blur of the shot (during the pan) using the Effects > Time > Pixel Motion Blur effect. This can sometimes help a pan that is moving too fast.

Often times, camera pans are simply too fast. After fixing any stabilization issues in the footage, use the Timewarp effect to slow the pan down. The rule of thumb is to pan no faster than a full image width every seven seconds, otherwise judder will become too detrimental.

Red Cameras: Panning Best Practices