A robust and efficient video stabilization algorithm

Hung-Chang Chang, Shang-Hong Lai, Kuang-Rong Lu

Abstract: The acquisition of digital video usually suffers from undesirable camera jitter due to unstable random camera motion, which is produced by a hand-held camera or a camera in a vehicle moving on a non-smooth road or terrain. We propose a real-time robust video stabilization algorithm to remove undesirable motion jitter and produce a stabilized video. We first compute the optical flow between successive frames, followed by estimating the camera motion by fitting the computed optical flow field to a simplified affine motion model with a trimmed least squares method. Then, the computed camera motions are smoothed temporally to reduce the motion vibrations by using a regularization method. Finally, we transform all frames of the video based on the original and smoothed motions to obtain a stabilized video. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the stabilization performance and the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.