DAVID MALAN: So I'm here with CS50's own Dan Coffey jogging along the Charles River on Harvard's campus. Now, if Dan were just using a camera to shoot this, the image would be pretty shaky, definitely not stable. But he's using a technique called image stabilization, which should hopefully be stabilizing the image. Can we shoot the rest of this inside? OK, image stabilization. What is it and how does it work? DAN COFFEY: So for many years, the TV and film industry have been trying to get more dynamic shots by introducing movement, but it's a challenge to keep them stabilized. You've seen the West Wing, maybe, where they do the walk and talk shot. And basically, what they use for that is a Steadicam, which is a big rig that you wear. It's a vest with an arm that isolates the camera from the user and counterbalances it with a series of weights. But it takes a really long time to set up and it's very complicated to actually use. 

There are new developments in software that you can use where you can make adjustments in Mac or PC, which sometimes work. Sometimes they don't. But one of the latest developments is actually this. This is the MoVI M10. It's a really neat piece of equipment from our friends at Freefly Systems. And basically, it uses a series of gimbal axes to stabilize your camera. DAVID MALAN: What's a gimbal? DAN COFFEY: So a gimbal is a set of rings that each spins on its own axis and basically isolates each direction, either the x, the y, or the z, and really just makes it very smooth and fluid. So this M10 is a large gimbal and has three axes on it. One here for the tilt. It's got one in the back for the roll and one up top for the pan. And I can actually show you if you want to see how these actually work. 

So if you look here in the software, this is the Freefly configurator. And it's basically outputting diagnostic information right now. You can see we have motor tilt, motor roll, and motor pan. And as I actually pan the camera, you're going to see the blue lines start to go up and down. DAVID MALAN: OK, so that represents the-- 

DAN COFFEY: It's the resistance of the motor pushing back against me, because the antennae always wants to come back to rest in the same position. 

DAVID MALAN: OK, so the taller, the lower the bar, the more resistance. DAN COFFEY: Yeah, the more intensity that the motor is using to fight tilt. You can see the red line do the same thing. And then roll. 

DAVID MALAN: The green line, up and down. 

DAN COFFEY: So these are the three axes we're stabilizing against. And so this is not normally how you would operate it. So if I actually pick this up. And here, why don't you actually hang onto it. 

DAVID MALAN: Yeah, sure. Thank you. 

DAN COFFEY: And now you can see how little the camera moves when you hit the edge, right, the window if you will. It starts to pan with you. That's actually set in the software as well. 

DAVID MALAN: I see. 

DAN COFFEY: But there's another really neat feature. If you are in a more complicated shoot, you can turn on this remote, have a second camera operator actually do the nitty gritty controls. So I can now pan and flex this control. I can tilt and I can actually roll. 

And so in this set up, you would actually be the one moving the camera physically and I would connect a wireless video transmitter to the camera, put a receiver here on a monitor. And then I could actually, just like a video game, kind of operate the camera for you. 

DAVID MALAN: Nice. 

DAN COFFEY: So I'll put it back in single operator mode so you can get a sense of how smooth it actually is. 

DAVID MALAN: Yeah. No, absolutely. And I have an idea. Follow me? 

DAN COFFEY: Sure. DAVID MALAN: OK. So we're here in the bathroom to test out some actual image stabilization in front of, well, the only mirror we have. And I thought it'd be interesting to see just how much the camera moves when I actually move my arms-- up, down, left, and right. DAN COFFEY: So let's see there the handheld roll. Go for it. DAVID MALAN: All right, here we go. 

DAN COFFEY: Really moving it. DAVID MALAN: Yes. DAN COFFEY: So I see a little bit of movement, but I mean, you would never operate it like that either. 

DAVID MALAN: No, definitely not. 

[TOILET FLUSH] DAN COFFEY: All right, so David, let's get serious this time. We'll do a test where you actually go up the stairs. And I will lead you with a stabilized MoVI. And Andrew will actually come next to me. Come on over, Andrew. And we'll see what it looks like side by side. 

ANDREW HILL: Got it. DAN COFFEY: OK. Here we go. We're going to go up the stairs in three, two, one, go. Hi, Shelley. All right, David. Why don't you take this? Take all that you've learned today and put it together, and we'll get the final shot. All right, and here we go. 

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