Image stabilization/alignment algorithm

Question

From what I have read on the web, one of the most efficient algorithms for image stabilization is to use Gray coded bit plane matching. However, I'm having trouble understanding it (Gray codes themselves are not that complex, it's the rest of it). Can anyone point me to a resource on this subject (or another good method of stabalization) that is a little below the level of most published papers? Sample code beats abstract generalized equations.

For my purpose, there will be no panning or zooming of the video and no moving objects in the frames.

Answer 1

Since you are obviously not an expert in the field, I would suggest avoiding chasing the current "state of the art" algorithm since your not going to be able to reliably evaluate the various claims in recent papers.

Here is a link to some code and a paper ("The robust estimation of multiple motions: Parametric and piecewise-smooth flow fields") with fewer prerequisites: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~black/code.html

If you can read and understand that paper you should be able to build a decent image stabilization/alignment system with the associated code.

Answer 2

You can try some simple approaches first, I've suggested some recently here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3431434

In your case (no pan, no zoom, static scene), phase-correlation might be already sufficient and it's quite easy (see e.g. wikipedia on that). If I recall correctly, there are several video stabilization filters/plug-ins available for avisynth that use phase-correlation - you can try them out first.

For my needs, I've implemented a simple tool that goes the SURF/Homography route to align several images (aligns images, not videos). You might want to try that out to see if this suffices your needs as well: http://ioctl.eu/wiki/applications/ImageAlign (Heh, I hope that code still runs...)