Fast 3D Rotation Smoothing for Video Stabilization Utilizing Tangent Spaces of SO(3) Manifold

We propose two novel 3D rotation smoothing methods for video stabilization tasks of the common handheld devices. In this paper, we model the motion trajectories of videos in the tangent space of the 3D Special Orthogonal Group (SO(3) manifold). By considering the video frames in coupled and non-coupled ways respectively, we obtain the Tridiagonal Coupling Method (TCM) and the Non-coupling Method (NCM). Both our two methods demonstrate faster processing and superior stabilization results compared to state-of-the-art techniques. Additionally, the 3D camera rotation matrix needed for each frame is obtained by gyroscopes commonly found in smartphones and tablets. Compared to many 2D methods, the proposed methods not only require less time but also allow mobile devices to benefit from the advanced video stabilization effects offered by 3D methods and manifold optimization.