Action Footage Player
Action Footage Player · for divers and snorkelers
Your dives, steady and true to your eyes.
The blues you remember, the light from the surface, the reef in the shadows. Shoot in log with EIS off, and Action Footage Player shows your dive in HDR, stabilized for water, with your depth on screen. On your Mac or PC, with the conversion done automatically.
Why dive footage disappoints
The camera saw it. The usual workflow loses it.
Shaky, even with stabilization on
In-camera stabilization is tuned for air. Under water it misreads the motion, and the result wobbles. You already know this.
Squeezed or grey
A dive runs from bright light at the surface to dark blue at depth. The default mode squeezes all of it into a standard screen, with trade-offs along the way, and log on a regular screen looks grey and lifeless.
Fixing it takes a studio
Grading log and stabilizing EIS-off clips usually means editing software, a project per clip and hours of rendering. Most dives never get that treatment.
Divers are underserved
Camera makers build for the majority on land. The author, a diver himself, has sent them detailed proposals for underwater stabilization; it has yet to fully reach the cameras. Action Footage Player does it now, on footage you already have.
What changes
Open the clip. That's the whole workflow.
HDR from log
Under water, log played in HDR is clearly better than the camera's default mode, especially on recent cameras. The difference is night and day on an HDR screen. No look is added: the exposure stays as recorded and the shadows on the reef keep their detail, so the dive stays as calm as it was. Lights still matter for color at depth, but even without them your footage now looks better than it used to.
Stabilization made for water
Action Footage Player stabilizes from the motion data the camera records, with a correction for how water bends light through the lens. It happens while the clip plays. Many divers carry a bulky two-handed rig just to hold the camera steady; for steadiness alone, you no longer need one.
Depth on screen
When the camera logs depth and water status, the player shows them over the video. Fields the clip doesn't have stay hidden.
Your logbook of dives, ready to watch
Old dives shot with EIS off play stabilized straight from the folder. Nothing is rendered, nothing is copied, the originals stay as they are.
Share the best minute
Press l twice to mark a part, then Shift+E. You get an HDR file that iPhones, Macs and YouTube show correctly.
Highlights from the dive
Moments you marked with the camera's highlight button become markers on the seek bar. Jump to the turtle instead of scrubbing an hour of blue.
Measured, not promised
From jitter to steady.
On a test clip shot with EIS off, frame-to-frame jitter dropped by a factor of eight. The default preset is tuned for water, so there is nothing to set up after the dive.
Above water, in-camera EIS works well, and a preset without refraction is there for EIS-off clips shot in air.
Frame-to-frame jitter, one test clip
Measured on a single EIS-off clip from an Osmo Action 6, before and after stabilization.
- refraction index
- 1.33
- smoothing
- 0.5
- max zoom
- 140 %
- horizon lock
- off
Before the next dive
Two settings on the camera, one double-click after.
-
Set the color profile to log
D-Log M on DJI, GP-Log on GoPro, I-Log on Insta360. If you watch on HDR screens, this is where most of the gain comes from.
-
Turn in-camera stabilization off
EIS off lets the camera record clean motion data for Action Footage Player. On GoPro HERO8 and newer you can leave HyperSmooth on: its result won't be perfect, and the player stabilizes it further. On HERO5, HERO6 and HERO7 Black it has to be off.
-
After the dive, double-click a clip
It plays in HDR, stabilized, with your depth on screen. Switch stabilization between crop, filled edges and off with Ctrl+g.
Cameras divers use
What works today.
Action Footage Player is developed against real dive footage from one camera. Everything else is supported in code and waits for someone to try it on their own clips.
| Camera | Status | Under water |
|---|---|---|
| DJI Osmo Action 6 | Verified | Log, stabilization, depth and water status, HDR export. Tested on real dive footage. |
| GoPro HERO12, HERO13 | Expected | GP-Log and stabilization are in place; HyperSmooth may stay on. Not yet checked on real footage. |
| Older GoPro HERO5 Black to HERO11 | Not verified | No log on these models. Gyroflow's engine reads their motion data (HERO5 Black and newer); support in the player has not been checked yet. |
| Other DJI Action 4, Action 5 Pro | Partial | Stabilization expected; their log is not supported yet. |
| Insta360, single lens | Partial | 10-bit I-Log, chosen by hand. 8-bit I-Log is not supported. |
Dive with one of the cameras marked Expected, Partial or Not verified? A short sample clip in a GitHub issue is the fastest way to get it verified.
Questions divers ask
Before you download.
Do I need an HDR screen?
For the color, yes. Recent iPhones, MacBook Pros, HDR TVs and monitors show what log recorded. On a standard screen, a log clip looks worse than the camera's default mode, because the camera makers' own processing adapts to each scene and getting the same result from log takes a colorist.
The stabilization and the depth readout help on any screen.
Does it bring back the reds lost at depth?
No. Water absorbs red light before it reaches the camera, and Action Footage Player shows what was recorded, with its full range. Getting reds back takes a red filter, a dive light or white balance on the camera, or color correction afterwards.
Can't the camera's phone app already show my dives in HDR?
Some apps can. Their HDR modes tend to re-expose the clip as the scene changes and push deep shadows to black, a look made for social media. Under water that shows: the shadows on the reef go black and the brightness shifts as you swim.
Action Footage Player keeps the exposure the camera recorded and the detail in the shadows, so the dive stays as calm as it was. Its exports have no look added either, so you can still adjust them to your taste. A look baked into a file can't be taken out.
Do I snorkel close enough to the surface for this to matter?
Yes, if anything more. Near the surface the contrast between sunlight and shadow is at its strongest, and the camera moves with every wave. Both are what Action Footage Player is built for.
Will my old dive videos look better?
Clips shot with EIS off play stabilized. Clips shot in log play in HDR. Clips shot in the default mode with stabilization on will look as they always did: Action Footage Player can't add range that wasn't recorded.
Does it change my original files?
No. Action Footage Player only reads them. Exports go to a separate stabilized/ folder next to the clip.
Is it free?
Yes, open source under GPL-3.0. Once in a while Action Footage Player will offer you to make a voluntary donation. You can skip it, or ask it never to remind you again. Nothing is locked either way.