If you just want verticle shaking, you might try the "Film Effects" FX. Turn everything off or down to 0, except the "jitter" factor. It is more limited than using track motion and keyframes, but it would be much faster / easier.

I was laughing so hard, I couldn't type my response at first. You want camera shake... I can get you camera shake!!! I'll send you the phone number of a certain videographer I recently used.... You'll get more shake than you can use!!!!

Thank you! worked nicley

"I was laughing so hard, I couldn't type my response at first. You want camera shake... I can get you camera shake!!! I'll send you the phone number of a certain videographer I recently used.... You'll get more shake than you can use!!!!"

Hey!!! I know that guy!!!!

:-)

You may want to try different settings with SuperSample and MotionBlur to top it off too after you get what you want with the above suggestions.
Just select/"shift+B" those to check it out quickly...

And you gave me an idea: they got Dynapel's SteadyHand, I'm thinking about launching Futzihell ShakyHead now... mmm...

Here's a corollary to the original post. I need to MATCH the shake on the original shot. I have a still picture that I want to superimpose over hand-held video. The still is a cut-out of a person who I want to appear to be standing in the shot. To add realism, I want the still image to bob up and down and move left/right with the handheld motion of the video. I can use Steadyhand to steady the original shot so, but I would prefer to keep the character of the original shot.

Edit the stil picture, putting in a single white pixel. Experiment with the pixel location until it is exactly over some bright point in the first frame of your clip. Use track motion on the still, frame by frame, to move it so that the white pixel stays over the bright point in the clip.

It is even more work than it sounds, but it makes a neat effect. By the way, I used a similar technique to take shake out of a clip (filmed by my buddy, mentioned above).

Glad to hear that it is doable. Sorry to hear that it is as much work as I had feared. Thanks for the tip about the white pixel.

I started making a script for a shake (explosion) effect once. But since I couldn't control the Linear Blur effect from scripting I gave it up. Let me know if you want the script, it shakes, but it doesn't look as realistic as it could with linear blur at the correct angle each frame. Motion blur would help I guess.

I for one would *love* this script.

I'm working on a plug-in that will hopefully automate some of the task, but I don't have a lot of time to work on it, so it is going slowly. For reasons too long to go into, I have to work with some clips from VERY amateur videographers, so I need this a lot.

If/when I get the darn plug-in working, I'll post on this forum. Good luck,
-Don

FWIW, DV had an article on this not long ago - might find archived it at their web site. Though it dealt with AE, basic principles might be of use or interest.

Why can't somebody create a plug which would be a noise generator that can modulate the X, Y & Z position of a clip!!
2 controls: speed of the noise (random modulation) and depth(amplitude) of the effect!!
and of course a selection for the direction (X, Y, Z)!!!

would be very useful, no longer keyframing for random effects!!

That's the goal of the script I wrote about. In it's current form it's alot simpler though. I'll clean it up and put in on my webpage as soon as I'm done moving.

If you need to work with lots of shaky footage, you definitely must look into Steadyhand from Dynapel. Footage that is just slightly shaky looks like it was locked down on a tripod, and amateur footage begins to look almost decent. Here's the link:

Steadyhand

cool!!
let us know!!

this could be a really handy plug/script!!

Since it is so much work duplicating an existing shake, consider using SteadyHand to stop the shake. If it is REALLY bad you may actually have to do it twice.

Then, superimpose the still, render.

Reload the track which now includes the still, and ADD shake to the now one track clip. Guaranteed to match. Unfortunately, it is not easy to make the shake realistic, but at least they will match.

One way to approximate it would be to try to stabilize the shaky clip using keyframes and pan/crop. LOTS of keyframes. Then, when you have the SteadyHand superimposed clip, use it to replace the clip on the timeline that has all those attempts to manually steady it. The effect will be ADDING shakes to the otherwise steady clip.