I do not mean to be rude or clever but consider using some sort of steadycam, tripod or monopod, and a camera with optical image stabilisation.
Best/Tommy

By the way, I have never tried Steadyhand but I guess it works like any other motion tracking software by analyzing/tracking pixels in a defined area. As long as the pixels in that area look resonably the same they're easy to follow but when a cameraflash flashes, the pixels rapidly change color and composition which causes the software to loose track and search for the pixels elsewhere.
Best/Tommy

I'm presuming you've tried all the settings? Try setting ZOOM to 0. There is also, I think a rotation setting.The other thing you might try is to islolate the troublsome flash frames. SH up to and then AFTER the flash. If there are too many flashes then this isn't going to be easy at all! Put the flash parts back and dissolve from and back. Messy, yes. Solution? I dunno.

I 've had a daylight, tele of someone talking against a marquee striped awning - light blue and white/yellowy stripes. Using SH the stripes look as if they momentarily slightly rotate. Being an awaning it "look" as if the wind suddenly has affected the background. Okay, this isn't your problem, but in terms of "reality" it just looks as if the wind, has in fact, just come up! - Not a problem for me.

There is another product, Steady Move, which may be worth checking out. I dunno.

Hope this has helped. There is nothing more infuriating when you know what you want. I've learnt to get myself nearer to the shot - ie little tele=steadier camera work - and to use a tripod when I need too.

Please keep us informed if you get/don't get a solution with any this piece. . . . I'll keep my eye out.

How about getting back to Dynapel with an email, asking for best settings - yeah?

Grazie

There is no setting in Steadyhand that will fix this. You should, however, set Zoom to zero (you have to do this each time). This is unrelated to your problem, but it will make your results look better.

What I do for situations like this, and it is a pain, is this:

1. Have Steadyhand render all the footage that needs to be steadied.
2. Import this steadied footage into Vegas and put it on a timeline above your original footage.
3. Cut back and forth between the two versions as needed.

So far, this is not difficult. The pain comes when you do the cut in the middle of a scene, because Steadyhand zooms in on the image so that you don't get white borders as it moves around the image. Therefore you then have to use the Pan/Crop tool in Vegas to zoom in on the original, non-steadied image (you can get the X & Y values from Steadyhand and then type them into the Pan/Crop dialog so that the zoom matches exactly). The pain in the neck part is that you then have to carefully move the pan/crop around until the original and steadyhand image match exactly.

You can get perfect results with this technique, but it takes many minutes per edit.

I have a potential solution. Haven't tried it, actually, but it might work.

(1) Mark each flash on your video with a marker.

(2) Run SteadyHand on this original video, and then bring that steadied avi back directly underneath the original video in Vegas. We'll use this avi later.

(2) Look at the original video. Zoom into the first flash on the timeline, and cut out the flash frame.

(3) Replace the flash frame with a copy of the previous frame.

(4) Do the same for every flash on the video.

(5) Run SteadyHand on the de-flashed video, which will now steady properly.

(6) Import the steadied avi underneath the first two videos in Vegas.

(7) Replace the individual flash frames in the third avi from the second avi directly above.


Your third avi will now be steadied, the flashes will be back in place, and hopefully those flash frames will also be steadied. In other words, I think what is happening is that the flash frames are throwing off SteadyHand, but the flash frames themselves are steadied. Or maybe not.

I don't have any footage handy to try this myself, but I think this will work.

riredale - Yeah, this is closer to what I was attempting to say . . . . I'll keep this.

Thanks,

Grazie

riredale,

Yeah, I like this too. While it requires a ton more Steadyhand rendering time, it requires a lot less of my time