HDV stabilization

michaelt wrote on 2/12/2008, 3:01 PM

Could anyone recommend a flow to use with VMS 8 Platinum to stabilize video (.m2t files) made with Canon HV20 ? As far as I know Sony does not have a plug-in like one of those FX effects, or does it?

I used to use SteadyHand software from www.goodervideo.com , but they support only AVI files, and it seems to me this doesn't work when I rendered m2t to avi.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Michael.

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 2/12/2008, 6:41 PM

There is BorisFX that has such a plugin, google it.

hazzardm wrote on 2/14/2008, 11:42 AM

Is the BorisFX VMS 8.0 compatible?

They only seem to reference Sony Vegas?

Eugenia wrote on 2/14/2008, 2:58 PM

90% of older plugins work on the latest Vegas versions. So why don't you try the demo?

hazzardm wrote on 2/14/2008, 6:44 PM

Due to historically poor experiences with uninstall.exe apps, I am cautious on ad-hoc installations.

Then again, my shaky hand is probably worth a 15 minute Acronis backup to give it a try.

TravelJunkie wrote on 2/15/2008, 7:59 AM

Another standalone option is to use "Deshaker" - which is a free plugin for VirtualDub. This can deliver extremely good quality results - and works fine with HDV AVI's. However, it is a slow process, and a somewhat arcane workflow!

My own workflow for deshaking HDV footage is as follows:-

1. Render the shaky clip to a Cineform (HD Intermediate) AVI using VMS 8 Platinum.
2. Load the Cineform AVI file into VirtualDub and apply DeShaker.
3. Output the newly smoothed footage to an uncompressed AVI
4. Load the uncompressed AVI back into VMS 8 and carry on with your edit

If you can lay your hands on an unrestricted copy of the Cineform codec (maybe by paying Cineform?) then you can output your de-shaken file directly from VirtualDub to a Cineform AVI instead of uncompressed. This saves a LOT of hard drive space!

Try Googling "deshaker" and you'll find some good advice and tutorials on how to install and configure the plugin...