Ouch. Suppose I could keep Premier Pro and Steady Move installed just for that.

Actually, I should get a heavier camera to shoot with. These little JVC 520U are so light that the slightest move causes massive shakes.

No, and that's a bummer. These tools are usually found in plug-ins or compositing software such as Boris RED, After Effects and Digital Fusion or in stand alones as Steady Move. Since Vegas have some compositing possibilities I've already suggested to Sony to implement this function. We'll see if they've listened come the V5 release.

I've never tried to stabilize footage in Vegas. But in theory, you could experiment with zooming in a bit, step forward frame by frame and move the frame around using track motion or pan/crop and use the grid in the preview window as a guide. Very time consuming and probably not so good results.
Best/Tommy

BTW - NEVER zoom in without a tripod. Slam on a wide angle lens if possible.

There is a 3rd party stand alone app called 'steadyhand' that works on DV footage, made by a company called Dynapel (probably www.dynapel.com)

I have used both Steady Hand and I believe it is steady move which uses Virtual Dub. They do help a lot but if overused tend to jiggle the focus around and if you are letterboxing you are pretty much out of luck as the picture will move up and down with the corrections or back and forth. There is always something that gets compromized.

JJK

As the other posters are probably thinking, the best steady-shot strategy is to shoot everything you possibly can on a fluid-head tripod, and for handheld, use some version of the Steadicam type equipment. There's a variety of sites on home-made steadicam systems.

By the way, at my daughter's wedding a few years back, I wanted a high-angle shot during a dance segment, so I folded the tripod legs together into a single "pole" and raised the camera overhead--surprisingly steady footage (the fold-out view screen angles down so that's how I could still frame the shot--a poor man's crane shot).

Which reminds me of one other thing about lightweight camcorders--you may already know this-but it doesn't really hurt resolution to switch on the auto-steadyhand function on camcorders (assuming you're not shooting for Sundance) for hand-held shots. However, switch it OFF when it's on the tripod or you may get a strange vibration in the stationary picture.

>Yes you can do it in Vegas, but it will take you a very long time to keyframe everything out.

FWIW, there are times where this is a suitable approach and gets better results than using a plugin. For example, I have some footage of bald eagles circling and fishing. I had my tripod and I tracked pretty well, but I was in full zoom and the birds don't just fly in a straight line:-) Sub-zero degF didn't help. The important point was that I had zero rapid oscillations (which the plugins handle well) but many "swings" and "jerks". The plugins did not handle this well at all. Plus, I would have had to specify the "truncated frame size" very small, i.e., losing resolution and detail when re-expanded, which was unnecessary for the majority of the clip. (Yes, you can split the clip and use different plugin settings for each sub-clip, but good luck getting them smoothly back together.)

I fixed it with manual keyframes. I thought I was in for many painful hours, but it turned into many fun hours. Basically I would start with a frame and eyeball a feature of the bird on the screen (a stickee on the screen may help), then I would step forward until the feature moved substantially. Then simply select the frame and move it back to the stickee. Very fast process. Repeat to the end of the clip, then start over and add additional keyframes as desired. Make sure all keyframes are smooth. After this is complete, go back and reduce the size of the frame so that the picture is re-enlarged to fit. You probably will have to add keyframes and/or adjust the transition to ensure all the edges remain outside the safe area. This is a much slower process.

It was actually great fun - my first bald eagles so I enjoyed watching it all over and over and over again in slo mo:-)

The big problem is enlarging the result to refill the screen, which is where you lose your hard won detail. Rendering in BEST mode, plus careful sharpening (convolution filter, not the sharpen filter, keyframe to coincide with the amount of enlargement) helps. I believe Vegas beats the plugin competition handily here.

Bottom line was I was able to vastly out-perform the Dynapels et al.

Naturally, this approach isn't going to be practical for rapid oscillations.

Excellent explanation RMD! Thanks . .I can see you with your sticky, moving the film about .. great image . .

Tell me, instead of enlarging the film to "fill" the frame . .what would happen if you kinda placed the same footage - unsteadied - "behind" the steadied stuf? Like about a few pixels? With the edge or border "softened a bit? Would this be acceptable? This would mean not needing to "enlarge" and therefore loose the detail you had fought for - yeah? Or you could place an enlarged "copy" of the steadied stuff behind the steadied stuff . . .. Just a thought .. .

Grazie

Inside Vegas there is no comfortable way to do that job. I use VirtualDub Deshaker plugin to do it. It's for free and I find it way better in the results than Dynapel products.

Marco

Marco, you got a web link for that?

J--

http://biphome.spray.se/gunnart/video/deshaker.htm

Beware this is a VD plugin that needs 2-pass processing. So this one CANNOT be used inside Vegas through the VD-plugin.

Marco

RMD: and I'd add, having done the same thing before, that using the Grid on Preview window is very helpful sometimes to put things really straight in the picture. Just being able to fade it a little down would be great but it's not that big an issue.
Just a $0.02 complementray blah-blah to your post... ; )