This is why the big boys have special vehicles and camera mounts. There's a saddle bag gadget that I'm told works well in cars and numerous suction pad gadgets that aren't too expensive. The roof would be the worst place for a camera as that's where there's the most movement.
A trick I've learnt from a guy who shoots SERIOUS footage from a chopper for a living. A simple bungy card can sometimes work as well as the most expensive camera mounts. They hang one from the top of the door in the chopper and hook the camera onto it. The trick is to get the right tension in the 'elastic band' so the whole thing dampens out rather than oscillates.
Haven't tried it myself but it sounds like it should work and bungy cords are dirt cheap.

Other trick for a running low shot, fold a towel in two and cradle tthe camera in it while keeping the camera just above the ground. Can be very effective. You'll get a sway as you start and stop unless you accelerate slowly but you can cut that bit, you can even twist the towel to track a subject.

Bob.

If you can not use gypos, then use JJKizak's suggestion. Also using extra carpet and padding with tripod will reduce movement. I shot a 20 minute historical documentary about bidge travel on a 5 mile bridge, Mackinac Bridge, a lot of movement, high winds, and it worked fine. Do not let the camera support ride directly on the metal frame/structure of the vehicle.

I am just about to write a user guide to using Deshaker for Vegas. I have just used it extensively on footage taken this weekend and am extremely impressed. I had been using Steadyhand from Dynapel, and this beats it completely. It also has the advantage of being free. The only downside is that the interface is quite geeky, hence the need for a guide.

I agree that it is always better to start with rock-solid footage so you don't need this kind of software. However, there are three reasons to need this capability:

1. You need to "run and gun" and don't have time to set up. This was definitely the case this weekend where I was alone, shooting both still and video, of a "powderpuff" girls football game, including warmups inside the gym, and then actual play on the field. The locations kept moving, and there was no time to set up (except for the game).

2. You don't own and can't afford steadycam equipment. If you plan ahead, and do a little work, you can use this technology to "approximate" a dolly shot. You can walk with the camera, using the camera's own steadying mechanism, plus a cheap steadying device, use the Deshaker software, and end up with something that looks pretty good.

3. You have to use footage that someone else has shot. I had to do this with this same shoot. I was able to find 3-5 seconds of reasonably steady, more-or-less on-subject clips, which I then steadied.

The guide would be very welcome, especially what codecs and combinations of things. Also the media weather it is captured from digital cameras or analog tape. All the stuff I had was originally processed thru a pro lab and I don't know what they did stabilization wise. So all of my experiments were on analog and none on digital.

JJK

John,
Did you mean Deshaker for VirtualDub? or has someone cloned a plug-in for Vegas....

I have tried a few things for image stabalization

Deshaker is good, and it is a VDub plugin not a Vegas plugin. It does two passes to stabalize the image which I believe makes it incompatible with the Veags plugin architecture

I am not aware of a plugin that gives this funtionality within Vegas.

Dynapal and Steadymove are options but I have only tried them once

My favourite option is to use Boris RED outside of Vegas (After Affects also has similar functionality as well as Commotion) and then use the output file in Veags.

The last option prodcues the best results as any image stabilization software tools will get it wrong on a few frames and manual correction is often required.

Yeah, I tested some tools in the past. In my opinion VirtualDub's Deshaker beat them all. You have to take care of several settings - but the result is just great.
And - yes - because it's a 2-pass process Deshaker does not work as a Vegas plugin. Maybe one day ... ;-)

Marco

One thing I should have mentioned before and I've raised it re SloMo work, use the fastest possible shutter speed in the camera.
Even if you can find some magic solution to the movement the motion blur cannot be fixed in post, you're stuck with it. This is why so many say "but it makes the footage look blurry", well, shock, horror, it was blurry to start with, you just didn't notice it cause the blur went with the movement, removing the movement doesn't remove the MB and now you would have rather odd looking video!
Could make for an interesting FX and one I'm trying to work out how to emulate it in Vegas, I've seen it used a fair bit in TVCs.

Did you mean Deshaker for VirtualDub? or has someone cloned a plug-in for Vegas....

I wrote my initial post too quickly, and therefore it was misleading. PAW is correct that you can't use temporal plugins within Vegas (even with Wax) because Vegas cannot provide information about previous or future frames.

John,

Your documentation on deshaker sounds really good let us know when it is available

Paul

That is what I thought John...but wanted to be sure :-) Look forward to your user guide.!

One more option to consider: speed it up!

I had footage shot from the hood of my car that shook like crazy. Then I just increased the velocity to 300%, and it became an interesting high speed drive down the road; all bumps invisible due to the speed.

May not work in your case, but worth considering.

One more option to consider: speed it up!

Or, slow it down. Slow motion does wonders for shaky footage.

The Deshaker guide just got derailed, at least temporarily. My entire Word documents folder disappeared and various undelete utilities have not been able to bring it back. Never had anything like this happen before. My last backup was a week ago, so I didn't lose much, but the Deshaker guide, which was several hours of work, and almost finished, is gone. It's emotionally tough to start over, so it will be awhile before I get back to it.

You didn't do a recent system restore did you? If you did windows can remove things and put them in the "system volume information" folder. If you change the readonly attribute you can get into it and find things, but they are usually renamed.
It's worth a shot to look into it.

You didn't do a recent system restore did you? If you did windows can remove things and put them in the "system volume information" folder. If you change the readonly attribute you can get into it and find things, but they are usually renamed.

Yes I did. However, my documents drive (D:) is never included in the System Restore, only my C: drive. However, I'll poke around and see whether I can find anything.