Quite!

It's a shame they don't provide any video examples.

If they did, I couldn't find them.

John & Jay,
you can download fully functional trial versions of all their plugins which is probably a better way to evaluate them than a marketing demo video from my experience. Unfortunately to use it you'd need a copy of AE or FCP. While you can also download a trial copy of AE it'd only be CS4 and that plug might not yet run under CS4.

If you want to buy these kinds of plugins toolfarm.com has them at a slight discount and from time to time at a big discount.

Bob.

Yeah, video examples would be appreciated.
I wonder how they can take the center frame and stabilize it with still having the sky that's non-existant during that shake..? and without cropping..?

you can download fully functional trial versions of all their plugins which is probably a better way to evaluate them than a marketing demo video from my experience. Unfortunately to use it you'd need a copy of AE or FCPWell, if every day had 25 hours, I might have the time for that ...

There's really not much point to "de-shaker" plug-in for CS4, since AE CS4 comes with Imagineer's Mocha motion tracking built-in. The addition of Mocha is one of few truly worthwhile improvements made to CS4, over CS3.

http://www.imagineersystems.com/products/mocha-AE/Mocha_image_stabilization.mp4

>>...and without cropping..?

I have never seen any stabilization software that does not crop to one extent or another.

I have never seen any stabilization software that does not crop to one extent or another.I guess it depends on your definition of "crop," but the free Deshaker plugin does synthesize video at the edges by grabbing stuff from adjacent frames. Thus, if you start with 720x480 or 1440x1080, you do NOT have to crop down to 700x460 and then re-scale upward. While the software does fail sometimes to produce good video at the edges, it succeeds -- and succeeds VERY well -- for about 90% of the events I stabilize.

As for CS4 having this built-in, my response is: "of course!" There are several "fixes" that virtually ALL event videographers have to do with their video in post:

color correct (Vegas has this);
levels adjustments (Vegas has this);
titles (Vegas has this)
noise reduction for low light (Vegas does NOT have this and provides poor support for temporal de-noising plugins)
motion stabilization (Vegas does NOT have this)

I'm still hoping that someone who DOES have the Adobe products can report as to whether this software is any good, and how the motion stabilization compares to Mercali or Deshaker, and how the noise reduction compares to Neat, the Mike Crash implementation of the VirtualDub filter, or other noise reduction techniques.

"I'm still hoping that someone who DOES have the Adobe products can report as to whether this software is any good"

"Well, if every day had 25 hours, I might have the time for that ... "

I'll try to squeeze it in.
One thing I've learned the hard way is in general you need to invest a lot of time in AE and many of the 3rd party plugins. Some of the Red Giant plugs do only provide much the same functionality as you could do anyway in AE however they can save you a lot of time or provide greater finesse.

Bob.

Nirvana at last so I don't need to find that 25th hour, Examples here:

http://www.toolfarm.com/plugins/index.php/Red_Giant_Magic_Bullet_Steady

The Toolfarm Red Giant forum might also be a good place to look for user comments.

Bob.

Bob, thanks for the link. For the motion stabilization, that was exactly what I was looking for.

I didn't think the results were all that impressive, especially given that it is demo footage and therefore should be something that shows off the technology to best advantage.

While I haven't used Mercalli myself, the demo of their stuff looks a lot better.

Now all we have to do is find a similar page that shows the noise reduction ...