There's a program from ArcSoft that is called VideoStabilizer. I have it and tried it on a couple peices of footage. It does seem to work pretty weel, but I found it didn't work on my edit computer which runs XP although it runs fine on my online computer which also runs XP. Go figure. Their support is not the best but for $85 bucks which also got me unlimited downloads for whatever reason I might need them, it was worth it. If I use 2 times and it saves my butt, it was worth it to me. It's www.arcsoft.com.
Oh yeah, I wouldn't want to do 5 or 10 minutes thru it but for a 10-15,20 or 30 second clip, it seems to do a good job.
Don B

JM is correct. Steady Move in their demo on their website looks phenomenal - honest!

Recently I phoned Steady Move here in the UK and they told me they hadn't any plans for the futire to make a standalone version of SM OR a plugin for Vegas - hiwever there were more than aware of the "interest" shown by communications to them of the wishes by Vegas users of a plug or standalone version.

SH is good, but SM, from I see on their website, is better.

Solution? If you have an Adobe product that can use SM, research that route. However, I aint gonna buy Premmie just for that!

Cheers,

Grazie

DeShaker is excellent -- much better than Dynapel's offering, and likely on a par/better than SteadyMove -- what's more, it's FREE.

- jim

Just downloaded VD and the DeShaker. It wont capture from my device. MS Movie Maker will. Hmmm... it also "hung" my system.

Grazie

I bought SteadyMove. I never use my Premiere anymore, but needed it for the SM plug-in to work. I used it once and wasn't thrilled. Ending up not using the fooatge I was trying to salvage. So $100 for nothing.

The clips on SteadyMove's website are impressive, but keep in mine those clips are low-resolution and small in size. So it's hard to see the actual effect on the clip.

I played with the demo of SteadyHand a couple of years back and thought the parameters of what could be done were better than SM. But like the person said, they've all but abandoned the product.

DGates - Oh?! So the parameters on SH are better than SM? I don't feel so bad about SH now, and a step in the right direction. What do you mean about, "But like the person said, they've all but abandoned the product." ?

Grazie


ps. Once downloaded just HOW do you install VD .. so it wont hang a system? - Must be something I'm doing wrong.

Well, the demo of SH was in standalone form. It made the adjustments necessary easier. SM was just a plug-in for Premiere, and seemed to have a couple of options less than SH. No biggie really.

At the end of the day there is only so much ANYTHING can do with wobbly or shaky footage. Just think about it, try to see just how it could be done. Software isn't magic, the only magic is that it can make mundane tasks like creating 1000s of keyframes automatic. So just take say 10 frames of your wobbly or whatever footage and try using pan / crop to get it stable and see what the results look like.
You'll probably find you need to crop a lot and then zoom in so the shot must get softer. Then there's the motion blur that the movement of the camera added that shouldn't be there in a steady shot.


Bob.

"Software isn't magic . . " thanks Bob! . .The shades have been lifted! . . I've seen the light! . . . . .

Peace & Love

Grazie

Make sure you have the Virtual Dub that handles MPG and a standalone codec or it won't work. You absolutely must download the instruction sheet to use Deshaker.

JJK

Yeah, I know, maybe I'm being a bit harsh and maybe I'm just stating the bleeding obvious, didn't mean to offend anyone. I know sometimes s**t just happens no matter how hard we try. I've shot more dodgy footage than good stuff myself, mostly 'cause I didn't have a choice, who wants to lug a tripod when you're on hols and when you're squashed into a bus or a train there's no room for the thing anyway. Even if there was as soon as you start rigging a decent looking set of sticks you're no longer just a tourist and believe me the local cops can start to get very nervous.

But then again I've had SO much poorly shot footage from clients who could easily have shot it much better, there's not too many places on the planet where you cannot find something, even a stick will do, to keep the camera vaguely still.

Philosophical discussions aside, I've had a pretty decent go at trying to stabilise footage, both by hand hand and with a couple of the suggested tools. What I found happening was it'd probably work OK under some circumstances but I was trying to take a shot with a fair bit of vertical motion up and down and get it rock solid. Now I could get to a certain point and it looked almost there but it had this aweful jitter.

Thinking about it now this makes sense. As a horizontal edge moves up the frame it appears in alternating fields. The pan/crop tools work on frames, not fields but to make matters worse you have to zoom in on the image to compensate for the parts that are now out of frame, so the single line jitter gets enlarged to maybe a two line jitter which is starting to get nasty.
So maybe, just maybe converting to progressive first, before motion compensation is the key here. Of course if all you're trying to do is smooth it out and keep the overall pan or tilt then this mightn't be an issue. But if you were trying to remove the tilt from the shot the it could well be a big issue.
Maybe this is just wild speculation, maybe it'll give someone a clue.

Bob.

Bob - I do harsh, but in a different way - hah! - Nah roblem matey. . . .

As I progress and see some of my shots I wanna keep - also from situations that I wanna use - I just need a little "nudge" to keep it as good as I want it. Nothing NOTHING takes the place of a nicely organised dolly or tripod shot. agreed! . . It's for those "o o o h yes please if only it was slightly more steady!" shots . . . .

Grazie

Some months back I uploaded this clip which shows the effect of using SteadyHand on a walking shot. I prefer to not use the "zoom-up" feature that enlarges the image to fill the original frame, since that softens the image; instead, I just put a narrow mask over the edges to hide the moving frame edge. With keyframes one can shrink and expand the size of that mask as needed, and when done this way the mask really becomes invisible to viewers (the mask is invisible anyway when viewed on a TV, due to overscan).

A couple of quick thoughts, observations, etc. from my use of Steadyhand:

1. If you use a slow shutterspeed, then you will trade shaky footage for footage that goes in and out of focus (because when the camera moves, it blurs the image). Solution: if you know in advance you are going to stabilize, use a faster shutter speed.

2. Most people use post-stabilization as a fix for something that is unwatchable (I've used it on low-altitude aerial video taken on a bumpy ride). However, it can also be used to take very steady, but hand-held footage, and make it look like it was taken on a tripod. The results of this operation can be positively stunning. Not quite a substitute for a Steadicam, but not a bad poor-man's substitute.