Video stabilization post processing.

[gammamonk]

I'm looking for a tool to take shaky video and smooth it out. I found a program called SteadyHand which had an impressive demo video, but actual results are rubbish.

Does anyone know of a nice tool? Affordable or free...

 

[P-Worm]

This is a pretty complicated thing for a program to do, and the only one I have seen that does a good job with it is Shake or After Effects. How much footage are we talking about? If it isn't too much, I may be able to do it for you. PM me if you're interested.

P-Worm

 

[bigbossbmb]

yeah, p-worm's right...I've only seen decent results from shake and AE.

moral of the story: shoot with a tripod

 

[AviationFan]

I don't have After Effects, but I agree that Shake can do a decent job. Just be aware that even Shake can't undo motion blur, so with very fast, jerky movement of the camera, the result will look stable but can be a little blurry.

- Martin

 

[ChrisA]

moral of the story: shoot with a tripod

I would tend to agree. But there I am under water
in SCUBA gear and a housed Sony DV camera. There
are other cases where a tripod is not practical. One
option is a "steady cam" type mount. Even a home
made one using iron plumbing pipe and weights. But
the SCUBA scenario has motivated me to hunt for
something that works in post.

Doen't Final Cut have an "Image Stabilize" feature?
Also there are third party plug ins that do this better.


If you want "Free" Final Cut is not that. Look at "Cinelerra". It turns out the Cinelerra has what they call a "motion tracking" effect that you can apply. It's not Mac OS X. Runs under Linux

Look at section 18.16 here
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra/cinelerra.html#SECRETS-OF-CINELERRA-EFFECTS

You could run your bouncing clips through Cinelerra and then import to iMovie and still be "free" but be warned, Cinelerra has a steepper learning curve than even FCP. It's a huge pro-level system

 

[Bibulous]

GeeThree has this for $69- link and demo page