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SmoothCam – slow but WOW!
Just tried my first SmoothCam filter on a very wobbly handheld shot from an aircraft, I have to say it took a while but the results were stunning!
This just paid for my FCP upgrade!
Steve Connor
Adrenalin TelevisionHave you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.
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9 Replies
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Hi Steve,
To what kind of footage did you applied it? I tried once in Shake with DV footage and the results were a bit desapointing.
Cheers,
Rafae; -
It works best on HD footage as there are more pixels to play with. Larry Jordan has a nice tutorial in Edit Well this month that covers this.
https://www.peachpit.com/promotions/promotion.asp?promo=3468&redir=1&rl=1Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com -
I have done this on broadcast stuff shot in HD. It’s absolutely fantastic. Much better than what I managed to do in Shake (however, that might be caused by my limited knowledge in shake)
Anders
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[Steve Connor] “Just tried my first SmoothCam filter on a very wobbly handheld shot from an aircraft, I have to say it took a while but the results were stunning!”
So far we have been underwhelmed by this feature as the shots we’ve attempted it on have been SD shots with text on the screen somewhere, such as a billboard or a river marker. Image just got too soft for the effect to be used.
It has potential, but not quite there for us yet.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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That’s been my experience, too.
I have noticed that if you have alot of jerkiness in the video, its useless. In my business, you have to shoot animals that can be 150 to 300 yards away and full zoom with a little breeze can get quite shaky. SmoothCam falls flat on these shots. But now, for shots that have a little shake to them, its great.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey -
Depending on the shot, Smoothcam’s great or it sucks. The other day I was stabilizing a shot from a 29 second master clip, it took over an hour in an SD timeline, it was so slow, I took the clip into AE while it was analyzing, stabilized the shot, and added a moving track matte for an enhanced sky, rendered it out and put it in my project, and the smooth cam still had a half hour to go. So much for progress. BTW the Smoothcam stabilize was okay, but I just can’t wait that long.
On shots with a lot of motion blur, it puts a horrible ghosting on some of it, which is unacceptable. Unless of course you like the effect, in which case you can say you meant to do that.
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“slow” seems to be a serious understatement. i applied the SmoothCam to a 1 minute DVCPro HD clip…and it has been analyzing since yesterday, with 36 hours left to go. it’s cool that it does this in the background and i’ve kept working mostly unencumbered and i’ll just be patient and see how well it works. are you guys experiencing these kinds of times on yours?
thanks again!
mh
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You know it’s analyzing the entire media for the shot? How long’s the media file? It shouldn’t take that long for a one minute piece of media. If you’re only doing one shot from the media file, export a QuickTime Movie, re-import it and run the analysis on that.
All the best,
Tom
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs
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doh! ya, i read that in the manual, but it didn’t strike me until YOU said it that the clip i’m analyzing is only a 1-minute sub-clip of a much longer clip! i’ll bet that will be the little bit of “Eureka” on this question.
i’ll do as you said. (see, this is why i call so many of you guys, “smarty pants”…because you are!)
thanks again!
mh
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