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keyframing motion stabilizer
I’ve found motion stabilization indispensable in the work that I do and with the kinds of shooting situations I find myself in.
I’ve tried many – smoothcam in FCP7, NAtive AE stabilizer, Lock and Load, and now the different flavors of smoothcam in FCPX – they all have their strengths and one doesn’t know which will work best until applying the stabilizer.
It turns out the FCPX automatic smoothcam works best for this one passage in what is an otherwise stabilized shot (done with a Ronin) – it handles a ronin flub brilliantly, but then later on flubs a superb ronin move.
It doesn’t seem like I can keyframe the stabilizer, so that it is off for the end of the shot. I’m also having difficulty matching shots and doing it manually in AE. Does the new motion allow for keyframing motion stabilizers ? any other thoughts welcome.
FCPX 10.2.1
OSX 10.10.3 -
5 Replies
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You can’t keyframe the smoothing amount directly in Motion, but it’s easy to just rig the controls to a slider and keyframe that. takes less than a minute.
You can also convert the finished stabilization to keyframes and edit them directly (CMD+K). -
Thanks for that response Marco. I can convert the stabilization to keyframes in motion or FCPX ? And while the slider concept seems totally doable, would you be able to point me to a URL that explains it in detail ?
Working with FCP since 1999 and I feel like an idiot with FCPX – its like learning to write with my other hand.
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I meant Motion. Here’s a short video where I just link two controls to another slider, which is keyframeable. https://youtu.be/1FZNKJ6sgAs That’s just a workaround because the smoothing controls are not keyframeable for whatever reason.
You could also edit the generated transform-keyframes directly after applying them to the clip.
The Motion manual describes rigging and the tracking behaviors really well: https://help.apple.com/motion/mac/5.0/en/motion/usermanual/index.html
I’d recommend watching a few tutorials to get you started in FCPX and Motion. I like the ripple training tutorials.
https://www.rippletraining.com/categories/motion/
https://www.rippletraining.com/categories/final-cut-pro/ -
Many thanks Marco ! Gonna give that a try tonight.
Best – Michael O
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Marco – thanks for the video – I can get it too work (that is I see the values changing when I play back) but the diminished FPS playback (even if my frame size is 12% of the original) does not allow me to judge whether the effect is appropriate – I know motion is supposed to be an app where you don’t render, but maybe I am doing something wrong ? I see there is a RAM preview like in AE, and it seems to render the frames but does not playback.
Also thanks for the URL’s to learning resources – I am going to have to stick with lynda.com since I get access to that free through my work.
Michael
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