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Smooth Cam and smoothing cross dissolves
Hello everyone,
I’m working on a yoga-type video and between all my cuts I will be using cross dissolves (from 1-2 sec. long each). I need to smooth out the camera so I’ve been experimenting with different ways to do this and get my transitions to be smooth. I have a lot of clips and footage to deal with (20hrs editing to 1.5hrs). Here’s what I’ve done for my tests:1. Shake workflow – Send each clip from FCP with extra frame handles and apply SmoothCam to the clips. Brought these smoothed clips back into FCP and added my cross dissolves.
Result: Motion looks great, lost some saturation in my colors. But it took forever!
2. Shake workflow – Export my edit with cross dissolves from FCP to a self-contained Quicktime and brought that into Shake for SmoothCam.
Result: Transitions were wobbly and I had less saturated colors again. I guess Shake can’t smooth two images.
3. FCP workflow – Export my edit with cross dissolves to a self-contained Quicktime and applied FCP’s Smooth Cam.
Result: The fastest workflow with vivid colors but same problem with the wobbly transitions. FCP can’t do two images either.So how can I get smooth dissolves between my clips, nice color, without applying the Smooth Cam filter to my entire collection of footage?
Thanks!
Holly -
3 Replies
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For option #3, Smoothcam analyzes your footage pixel by pixel and I imagine it’s getting confused when you export your footage with cross dissolves as it simply doesn’t have enough information to track due to the blending of images.
What I would suggest (if you have a lot of smoothcam to do) is to media manage your final timeline and recapture your 1.5 hours as independent clips (that way all the clips are small, or much smaller). You can then apply smoothcam to each clip and after it’s done analyzing, apply a transition.
If you don’t want to go through that, then export your clips as you have them now as self contained movies WIHTOUT the transition (but you need handles), bring them back in to FCP, edit them into the timeline, apply smooth cam then add the transition.
Make sense?
Jeremy
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Thanks so much! Yes, the 3rd sounds like the best way to go. I’ll just edit down my footage and media manage it before the Smooth Cam.
I was hoping there was some magic setting I missed that could do my dissolves for me…but maybe that’ll come out with FCP 7 🙂Thanks again,
Holly -
[Holly Buechel] “I was hoping there was some magic setting I missed that could do my dissolves for me…but maybe that’ll come out with FCP 7 :)”
Nope! That engineering team is hard at work on the new iPhone espresso/gelato machine. It has much higher priority.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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