Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy Stabilizing footage that isn’t shaky?

  • Stabilizing footage that isn’t shaky?

    Posted by Harry Powell on October 30, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    I’ve tried searching the archive but without success ..

    I’d like to eliminate a camera shift. SmoothCam is impressive with camera shake but doesn’t work for this. There is no shake, just a slow slight re-adjustment I did while filming (on a tripod). I’d like to tell FCP (or Motion if absolutely necessary) to anchor on a particular stationary object in the frame, and adjust the rest of the frame accordingly.

    Any ideas preferably within FCP, as I really don’t know Motion well (but intend to take time-out to learn it properly at some point)?

    Bj Ahlen replied 15 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Michael Gissing

    October 30, 2010 at 11:10 pm

    What you need is tracking, not stabilising. Time to learn a bit more about the power of Motion.

    You can zoom in and do it manually in FCP with keyframes, but Motion or After Effects are much better designed for this.

  • Bj Ahlen

    October 31, 2010 at 1:53 am

    In editing a documentary, I got a 120 degree wide panning shot where someone had kicked the tripod right in the middle of the pan.

    The camera dropped about 20 degrees, and I didn’t have enough “air” to do tracking. The client was devastated, because the shot was just unusable, and it was an important part of the story.

    I solved it in less than a minute by inserting a lens flare in the trailing corner at the exact moment the camera dropped.

    This was enough to distract the eye, and when I showed the clip again with this fix, nobody saw anything wrong with the shot.

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy