What is your take on Smoothcame in Final Cut 7

[David Roth weiss]

The various 3rd party plugins (Lock & Load for example) are much better and much more user adjustable than Apple Smoothcam. The automatic one in FCP X is even better.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

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[Shane Ross]

Well, it doesn’t normally act like THAT! I’ve never seen it zoom in that much. Something’s wrong with it.

And you do know that Smoothcam examines ALL of the clip, not just what you use in the cut. If you have a 10 min file, and you use 15 seconds, Smoothcam analyzes the full 10 min…not just that 15 seconds. Which could be what is taking all that time, and causing this. Export out just that small section, reimport it and then apply the smoothcam.

Shane

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[Jeremy Garchow]

I feel that when smoothcam works, it works pretty damn well.

When it fails, it fails spectacularly.

To be honest, that’s a pretty tough shot. Your camera is moving in very which way.

Pan, tilt, pedestal, track. Also, when things cross in front of the camera and cover the raster, smoothcam tends to fail. Spectaculary.

Try lock and load, that has been mentioned.

[Jan Bliddal]

Hi Shane yes I have learned from painful previous experience with smooth cam that it analyzes the entire clip. The 2x 18 sec is the entire clip. I just wanted to do a testing. Hi David I think I will look into my smooth came filter to see if I have messed it up somehow. If I have I do not remember then but thanks for making me aware of the possible culprit to its bad performance.

Let the machine work for you. Not you for the machine

[Jan Bliddal]

I have learned something valuable about smooth came today. Watching the filter setting of the part analyzed by smooth came I discovered that it had zoomed in on the video by some 330% which is a lot. I thus decided to analyze the original copy again with ad 125% zoom instead. this gave a much better result and showed me why it had done the 330% zoom in the first place. Reason as some you properly could have guessed was when my daughter moved in and out of the frame. I now know that I will have to cut out sudden movements across the frame. export the part i want to analyze. reimport it into final cut and the apply smooth came. thank you all for some very valuable advice.

Let the machine work for you. Not you for the machine

[Chris Tompkins]

The new AE has a Fantastic Image stabilizer.
FWIW

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Mark Mallett]

Been playing with the stabilizers.

Mercalli has got to be the best. It is the fastest and the most stable of them all with a very simple interface.

After Effects Warp Stabilizer… well, I can’t wait all day for it to render. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but a 10 second clip takes several minutes to spit out. In fact, I gave up.

Forget the name of another one… uh… Essentials something… and it was not as good as Mercalli.

FCP X has a built-in stabilizer, and for some footage, it actually works well. What is probably best about FCP X is that it will analyze your footage as you ingest it. So you can go for a coffee while it looks at your footage. When it comes time to edit, you simply click on the Stabilizer and adjust it to taste without any further rendering to view it real-time. It’s an awesome feature. However, Stabilizer in FCP X tends to over-react by doing quick zooms in and out. Shucks. It will be a while, if ever, that Mercalli will make one for FCP X according to an email I received from one of their reps.

[Evan Showler]

In my experience with Smoothcam- Its not a fix all for amateur film making and not being able to hold a camera.
Smoothcam is merely here to make the subtle movements made by out natural human like movements even more subtle.

I use this filter periodically and have only had one or two instances in which i was not pleased with the results.

I haven’t “upgraded” to FCP X because it seems like iMovie on crack to me and I like my editing system just fine. Im running 6.06 just fine. =]

Evan Showler

“Truth 24 times a second.”