SmoothCam help
 

Hey everyone,

I want to apply the smoothcam effect to a 15 second clip but the analyzing time says 16 hours. I think it's analyzing the whole clip which is a 1 hour continous shot (from a wedding) I've seen the feature "make independent clip" would this work and how do you apply this feature? Thanks in advance for any help.

Darryl Murphy

What system? Settings?

Smooth cam takes a looooong time. As long as you apply the filter onto a clip in your sequence, you should be doing it correctly.

Darryl, you need to export the 15 second clip as a new quicktime movie, import it, and apply smoothcam to that shorter clip.

When you drop smoothcam on clip the plugin needs to analyze the entire clip in order to do its job. It doesn't care that you only want to smooth a short portion.

Here's a slightly longer workflow that improves on what the workflow above will give you. The problem with smoothcam is that it assumes you want a clip to start and end relatively static. The result is the motion seems to accelerate at the start and decelerate at the end of the clip once smoothcam has been applied.

The solution is to do the same as above, but add a "handle" of about half a second at the start and end. Then once smoothcam analysis is done, tweak the parameters of the filter to your taste. Then export this clip as yet another clip, and re-import this new clip. Set the in- and out-points to match the original clip.

For this workflow it helps to work in a lossless codec - I wouldn't recommend it for, say, HDV.

Find a friend who owns Motion, and use that instead! SmoothCam is horrible, both in result and in time required.

Thanks guys, I'll try it right away.

Darryl