Steady Move...anyone use it?
 

Keep in mind that any software that stabilizes footage needs to
zoom in (basically) depending on how much the shake is to
be able to stabilize it. In this process you are going to loose
resolution due to this process. Just so that you know.

Ahh, I knew there had to be a catch.

Of course...the company claims the following..

"You should not notice a loss of quality with any type of footage." I guess I may have to buy it, just to try it (they don't have a demo version.) Unless someone else has already tried it...

Found a review

http://videosystems.com/ar/video_steadymove_pro/

Seems to be a decent plugin. Only works on Premiere / After
Effects and Combustion though. It normally requires to zoom in
and the reviewer noticed the footage getting softer with this
(normal behaviour). It also seemed like you had the option to
not zoom in, that's interesting although might not always be
useful.

The reviewer claims there is a demo version of the product
included with Premiere Pro. So if you have that you can at
least check it out before you buy it. 2d3 has some other nice
products as well.

You can actually download a demo it seems. From the 2d3
site. Follow this link

Thanks Rob...now I have to wait till I get my NLE...

Check out steady hand by Dynapel--its as good as steady move and it doesn't require Premiere to run

I have Steadyhand by Dynapel, and it's pretty good -- as others have mentioned, it works by zooming in, or cropping.

Steadymove is interesting, though. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but it seems to work by time transposition, i.e. taking elements from one frame that go missing in the next due to shake. If I'm right about how it works, the result would, indeed, be no-resolution-loss stabilization and is a pretty clever solution to mild shaking.

I probably won't be able to play with it for a few days, but I'll report back when I've done some more experiments. I need to look at the stabilized footage frame-by-frame.

That would be great Paul, looking forward to your evaluation.

I used Steady Hand extensively on a recent project.
First off you should know that rendering takes
quite awhile. One hour of footage takes about
24 hours.
So after about 3 straight days of rendering
I got to take a look at the results.
My footage had people in it. It looked okay
on the monitor but when I viewed it full
size on a TV, the faces were distorted
with small blockiness, and the
hit to resolution was high enough, that I had to
trash the whole Steady Hand footage.
*Maybe* if there weren't people. *Maybe*
in some other situation. If I get any other
impressions, I'll get back.

In all fairness, I should add that the footage that I
Steadyhanded was deinterlaced, so there was a
good loss of resolution to begin with, prior to
the Steadyhand. Perhaps on
interlaced footage things would be different.
There are different settings in Steadyhand
for if your footage is interlaced or not.

The SteadyMove plugin from 2D3 included in PPro is the "lite" version. It can be upgraded to Pro with a lot more features. 2D3 is an extremely impressive company. Some of the stuff they are doing is mindboggeling. I haven't tried the Pro version but the Lite version can produce pretty impressive results.

SteadyMove is awesome...i've only messed around with it, but it seems to do wonders. The more wobbly the footage, the more it has to zoom to correct it, although, you can adjust the amount it zooms. you can also tell it to not zoom at all, and you will see the corners of the image bounce around the frame, which is kinda neat in itself. i recommend giving the demo a shot.

SteadyHand is the same way, though with only one
zoom setting. It gets the "moving around
black borders", too.
Any y'all ever see what happens when one
of these -- atleast the SteadyHand -- has to
deal with a photographer's flash? Pretty
crazy. Spinning images. Upside-down images.
Really throws these programs for a loop.

Naturally Dave, you have no need for this sort of software now that you own a camera stabilizer...right???!

Good memory, Charles.
I wish I could say it were true. Unfortunately
there has been an unexpected production
delay. I have paid for it, but after some time
had passed I inquired on the status and was
informed of this delay. No ETA at this
point.
I didn't think you'd catch me with
my hand in the steady software
cookie jar over in this forum. : - ))
Must say that this software is far from
a substitute. A fair amount of artifacting
is involved. Straight-on moving-ahead
shots aren't bad. But panning shots on the
other hand ....
And all shots take a resolution hit.

A SteadyMove type job is really just a reverse track and it can be usefull to know that 2D3 does the best tracker technology available to buy commercially in this world (out side of what's beeing done in the Israeli air force R&D).

ouch, sorry to hear about your back order issues Dave. That's not good.

For what it's worth, I just edited a two-cam shoot
where one of the cams was SteadyHanded.
Looked so-so in the editing suite, but viewed on
a TV the SH footage just wouldn't fly so we had
to go with the shots from just the one cam, even
though the "content" of the other cam was better.
The SH footage looked all wavy, as if it were
being viewed through a window
with rain running over the pane, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, Charles, you know I'll be back with
commentary on the rig, once it gets in.

It would be interesting to see how SteadyMove worked with your shot. Anyway of testing it? I'd be willing to run it through steadymove it u wanted to put a bit of your shot on an ftp site.

Let me know

Rich, SteadyMove is Mac only, right?
I have about three 15-second segments that could
use some stability. Two were tele shots zoomed from
a distance, and one is where the cam itself is
"flying". It would be good if we could post the
before and after, comparing both the SteadyHand
and SteadyMove programs. Anyone know how we
could work this out? I don't have a place to
post but I could provide the original clips
and the SteadyHand-processed "after"
clips.

Dave, I could host thoses clips for you, just email me!

Jean-Philippe,
That would be nice. Do you have an interest in
these steady programs or are you just helping
out? Do you have any idea what is the maximum
file size you can get by email?
And Rich, are you game? What is your max file
size for email.
I guess I'd mail the originals and the SteadyHanded
clips to Jean-Philippe. Then I'd send Rich the
originals, he could run them through SteadyMove
and email that to Jean-Philippe.
How's that sound?

Yeah, when they are on the ftp site, just email me and i will snag them, and mess around, and upload the results.