Glenn Gipson
February 12th, 2004, 05:59 AM
http://www.steadymove.com/default.htm
View Full Version : Steady Move...anyone use it? Glenn Gipson February 12th, 2004, 05:59 AM http://www.steadymove.com/default.htm Rob Lohman February 12th, 2004, 06:10 AM 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. Glenn Gipson February 12th, 2004, 07:24 AM Ahh, I knew there had to be a catch. Glenn Gipson February 12th, 2004, 09:08 AM 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... Glenn Gipson February 12th, 2004, 10:07 AM Found a review http://videosystems.com/ar/video_steadymove_pro/ Rob Lohman February 12th, 2004, 11:45 AM 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 (http://2d3.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/2d3.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_lva=&p_faqid=622) Glenn Gipson February 12th, 2004, 02:13 PM Thanks Rob...now I have to wait till I get my NLE... David Mintzer February 12th, 2004, 02:50 PM Check out steady hand by Dynapel--its as good as steady move and it doesn't require Premiere to run Paul Tauger February 12th, 2004, 06:28 PM 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. Glenn Gipson February 12th, 2004, 06:58 PM That would be great Paul, looking forward to your evaluation. Dave Largent February 12th, 2004, 11:36 PM 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. Dave Largent February 16th, 2004, 01:08 AM 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. Martin Munthe March 20th, 2004, 10:48 AM 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. Rich Lee March 22nd, 2004, 08:37 PM 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. Dave Largent March 23rd, 2004, 01:36 AM 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. Charles Papert March 23rd, 2004, 02:13 AM Naturally Dave, you have no need for this sort of software now that you own a camera stabilizer...right???! Dave Largent March 23rd, 2004, 02:55 AM 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. Martin Munthe March 23rd, 2004, 04:34 AM 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). Charles Papert March 23rd, 2004, 11:09 AM ouch, sorry to hear about your back order issues Dave. That's not good. Dave Largent March 26th, 2004, 02:16 PM 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. Rich Lee March 26th, 2004, 02:21 PM 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 Dave Largent March 27th, 2004, 01:56 PM 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. Jean-Philippe Archibald March 27th, 2004, 03:06 PM Dave, I could host thoses clips for you, just email me! Dave Largent March 27th, 2004, 03:22 PM 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? Rich Lee March 27th, 2004, 08:01 PM Yeah, when they are on the ftp site, just email me and i will snag them, and mess around, and upload the results. |