Any kind of software solution you might try to mimic steadicam moves with a handheld camera is never a substitute for the real thing, especially for longer shots,like following the couple during their first entrance into the venue, or circling them during the first dance.

It works great for me, haha.

Now this is a true steadicam hero!!! a 96 minute feature film shot in one steadicam take (apparently)

Trailer: "Russian Ark" - YouTube

Pete

It works great for me, haha.

You have made me curious, can you show such a fake gildecam shot stabilized in AE?

You have made me curious, can you show such a fake gildecam shot stabilized in AE?

I don't have any of my shots online, but here's an example of what it's capable of. With the right tweaking it can be really great.

Adobe After Effects CS5.5 Warp Stabilizer Test - Canon 550D on Vimeo

Edius has a build in stabilizer which works great to filter out micro shakes but in case of removing larger shakes it deforms the image in the process, it's hard to explain but you see the background "twist".

AE seems to be doing a much better job but I still see the image "twisting" but not so noticeable, you do get some resolution loss as it needs to zoom in on the image to have correction space. I have seen some stabilizing tutorials on Andrew Kramer's video co-pilot site and eventhough the results are great it seems a very time consuming job, Also the example you gave is a basic move with no pan or tilt changes but I'd like to see how a shot would look like following the couple during their first entrance while they are making constant direction changes, I can imagine that would take a lot of time getting that right.

With a steadicam you just shoot, slam it on the timeline and get on with the editing :)

Anyone thought about using one of the MOVI type devices? Obviously the MOVI is expensive, but there are cheaper alternatives and the prices will probably continue to come down. May be a nice way to get smooth shots.

the warp thing is handy to have ok, only downside to it is it wont allow you to change it to slomo or anything, so you'd have to render it off and re-import it if you wanted to add anything else on it.