FCP6 Smoothcam question? at DVinfo.net

Dom Stevenson · July 30th, 2007, 04:48 PM

I had a nice little 2 second clip of a couple of doves sitting on a roof (shot on my Canon XHA1 in HDV1080). Unfortunately it was a wee bit wobbly (delerium tremens perhaps?) so knowing that the master clip was huge, i did an export of the 2 secs as a self contained quicktime movie and imported to the browser and onto the Timeline . I then added the smoothcam filter and analyed quickly and efficiently. It rendered No Problem, except playback now gives me a massively zoomed in tilt of one of the doves from its toes to its head! Oh Dear.
I tried another clip from the same sequence (2 doves again) and followed the same procedure.
this time the clip seems to be identical to the source clip with no judders affected whatsoever.
I've had great results with this filter before, what could i be doing wrong now?
Thanks for your time,
Dom

Bill Davis · July 30th, 2007, 09:57 PM

Dom,

The way I understand smoothcam works is that it does a "motion analysis" of the whole clip looking for the GREATEST deviation from it's steady state. Then it blows the whole clip up and moves the clip around to keep the clip appearing steady.

If the clip section you selected has single a severe jerk or wobble anywhere in the entire clip, then it has to enlarge the whole clip enough to make that BIG deviation repairable.

If an other clip doesn't have the same "big jerk" in it - it can apply less enlargement to make the smoothcam application more subtle.

Go back to the heavily enlarged clip, drop it on your FCP timeline and shrink the clip size to 50% in the motion tab. In the wirframe view - you can then watch how the smoothcam is tracking the motion and where the greatest deviation occurs.

Fun to watch.

July 30th, 2007, 04:48 PM	#1
Dom Stevenson Major Player Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: London UK Posts: 430	FCP6 Smoothcam question? I had a nice little 2 second clip of a couple of doves sitting on a roof (shot on my Canon XHA1 in HDV1080). Unfortunately it was a wee bit wobbly (delerium tremens perhaps?) so knowing that the master clip was huge, i did an export of the 2 secs as a self contained quicktime movie and imported to the browser and onto the Timeline . I then added the smoothcam filter and analyed quickly and efficiently. It rendered No Problem, except playback now gives me a massively zoomed in tilt of one of the doves from its toes to its head! Oh Dear. I tried another clip from the same sequence (2 doves again) and followed the same procedure. this time the clip seems to be identical to the source clip with no judders affected whatsoever. I've had great results with this filter before, what could i be doing wrong now? Thanks for your time, Dom

July 30th, 2007, 09:57 PM	#2
Bill Davis Trustee Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Scottsdale, AZ 85260 Posts: 1,538	Dom, The way I understand smoothcam works is that it does a "motion analysis" of the whole clip looking for the GREATEST deviation from it's steady state. Then it blows the whole clip up and moves the clip around to keep the clip appearing steady. If the clip section you selected has single a severe jerk or wobble anywhere in the entire clip, then it has to enlarge the whole clip enough to make that BIG deviation repairable. If an other clip doesn't have the same "big jerk" in it - it can apply less enlargement to make the smoothcam application more subtle. Go back to the heavily enlarged clip, drop it on your FCP timeline and shrink the clip size to 50% in the motion tab. In the wirframe view - you can then watch how the smoothcam is tracking the motion and where the greatest deviation occurs. Fun to watch.