SmoothCam Glitch

Heybob-

Haven't tried this but maybe you could replace the offending frame ( video only, not audio ) with a duplicate of the prior or next frame. You might have to nest that part of the sequence and export to Quicktime and replace in timeline to analyze. Don't know if it will work... but it might.

Hope this helps - Joan

I would experiment with the sensitivity and amount of stabilization and see if you can find a happy medium that does not freak out with the flashes.

One thing about the smoothcam which you are probably familiar with is that it needs to analyze all the media of a clip to apply the smoothcam, not just what is between your in & out. If you wanted to speed up your testing process, you may want to export a very short self-contained movie to re-import for your tests.

If flashes are the cause then I wonder if this would work?
Blade the offending areas of your clips in the timeline.
Make copies of those offending flashes and place them in V2
Reduce the white levels on all the flashes so they are no longer offensive.
I know Smoothcam ignores filters, so export the offending pieces as self-contained QT files
Bring them back in and run Smoothcam on them.
Edit them back into the project. I wish I had FCP6 and I would have tried it first, but it's just a thought.

taken from nattress.com ----

I videoed a concert and there's lots of camera flashes that are distracting and I'd like to remove them

G Deflash from Set 1 will automatically remove flash frames that appear in a video by removing the frame they occur on

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I have the nattress set 1 plugin but I am in the middle of system maintenance and installing studio 2. If I get a chance I will test out your problem, with the deFlash filter unless you try it and post back first. Good luck.

Matthew,

If you test this remember that smoothcam ignores filters so you will need to export it bring it back in and see if the problem persists on the new file

I have played around with this a bit, but the smoothcam filter seems to be working fine for me. I tried it on a shot of a couple walking in at a reception with a lot of flashes going off. The camera follows behind the couple and it looked solid. I was using 6.0.1 with the recent pro apps update.

Hey Heybob,

Smoothcam definitely has its quirks, and it handles every video clip differently. In your particular situation, it's just the nature of the visual elements. The dude is wearing a white tux, and when camera flashes go off, the woman's dress (and everything else) becomes a large white shape as well, and Smoothcam doesn't recognize them as the same two figures.

I've encountered similar situations with tracking shots, where a car or a person goes right in front of the lens. In those situations, there's nothing you can do to "reprogram" Smoothcam... you just have to razor blade at the beginning and end of the offending moment, and blend as best you can.

So you can try that with your clip, but from the looks of it, that particular shot doesn't need stabilization anyway.

I think we can all agree that Smoothcam is not a cure-all, but it's a tool in the toolbox to make the end product a little bit better.