Steady/smooth shots ...

Hello All,

I am sure most of you have tried the on-board 'smoothcam' feature in FCP. Whilst it seems good enough for some jobs, it certainly isn't for others.

Last year I was shooting out of the door of a helicopter and smoothcam worked rather well while we were crabbing along a line of aircraft, on a wide lense. This year I was doing much the same, but smoothcam just isn't helping me this time around.

I have noticed that to get a well tracked image, smoothcam expands the image until the object to be steadied sits almost in the middle of the frame, then smoothcam does it's calculations. This particular shot is now waving about all over the place and the object I was supposed to be focused on, shoots frame right and then frame left.

Would you know if there was a 'steady' plugin on the market where the user could decide if he/she could limit the 'steadiness'? This is to say, lock the vertical movement only? Or lock the horizontal? Something that isn't quite so bold?

Thanks for your time,

sp