Fixing Camera Bobbles

Let's say you have some footage that's supposed to be a lock-off but somewhere during the filming the camera gets nudged, or bumped or slowly drifts due to a loose lockdown or a sleepy operator.

If it's a short clip and you can't really use smoothcam or some other image stabilization software due to them digitally zooming in I'll do this:

1. Download and install the plugin "DH Grid" from here.
2. Layer that atop the less-than-smooth footage.
3. Resize and reposition the DH Grid overlay so it's grid aligns with a portion of the image that you want to stay where it is.
4. Set a Center keyframe in the Motion tab of the clip.
5. Now using the JKL keys, advance frame-by-frame (or small groups of frames) and Nudge the footage up, down, left and right as needed using the grid to keep it in place.

One great way to do this is to use the little known Nudge key commands in FCP: Option + Arrow Keys. It'll help if you have the Canvas set to Image + Wireframe and you must have the clip you're nudging highlighted in the Timeline.

If you want to nudge a really really tiny amount use Command + Option + Arrow Keys. Depending on how zoomed in you are -or aren't- in the Canvas you may need to zoom in to see these tiny adjustments.

6. Each time you nudge the clip on a particular frame you'll automatically set a keyframe.

7. Render and see how badly you messed up :)  Don't worry, it's hard to get it right the first time. And the human eye/mind is so used to seeing movement that is natural, that unnatural movement will seem quite obvious.

Scoot back to the problem frames and adjust them as needed, render, wash, rinse and repeat.

Be aware though that if you've fixed a particularly nasty bobble, you're first inclination after making all these keyframes is to zoom the clip or reposition it (since the bottom or sides or top may be cut off).

DON'T.

If you move the clip now you'll set another Center keyframe and mess things up.

Instead, use this little-known key command: Hold Command + Shift and move the clip in the Canvas. Command + Shift will move the clip AND THE KEYFRAMES en masse without setting any new keyframes. Nifty, eh?

8mm Distress Kit goes HD

Back in 2009 (remember 2009? Your iPhone wasn't quite 3 years old yet and Slovakia just adopted the Euro) I reviewed a pretty spiffy piece of kit called the 8mm Distress Kit. Back then in the before-time™ it was in SD.

But, now, in the future world of today when your iPhone 4S shoots 1080HD footage the kit's gone Hi-Def, and only for a modest increase in price. What was then in then dollars was $35, is today, in today's dollars only $59.

In the virtual box you'll get 2 files which contain 28 clips sized at 1440x1080 running at 29.97 or 25fps if you swing that way.

The crazy thing is that this comes at the perfect time for me for a documentary that I've been working on for the past 86 years (well, it feels like 86 but if you want to get down to brass tacks, it's technically closer to 85) which involves super-8 footage and I wanted something to help me obtain some visual interest with some bland-talking-head interviews I've been handed which run the gamut from HD all the way down to SD DV tapes to even some (hold on to something) Flip footage. *gasp*

I think Mediapreview.net's HD 8mm Distress Kit is not only going to help make the documentary look like it cost more but I'll be able to invoice for more since it looks like it costs more which will make it cost more so it's all honest that way.

Check it out, give it a spin; there are some samples to play around with, a nifty little tutorial and more on their site. And with film going away, but people still having an intense interest in it's qualities (look at Instagram, lomography, me taking well over 11,000 photos with my nearly 8 year old cell phone just because they look "lo-fi" and cool), and the feature film Super-8, it looks like the super-8 look as well as the clean-slate innocence of that bygone time which accompanies it won't be forgotten soon.

It's funny; my assistant has never shot or touched film, never placed a needle on a phonograph record and has only seen 8-tracks on tv. He's never used a pay-phone or adjusted rabbit-ear antennas, either.

But there is something that speaks to us visually through the ages with film; there's a strange personal investment -or perhaps connection is a better word- in it when we see something shot on film, especially older formats like 8mm, super-8 and 9.5mm (look it up). There's some manner of ephemeral hypotactic permanence with it that digital just can't obtain. Sure digital is beautiful, the future and in many many ways better than film but the tangible hic et nunc of it is difficult for our minds to grasp; you have a pocketful of little digital cards or "files" tucked away in the dark recesses of a hard drive, unlike film where you can simultaneously see and hold history and memories and movement literally right in your hands...without needing any batteries.

Maybe it's the analog simplicity of it that encourages us to capture (and indeed slow down and notice) the simple things in life, and for that matter life itself. But then again, I'm old and have an 8 year old cell phone.

Give the kit a whirl and see how it changes the flavor of your footage, not just stylistically, but perceptually. To me it gifts digital footage with an import that it otherwise doesn't have. That's the language of film at work; that's why tilt-shifted footage looks miniature and in my mind and for my money, adding effects like what's in the distress kit makes footage as large as life.

DVCHDPROAudio.plugin Console Error

I'm sure you've seen it if you've ever launched your Console and looked at All Messages. Something like:

8/8/11 12:50:03 AM Mail[212] Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio:  dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio, 262): no suitable image found.  Did find:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: no matching architecture in universal wrapper

You'll see it for VLC, Mail, loginwindow, SustemUIServer, UserEventAgent and a bunch of other stuff.

You don't need it. Or at the very least, it's highly unlikely you'll need it.

So what to do? Since Apple has never really clarified what's going on here and it's a LONG STANDING bug/error/incompatibility and older versions can't even load on Intel machines (there is a universal version from 2007 of the plugin) I went to where it was, zipped it, trashed the original and left the zip file sitting there.

It's located in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL

What is this thing anyway, you ask?

I think it's a USB driver for 1:1 audio connections that apps like Reason, Audacity, Cubase and Logic use; or at least used to.

If you want to poke around the file you can take a look at it in the Terminal: copy and paste in:

ls -IR /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin

and you'll see some helpful-ish information:


drwxrwxr-x  6 root  admin  204 Apr 20  2007 Contents


/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents:
total 24
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin  1258 Mar 30  2007 Info.plist
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Apr 20  2007 MacOS
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin     9 Mar 30  2007 PkgInfo
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin   514 Apr 20  2007 version.plist


/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS:
total 2456
-rwxrwxr-x  1 root  admin  1254748 Mar 30  2007 DVCPROHDAudio

So it's not a permission's issue.

Then you can try: (again, copy and paste into the Terminal)

file /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio

and you'll see some slightly more helpful things like:

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio (for architecture ppc): Mach-O bundle ppc

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio (for architecture i386): Mach-O bundle i386

So, hey, at least the version you may or may not have is Universal.

And you can even right-click on it and Show Package Contents and dig around. You can open the DVCPROHDAudio file in Contents/MacOS with something like Hex Fiend and confirm that it's an audio driver for some obscure and some fairly outdated stuff.

Bottom line is you'll know if you need it. If you don't know, then you don't need it and likely never will. For my system it seems okay to zip the original package in the HAL folder and trash the original plug-in. This way it won't load (because it's not a .plugin file) and should the occasion arise when you do need it, just double click it to unzip it right where it needs to be.

Lock & Load Stabilizer

A new stabilizer called "Lock & Load" was updated to 1.0.4 today. It purports to be the world's fastest and more intelligent than SmoothCam, the free stabilizer that comes with FCP, but Lock & Load is $149.00. There's a video of it in action and a free 15 day trial (with water mark) here.

I haven't tried it yet. If I do I'll report back here. It may be fun to run a comparison of the two on the same footage.

Boosting Audio Levels

If you've received an audio file like a Voice Over that's just too low to really use and cranking it up to max level in the timeline (Control + ] (right bracket)) doesn't do it, and even doubling up the audio in the timeline doesn't bring the volume up enough you can use a plug-in.

Head over to Audio Filter > Apple > AUMultibandCompressor. At the top you'll see post-gain, ratchet that up in very small increments and check your audio level. Keep an eye on your peak meters and you should be able to get some usable volume out of what was previously an unusable audio clip.

Be careful though, this plug-in can REALLY make audio loud so bring up the level slowly.

CoverFlux Free Plug-In

idustrial revolution has released a free plug-in called CoverFlux which replicates Apple's coverflow with images. I'm not sure if it does video clips as well but the results with still images are fun. Seems like a niche ready-to-be-overused-to-death thing like Comic Sans but what can ya do?

BitTime Time Code Plug-In Updated

BigTime is a floating timecode display for Final Cut Pro. An indispensible tool for client viewings (and ex-Avid editors), BigTime shows the sequence or source clip timecode on a resizable window. No more squinting required!

BigTime can be freely resized and moved anywhere on screen. The text and background colours can be customised to suit your personal taste and the frames display can be shown or hidden as required.

I've never had the need for it but I know several editors that love it. Anyways, it was updated today.

Even More Free Plug-Ins

You can find some fun and handy free plug-ins here.

Two Strip Technicolor
Three Strip Technicolor
Three Strip Extreme
Richer
Convolve Toy
Captain's Blowout Fixer
Luma Toy

Stib's Free Plug-Ins

I'm sure you know about these free plug-ins but just in case you don't here's the link.

Effects:

colour engine
glow
zoom blur

Transitions:

smear
stib's better push
zoom blur cross

Generators:

arrows
better text
stars
spiral thing

Free Plug-Ins & Tips

Here's a site with some interesting plug-ins for FCE and FCP and well written tutorials on how to use them.

FCE Counter Display is a freeware Generator that displays a counter to be used in a clip
FCE Timecode Display is a freeware Filter that displays the frame Timecodes of a clip
Reflections is a freeware Filter that creates a Front Row like reflection of a clip
Quarter PIP is a freeware Filter that shrinks a repositions the video of a clip
Time Remap NEW! is a freeware Filter that emulates the Time Remapping function of Final Cut Pro
Clone NEW! is a freeware Filter that clones an area of the clip into another area of the same clip
Frames is a freeware Generator that displays simple frames to be used in Final Cut Express (ex Shapes)
Field Selector NEW! is a freeware Filter that displays selected fields of a clip

Thanks to PieroF for mentioning these.

Digital Heaven's VideoSpace & More

VideoSpace is a free widget for Mac OS X Tiger which calculates the disk space required for a given duration, codec, frame rate and audio setting. It works in both directions so you can calculate time to space or space to time as indicated by the direction of the arrow between the two input areas.

Check it out here.

Not only that but they have some video tutorials and some free plug-ins. Be warned though, for some of you out there their video tutorials auto-play so if you're speakers are turned up....

More Free Plug-Ins

Too Much Too Soon Plugs.

Eureka! Plugs

Free Plug-Ins

Andy's Better 3D
Andy's Region Blur
Andy's Simple Crop
Andys Fixed Crawl
Andy's Fake Anamorphic Fixer
Andy's Letterbox

You can download them from here.

CGM Aged Film LE Plug-In

You already know about this one but in case you don't here's a free (legal) download of a only slightly limited aged film look plug-in for FCP.