stabilizing a shakey dolly shot?

i've not had much luck with the stabilization filter in AE, mainly because it blows up the image. I love the results that steadymove produces, but i'm mac based. Any suggestions are appreciated.

The stabilisation tool in AE is weak.
Shake has an OK one but it will blow up your image all the same.
perhaps try and stabilize your shot bit by bit to avaoid excessive blow up.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Are you using FCP6? Have you tried SmoothCam?

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The stabilisation tool in AE is weak.

Nope...I disagree. I use this tool all the time - very solid. I recently used the AE stabilization tool (not a filter, btw) to stabilize a hovering helicopter in high wind shooting a long lens pullback that when compared to a FLAME stabilization of the same shot was just as solid (FLAME image processing was better...but the motion was just as stable). You just need to lock into a high contrast area and tweak the settings and it is VERY SOLID. Shake will blow up your image as well so if that's your issue, you may want to try something else. You may try rather than scaling up the ftg in AE, turn on 3D, add a camera & move in on the footage a bit (in Z-space on the axis). It is a different algorithm than scaling and is cleaner.

Bottom line: if your stabilized ftg is badly shaking, you are going to have to deal with some form of scaling / zooming on your clip to hide the edges. Just cut away from it ASAP.

My 2¢

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Joe is right, its hard to not scale the footage a lot if you have significant shaking.
Thats what tracking tools do, they scale the footage to compensate.

In terms of the tracker in AE, from my experience its is the poorest out of a poor bunch.
Shake has a OK one and those times when I cant use AE I take it into Shake and it is always, without fail, a better tracker.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com