Editblog has responded to Anton’s SmoothCam tests with some tests of their own:

SmoothCam is smooth, but slow [Scottsimmons.tv]

Scott’s tests run even slower than Anton’s, regardless of codec. I asked Anton about this, and his take was that the technology was really intended for short takes, not long chunks of footage, and that you’ll want to make big use of subclips. (Hope I’m getting that right, Anton, but I’ll say I certainly agree with that statement.)

Nonetheless, Scott did an even more interesting comparison with other systems. I think it’s always worth having at least a couple of tools in your arsenal for different tasks, so this is all the more helpful:

SmoothCam vs. Some Others

We’re going to keep on testing. It’s also worth noting that SmoothCam isn’t the only technology that seems to benefit from Apple’s Shake team and their intellectual resources in video analysis. There are other match move capabilities built into Final Cut Pro. There are also some really compelling match move-related techniques in Motion, and, in contrast to these render-based algorithms, those operate in real-time. (I haven’t yet been able to find out whether those are also related to the underlying processing algorithms from Shake; if anyone knows, speak up.)

Real-time analysis I think will ultimately be the future, not only for correction tasks but all sorts of creative purposes and motion control.

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Final Cut Studio 2 HD SmoothCam Tests [blip.tv]

Shoot jittery footage with your HDV/DV cam? While on a taxi ride? On a bumpy street, zoomed in, while being run off the road by the Hungarian mafia?* I know I do. While shooting freehand is great for that “Reality TV” look, sometimes you want to look like a pro while keeping your budget - and this is where Final Cut Studio 2’s new SmoothCam feature comes in.
(*It’s a long story, but yes, this happened. No, this is not that particular footage.)

SmoothCam is a technology borrowed from Apple’s high-end, node-based compositing system Shake that was ported to Final Cut Pro 6.0 as an easy-to-use effect filter. The basic idea is that SmoothCam tracks the motion vectors of the pixels in your footage and tries to make them as stable as possible, resulting in a smooth and bump-free shot. Sounds awesome, and as usual with Apple, it’s hyped to no end. But how good is it in the real world?

Vista for visualists is a problematic proposition. Typically, musicians have the toughest upgrade curve with any OS, but there’s a major incentive for musicians with Vista, as reported on CDM: the promise of significantly improved audio performance and stability. Right now, there isn’t enough software or hardware support for most musicians, though I expect that picture will start to change even within the next few weeks.

For visualists, though, we have two problems:

1. The only really major improvement (beyond what’s in Vista itself) is the new 3D platform, DirectX 10. That could be huge for advanced visualists willing to be platform-specific — but with the development tools only just now available and a lot of Microsoft’s own development initiatives (like XNA) still tied to DirectX 9, even programmers are unlikely to do anything with DX10 in the near future, let alone end users. (Cheap cards will be out soon, but more on that in a separate story.

2. So far, the big hole in Vista is graphics support. So, not only is the step forward (DX10) not quite ready for most users, in the meantime OpenGL and even DirectX 9 will see a big step backward for the short term.