Handheld Smoothing in Post - Epic

[Yuval Shrem]

Actually it doesn't - Mercalli is prosumer at best - but you have to know how to tweak settings in Warp Stabilizer. That said, almost any stabilization will have tons of artifacts, like parallax shifts that look wrong.

Often Steadicam op is cheapest and best solution (don;t buy a Steadicam, hire one - Steadicams are very hard to learn and a talent)

"Prosumer at best"? Really?!
After checking up the wrap stabilizer again in its CS6 incarnation, I will give it another try, especially for shots with parallax issues, however for shots with little to no parallax issues, I found Mecalli to work better visually, and regardless, when you have a lot of footage to stabilize, speed is to take into consideration. Wrap stabilizer is very very slow, compared to Mercalli, which is close to real-time in analyzing, and plays in Adobe Premiere properly with no need for rendering.
With all due respect, I would not be so quick to deem a powerful tool like that as "prosumer at best".

I do agree that the best way to go is to hire a great steadicam operator. "Fixing things in post" should never be the plan A solution, but sometimes things do need fixing, or simply can use a bit of improving in post. For most shots in need of some camera smoothing, I found Mercalli to work very well. For shots with dominant parallax that need stabilizing, Wrap Stabilizer (a very powerful tool in its own way) may be the better solution, but it will take a much longer time to deal with and process., and will likely require more tweaking of settings, to avoid some very strange artifacts. Fine for an occasional shot, but very problematic if needed routinely.

 

[Les Dittert]

Warp stabilizer works fairly well for wide lens shots that a simple planar stabilizer has no hope to fix. The reason warp stab. takes so long is that it is analyzing the velocity of all areas of the frame as a separate problem to solve.

I don't know of any other tools to stabilize wide lens footage. The basic problem with wide lens footage is the edges of the frame move at different speeds than the middle. Non warp stabilizers can stabilize the middle but they leave the edges wiggling like jello and this is not due to rolling shutter. Warp stab. does make mistakes that cause sudden image movement, I hope they tuned it some more in cs6.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

"Prosumer at best"? Really?!
After checking up the wrap stabilizer again in its CS6 incarnation, I will give it another try, especially for shots with parallax issues, however for shots with little to no parallax issues, I found Mecalli to work better visually, and regardless, when you have a lot of footage to stabilize, speed is to take into consideration. Wrap stabilizer is very very slow, compared to Mercalli, which is close to real-time in analyzing, and plays in Adobe Premiere properly with no need for rendering.
With all due respect, I would not be so quick to deem a powerful tool like that as "prosumer at best".

I do agree that the best way to go is to hire a great steadicam operator. "Fixing things in post" should never be the plan A solution, but sometimes things do need fixing, or simply can use a bit of improving in post. For most shots in need of some camera smoothing, I found Mercalli to work very well. For shots with dominant parallax that need stabilizing, Wrap Stabilizer (a very powerful tool in its own way) may be the better solution, but it will take a much longer time to deal with and process., and will likely require more tweaking of settings, to avoid some very strange artifacts. Fine for an occasional shot, but very problematic if needed routinely.

You need to know how to make masks and "guide" stabilizer in Ae - even though it seems it does not let you. This is a craft in itself. ProDad I found gave unusable, artificial-looking results.

The best solution is to never rely on these tools in the first place - they only help with tiny problems, like maybe a small bump on a dolly rail - anything more looks cheap, weird and nauseating.

 

[Yuval Shrem]

You need to know how to make masks and "guide" stabilizer in Ae - even though it seems it does not let you. This is a craft in itself. ProDad I found gave unusable, artificial-looking results.

The best solution is to never rely on these tools in the first place - they only help with tiny problems, like maybe a small bump on a dolly rail - anything more looks cheap, weird and nauseating.

I am very familiar with creating masks to guide a tracker. It's not a very complex craft - just hide moving parts, like people in the frame.
I agree that in shots with strong parallax ProDad (or any traditional algorithm) falls apart, as things move around when on a different Z plane from the one being stabilized.
That said, I found it to work wonders on most of the shot I throw at it. Hand-held shots that wanted to be steadycam shots, poorly operated steadycam shots that became perfectly smooth and usable, etc.
Obviously, it is best not to need to stabilize in post. It is also important to mention again that once definitive motion blur is introduced, no stabilizing in post can save the shot from looking weird.
For the majority of shots in need for mild stabilization in post, I found the ProDad Mercalli to do a terrific job, with almost no tinkering with settings, and at a speed that makes the process completely painless, allowing the creative process of editing to not be interrupted. I found that having those stabilized shots while editing, makes a difference in how I edit, so that's a major consideration.