Stabilize shaky video

[RickMen]

I just got back from a family holiday to the USA, I have about 5 hrs of video some of which is taken from a moving open top bus, as you can imagine that video is quite shaky and painful to look at. My camcorder (JVC GZ HD40) does have an auto stabilisation feature but I have found that it's not much use.

Is there some sort of way I can make the shaky video less shaky? I have already tried the anti shake filter but that seems to give the picture a blury halo effect (although I didn't play around with the detailed settings). I'm using X2 pro.

[Ron P.]

Not really much can be done to smooth out the video. What you discovered is that most all anti-shake filters just apply a blurring with some zooming in an attempt to remove the shake. A few years ago I wasted about $80 on ArcSoft's anti-shake utility. It does nothing more or less than VS's anti-shake filter.

Anti-shake filters are made primarily for small degrees of shaking, not the radical, severe shaking that we all would like to correct. So the only correction is really prevention. Plan on shaking before shooting, and use some form of stabilization, a mono-pod or tripod. If those aren't available, then support your camera firmly, while your arms are supported against a solid, non-moving object. I realize in a moving bus, there's probably nothing to really provide a stable platform. The pros use the very expensive steadi-cams that have built in gyroscopes. You could pick one up for few thousand dollars..

[RickMen]

Thanks vidoman.

I just did a search and found some positive references (back in 2005-6) to DePan software. Have you an experience with DePan?

[Ron P.]

No I've no experience with DePan. If there's a trial version, you could try it to see if it works with VS X2 and if it helps with your shaking problem..