How can I correct a tripod-shot video with vertical vibration?

[pete2004]

I have an uncompressed .avi file capped from a DV tape, which I am hoping to incorporate into a 3-camera edit (using Vegas) of a music concert.

The other two angles (done with Canon DV cameras) are relatively glitch-free, however this particular angle was shot with a Sony camcorder (not mine) mounted on a tripod which was positioned on the mixing desk (so as to shoot over the heads of the giants in the audience).

During the course of the shoot various bumps to the desk, mainly from audience members, has caused the camera to rapidly vibrate up and down (not so much side-to-side), and although I can see that the "vibrating" frames will not be fully reparable I would like to be able to stablilize the video as much as possible to lessen the "seasickness" effect.

My experiments with Deshaker in VirtualDub have resulted in unwanted zooming and rotating with an unusable result. All I want is for the vertical motion to be corrected as much as possible (is this the "y" axis?). There may be some horizontal movement, but I am not concerned about correcting this unless it can be done easily.

I also have Boris Red which for the life of me I cannot activate in Vegas. For the amount of time I have available, I think I will have to give up on Boris as a dead loss because it just seems overly complicated and I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to edit this video.

I am hoping some good person might assist me with Deshaker settings for (what I imagine should be) a rather simple stabilizing procedure.

I'd also like some guidance with colour matching (the Canon and Sony images look quite different - the Sony is most definitely better with more contrast and realistic colours, and hardly any grain), but I will save this for another thread, unless, again, it can be answered easily here. And I realise I may have to battle Boris to do this <grimace>.

Thanks in advance.

[jagabo]

The latest deshaker for VirtualDub will let you disable the zoom and rotate options. You can also try using Stab() (good for small shakes like projector bounce) or DePan() in AviSynth.