FAQ
Before buying
Plugged on a GoPro®*, SteadXP@ will follow you anywhere, anytime in your outdoor adventures.
It works with GoPro® HERO[4, 3+, 3, 2] camera* and fits inside the GoPro®* housings with their BacPac™* backdoor. It cannot be used with a GoPro® HERO5* or later since it doesn’t have the connection to plug accessories on its back anymore. SteadXP@ is not compatible with GoPro® HERO5* or later, DSLR, MirrorLess and video cameras.
On a DSLR, MirrorLess or cinema camera, SteadXP+ will be your ultimate companion for filmmaking and video reporting.
It just needs a flash mount (coldshoe) and a mic input (jack, mini jack or XLR). HDMI and AV outputs are not required to plug the device. Be sure to deactivate the EIS/OIS of your camera while using our device. Otherwise it will mislead our algorithms. SteadXP+ is not compatible with GoPro®* cameras.
SteadXP software is included with the purchase of any SteadXP device.
It is available as a x64 (64bits version) and is compatible with:
- Windows 10, 8.1, 7
- MacOS 10.15 Catalina, 10.14 Mojave, 10.13 High Sierra, 10.12 Sierra, 10.11 El Capitan, 10.10 Yosemite, 10.9 Mavericks
SteadXP products are shipped by DHL Express International to the following countries:
Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
Don’t forget to specify a valid phone number if you order one of our products.
No, SteadXP combines the device (which records your camera motions) and the software (which synchronizes videos and data files to correct the camera motions).
You need them both to stabilize your videos.
SteadXP was conceived for DSLR, MirrorLess, Cinema or GoPro®* cameras. It is not compatible with smartphones.
A SteadXP software license is included with the purchase of any SteadXP device. You can install SteadXP softwares on as many computers as needed.
When using our software for the first time, you have to register your SteadXP device. For this, you will need the email address used when the product was purchased and the serial number of the SteadXP.
Important to know before filming
Lenses
It is essential to film your sequence with the same focal length. So two possibilities: the best and easy one is to use a fixed focal (prime) lens or you can still use a zoom with some gaffer tape to prevent any focal movements.
EIS / OIS
Every electrical (EIS) or optical (OIS) image stabilization systems have to be deactivated on your camera and/or your lens.
Shutter speed
The more dynamic the scene you want to film is, the more you will have to increase the shutter speed to avoid motion blur. E.g. If you are filming when walking, 1/125 could be quite enough but the result will be more efficient with a higher one.
In a dynamic context (i.e running), we advise not to use SteadXP with shutter speeds lower than 1/250 to avoid motion blur artefacts.
Recording SteadXP audio signal
To work with SteadXP+, your camera needs an Ext MIC input (jack, mini-jack or XLR cable). Full details here.
Settings
For optimal rendering, setup your action cam with:
- 4:3 image ratio like 1440 or 2.7K
- Wide field of view
- The best resolution available
- The LED enabled
- “Never” option enabled for display sleep
SteadXP hardware
Fully charged, you can use SteadXP+ for 10 to 12 hours.
SteadXP devices are recording motion data at 24kB/s, so using this 2 GB microSD card, you have a 24H autonomy.
We recommend formatting your microSD card (1GB to 32 GB) with the SD Memory Card Formatter, using FAT16 or FAT32.
Warning: exFAT formatting is not supported by SteadXP devices.
Warning: you should save any data stored on your microSD card before use with SteadXP devices, as the first time you insert a new microSD card, SteadXP will format it.
Warning: avoid formatting your cards with “Disk Utility” if you are working on macOS
SteadXP+ is sending a digital audio signal that should be recorded on (at least) 1 mono audio channel. You can still connect a microphone on the other audio channel, as described below.
On DSLR, MirrorLess:
We recommend this male to male cable. Since SteadXP only needs 1 audio channel, adding this Y-splitter audio separator cable (1xStereo to 2xMono), you can record 1 mono audio track. We recommend using a preamplified microphone if you cannot set audio levels individually on each track.
Warning: This Y-splitter cable must be an INPUT splitter (SteadXP needs separate tracks). Do not use a generic OUTPUT splitter, as it won’t work!
On XLR Cinema cameras:
SteadXP+ audio signal is in fact a BALANCED signal: on a cinema camera we recommend recording it on audio Stream 1 or 2, using:
Whatever the audio cable you choose to use, SteadXP software will automatically recognize the type of connection.
NB: On RED DSMC1 cameras, you can use a single 1xStereo to 1xStereo male male cable.
Warning: It won’t damage your SteadXP+, but you should disable +48V or any other phantom power in your camera settings.
To enable horizon correction, calibrate the gyros of your SteadXP on the temperature range you plan to use it with. This needs to be done only once for each SteadXP:
– first, we advise to let your SteadXP (turned off) in a cold (and dry) place during one night.
– then turn SteadXP on and place it on a perfectly stable surface (on the ground) so it warms up slowly.
– finally, turn SteadXP off then on again to finalize the temperature calibration.
After that, whenever you turn SteadXP on, avoid shaking the device too much during the boot sequence (i.e when the LED alternates between red and orange).
To activate horizon correction in SteadXP software, simply uncheck the Roll checkbox in Preview tab.
N.B: This is for SteadXP+ and SteadXP@
SteadXP softwares
Log into your account and click on the blue DOWNLOAD link to get the latest version of our softwares.
If your computer is connected to the internet, SteadXP softwares will automatically detect new updates.
You will need around 300MB on Windows and 250MB on macOS to install SteadXP softwares.
Both softwares come with disk space management functionalities that will allow you to free disk space used by SteadXP temporary data files (proxy_tmp folders).
The SteadXP license allows you to install SteadXP softwares on as many computers as you need.
You can register as many SteadXP devices as you need on a single computer.
So you can freely cooperate with other users and exchange:
- Copy of SteadXP projects (.yxp files), which support user comments
- Copy of SteadXP working directory, to work on another computer
To sum up, you can simply exchange and share your external hard drives and licenses.
For an extended video codecs support, SteadXP will propose you to install FFmpeg. If you choose to install FFmpeg with SteadXP, it won’t affect any previous or future installation of FFmpeg you could do: it will only be used by SteadXP softwares.
High bit depth codecs are supported until 16 bits, in and out.
If you are shooting RAW (R3D, BRAW, ARRIRAW…), we advise you to apply a first pre-grade before using them in SteadXP software.
High bit depth codecs are supported until 16 bits, in and out.
You can choose to apply a 3D LUT on the proxy and/or on output rendered videos.
To add new LUT files, click on File->Import LUT(s)
For a 16 bits workflow, we recommend grading after our stabilization process, but it’s up to you.
A camera profile describes a shooting Lens+Camera recording mode (resolution/crop factor) configuration.
You can use our built-in camera profile database (164 available), or create your own ones using our SteadXP Calibration software. Before starting, be sure to take a look to our video tutorial.
SteadXP software will only display camera profiles matching the resolution of your input video.
All the camera profiles you created are located in the folder Documents/SteadXP/cameraprofiles.
If you want to share your camera profiles with other users, please send us the .zip files you will find within this directory to support@steadxp.com, tx!
A stabilization profile is a set of parameters (Roll, Pitch, Yaw, StabLevel, Histo & Zoom Out) controlling the dynamism of the clip to reproduce a typical look (e.g. shoulder-held camera effect …). It must not be confused with a camera profile.
Those profiles are accessible in Preview tab and can be loaded with the corresponding drop-down menu.
Tune this parameter to increase the stability of your sequence.
0: correct the rolling shutter
from 1 to 9: gradually increase the stability of the shot while keeping a shoulder-held camera effect
from 10 to 50: powerful stabilization of the shot
Histo is a pixel interpolation functionality aiming to increase stability and achieve smoother trajectories.
The interpolation happens when black borders enter the gray rectangle area of your video. Neighboring frames (past and future, i.e historical frames) are used to fill the black borders.
You can adjust the number of neighboring frames used for the interpolation. The higher the value, the heavier the calculations.
Yes, SteadXP software allows you to add Motion Blur to your output video.
In Preview tab Advanced section, choose a type of Motion Blur and its intensity. 180° being equivalent to cinematic standard (recommended value). The higher the value, the longer the processing.
From a cinematic point of vue, our Rotational Blur feature is accurate since only the rotational information of the virtual camera are taken into account. If you shot with 90° shutter angle, we recommend to add a Border 90° + 60° Central to match cinematic look.
You can also use Motion Blur option. It is based on a frame by frame motion analysis. As computation time could be important, we recommended to push small sequences to Motion Blur queue fisrt. A video tutorial will come soon about this new feature, it is still experimental and will be improved all along the way.
You can add a keyframe by double-clicking on a frame in the Reframing tab of the timeline. This way you can precisely control the framing of your shot. Take a look at this video tutorial for more details.
When you are in the Reframing tab of the timeline, you can also reframe a single frame simply by left-clicking anywhere inside the frame. The frame will be re-centered on the position of the click.
We recommend at least 8 seconds videos.
To select videos in SteadXP Calibration, you can either:
– select a single chessboard video, where all the angles were filmed
– select multiple chessboard videos, each one of them filming one angle at a time
If you choose the second option, SteadXP Calibration will merge those multiple chessboard videos into one single video. Go with this option if it is easier for you to film one angle of the chessboard at a time, each of them in a short video.
To learn how to film the chessboard, please refer to our calibration video tutorial
Video & Data files
No, it is not possible to change this timestamp.
SteadXP software will automatically find the .XPD file corresponding to your video.
No, .XPD data files should not be renamed.
It is not recommended, since SteadXP software uses the GoPro file naming format to detect matching .XPD data files.
Camera
When creating a camera profile, only the lens ends can be used (for example @16mm & @35mm for a 16-35mm). Using gaffer helps fixing the lens.
On a DSLR or MirrorLess camera, the auto-gain setup will set your audio gain properly.
Always check your VU-meters before recording, if the level is too low, your camera is probably set in audio manual mode. Then simply adjust your audio gain to 80%, close to the saturation.
Common mistakes
If the LED of your SteadXP is blinking 3x red and 3x green (SOS signal), it means that the microSD card of your SteadXP is either:
- full
- defective
- wrongly formatted (use the SD Memory Card Formatter to format it correctly, in FAT16 or FAT32)
Documentation
Video tutorials are available here. You can also use the Documentation menu in both softwares.