Best tripod/mount to record conference session on a cruise ship?

I'm going to be working a conference being held on a cruise ship, and will be recording audio/video of the conference sessions for CD/DVD production. I'll have several microphones recording audio, along with my Panasonic HDC-TM700K for the video and audience audio feeds.

On our last such cruise, I set up the Panasonic on a basic camcorder tripod. While it seemed stable during during the conference sessions, I noticed in the recordings that the video of the presenters on stage slowly moved up and down in sync with the pitching of the ship. It seemed as though the tripod head wasn't rigid enough, and the camera deflected back and forth ever so slightly as the center-of-gravity shifted while the ship pitched with the waves. Admittedly, the tripod was inexpensive. Thankfully, I was able to edit the footage to compensate for the motion using Adobe Premiere Pro, but the motion tracking/compensation algorithms took forever to run and really slowed down the production process.

What would you recommend for a stable camera set-up that would hold the cameras orientation relative to the stage on-ship regardless of the ship's motion? The camera just needs to be stationary, with no on-the-fly pan/zoom required.

That's a really good point. I likely did have the image stabilization on. Hadn't thought about it being the culprit. And I agree, I was surprised by the motion too as the sea wasn't that rough.

Makes perfect sense. And on a cruise ship, as you pointed out, the pitch/yaw sensors are picking up motion, and would try to essentially stabilize to the horizon, not to the ship itself.

-Chris

Those registered for the conference (not all on the ship) will get a set, yes.