Carrara camera on motion path unstable

drbproductions

Hi, sorry in advance for this somewhat lengthy post:

What I have is a 2 minute timeline, a large-scale terrain, a medium-size vertex object and a few cameras/lights.  The animation consists of a fly-through with one camera (the other cameras are just used for development views.)  Seems like a fairly simple setup, especially considering it’s just a background for the main project (which I’ve not actually started yet due to the current issues.)

Steps to create the current issues (skip to the paragraph below step 6 to avoid the frustrated user history):
1)     Initially, I set the camera aim and positioning at several points throughout the animation (15 – 20 keyframes.)
2)     The motion was not smooth enough but I didn’t really need more keyframes to describe the path, so I converted the animation type on the camera to a motion path, with 100% conversion.  Using the motion path, I was able to fine-tune and smooth the path, but then found that the camera had somehow moved far away from many of the keyframe points while I was manipulating the motion path.
3)     I tracked the “moving camera” issue down to what I can only imagine is a bug, where dragging the “previous” handle on a curve point (the handle closest to the beginning of the path) increases the path distance in the camera Motion properties.  This causes the camera position to jump forwards and back on the path as the animation is rendered (my first clue that things were drifting on their own.)
4)     I had to go back through the path again, keyframe by keyframe, and put the camera back where it was supposed to be.  Once that was done, however it was now obvious that there were some serious timing issues from one point to the next. 
5)     I didn’t find any tools for managing that (i.e., Distribute Keyframes in Time), so I created a spreadsheet of all of the keyframes attached to the path and their respective distances down the path (once again going through the path point by point) and calculated a time percentage based on the distance percentage; e.g., when the camera was 50% of the way from the beginning to the end of the path the time should be at 50% as well (i.e., at the 1 minute point of a 2 minute animation.)  After then moving all of the keyframes appropriately (again going through the path point by point) and expecting a much smoother result, I was stymied to find that the speed of the camera was still inconsistent, moving fast between some key frames and abysmally slow between others.
6)     Finally, I realized I didn’t really need to hang on to those keyframes and removed all except for a couple at the beginning and at the end (where I wanted the camera to remain stationary for a few seconds.)  I set the camera to align with the path to manage aiming the camera (since the keyframes that previously stored that information were now gone.)  The result for camera speed was much better, but now there were several (about 8) points in the path where the viewpoint would suddenly jerk (a noticeable change in camera placement and/or aim from one frame to the next.)  In addition, towards the end of the sequence the camera moves straight down and then levels out, but where it levels out the “align” option made the camera go almost completely upside-down.  Note that this was Align only, not Align and Bank.
 
At this point, after searching through the documentation and searching online for similar issues/resolutions and finding nothing, it appears that I'm left with properties in the motion path which should not be there and that there is no option for correcting other than painstakingly tracking down each issue-point and attempting to correct it with keyframes, which shouldn't be necessary (imho) unless you start having some special aim- or position-requirements outside of the Align function.
 
So far my experience with Carrara has been gravitating towards excruciating on the development side, and although the output has moments that are pretty close to awesome, there are so many moments that are amateurish-looking that I really wouldn’t want to show it to anyone.
 
In looking through the documentation, I see a lot of things that would be exciting to work with (elementals, physics, clouds, etc.) but if I can’t get a simple fly-through to work there’s no point in going forward with anything else.
 
So … is it me?  I know I don’t always catch on to new concepts quickly (like the motion path), but I program and provide technical support for a living and at least “appear” to be well thought of by my peers and customers so I doubt that’s the lion’s share of the problems.
 
Is it the hardware / platform / OS level?  Maybe.   Perhaps, like Bryce, Carrara is just going to gradually fizzle out.  (Bryce used to be one of my favorites but I haven’t been able to do anything remotely extensive on it for years without crashing it.)  As mentioned above, I was able to duplicate issues with the motion path, and the camera moving (a lot) while adjusting curve handles on an older OS, so I don’t expect the OS is the crux of the matter.
 
Any suggestions?  Get different animation software? A Windows PC?  Or a new hobby?

Thanks for any assistance,

drb