Another Mercalli V2 Stabilization Idiosyncrasy

amendegw wrote on 2/20/2012, 4:49 PM

Posting this to document something I've just discovered.

When using Mercalli V2 in an Interlaced Project, one must set a Deinterlace method in the Sony Vegas Project Properties or the Rolling Shutter compensation fails to work.

Here's an example of what I've found. This is a 1920x1080 60i Vegas Project with 1920x1080 60i footage rendened to DNxHD, then converted to 1280x720 30p using HandBrake (i.e. the musicvid method):

I'd like to see if others can duplicate (i.e. confirm) what I've found.

...Jerry

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 2/20/2012, 8:00 PM

I have submitted a bug report to both ProDad and SCS about a bug in Mercalli V2 that may or may not be related to this. I am using the Mercalli V2 Vegas plugin (i.e., not the stabilization built into Vegas 10 & 11).

What I have found is that ALL the Mercalli stabilization (not just the rolling shutter compensation) is lost if I render to any format that doesn't exactly match the project and source properties. So, for instance, if I take my 1920x1080 60p footage from my Sony CX-700V, stabilize it, and then render it to 1920x1080 60p MP4, everything looks fine. However, if I instead render it to MPEG-2 720x480 60i in order to create a DVD, all the stabilization is lost and the resulting MPEG-2 file is as shaky as the original.

I have sometimes observed that part of the stabilization is retained, namely the edge compensation, but that the video itself is shaky.

So, when you render to the DNxHD intermediate, are you changing anything (frame rate, interlace setting, or resolution) compared to the original source footage? Do your project settings match the source footage? If so, then you have uncovered a different problem than the one I am trying to research.

If you haven't done so, I recommend contacting ProDad. I have found them very quick to respond (you get an email back from a real person right away), although it is not clear what, if anything is going to happen as a result. They still don't seem to grasp that the problem I described is a major show-stopper because, in their mind, everyone always renders back out to the exact same video specs (even if using a different codec) as the original source video.

Grazie wrote on 2/21/2012, 3:39 AM

I do a lot of on-the-street interview camera work. I need to correct some of my wobbly-cam in Merc. and render out to DVD. I'm going to keep a watchful eye on this one.

G

amendegw wrote on 2/21/2012, 5:52 AM

"So, when you render to the DNxHD intermediate, are you changing anything (frame rate, interlace setting, or resolution) compared to the original source footage? Do your project settings match the source footage? If so, then you have uncovered a different problem than the one I am trying to researchYeah, all three settings matched. fwiw, in order to create the demo (above), I needed to create two Vegas projects - one with DeInterlace=None, the second with Deinterlace=Iterpoloate, render out, and merge the projects.

Upon reflection, here's a much better way to demo the problem, and (after a couple days of peer-review here, I'll send this to ProDAD).

...Jerry

PS: I just realized I mispelled "idiosyncrasy" - bummer

amendegw wrote on 2/28/2012, 1:51 PM

Just got a note back from proDAD, I guess I'm not surprised that they put this in the "indosyncracy" category. However, the followon, highlighted portion is interesting. .

"Hi Jerry, just wanted to follow up with you on your inquiry. My dev team advised me this isn't a bug per-se, it's a limitation within Vegas Pro that we have no way to work-around currently. Almost every NLE has something like this.

...Jerry