Mercalli question

Salamander wrote on 1/24/2008, 7:06 PM

I downloaded the Mercalli demo, and tried it out with a short clip in Vegas. This is a clip I shot with a Canon XH-A1. When I render using Mercalli, (a) I get an occasional blurry affect on each side, and (b) the rendered video image does not look as sharp as the same clip rendered without Mercalli.

I'm rendering in 32 bit floating point, 2.222 video, best quality. I'm using an HDV 1080i template. In Mercalli, I'm using the Versatile reliable image stabilization profile. I'm also using Vegas Pro 8.

Is this a function of the demo version? Something I'm doing incorrectly with other settings in Vegas and/or Mercalli?

Comments

JeanMovies wrote on 1/24/2008, 11:54 PM

From proDAD-FAQ ...

Mercalli offers matching profiles which meets various requirements and several applications.
It now appears that if a wrong profile has been used for a special stabilisation, following effect can appear:

http://www.prodad.de/faq/01/gb/faq-00000069-00000006.html
and
http://www.prodad.de/faq/01/gb/faq-00000065-00000006.html

Richard Jones wrote on 1/25/2008, 3:33 AM

You may find the exchanges under the heading "Stabilization" helpful, particularly the comments of 1/12 amd 1/13/2008 from the knowledgeable and ever helpful JonnyRoy.

Regards,

Richard Jones

Salamander wrote on 1/25/2008, 3:49 AM

I'll check those out, Thanks!

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/25/2008, 8:24 AM

> (a) I get an occasional blurry affect on each side

I assume you mean the blurry borders. This is caused by having to move the video in the opposite direction to compensate for the shake. Since moving the video will cause a border to appear, you can control how you want Mercalli to deal with this. By default, it will blur the border as you have seen. You can also set it to leave a black border or to have it resize the video (i.e., zoom in) to eliminate the border.

> (b) the rendered video image does not look as sharp as the same clip rendered without Mercalli.

One possible cause is the fact that shaky video has motion blur which looks natural to our eyes but when you remove the shake the blur remains without the motion and this looks unnatural. There is no way around this.

> ...from the knowledgeable and ever helpful JonnyRoy.

Hey, I resemble that remark! ;-) Thanks Richard. Just tryin' to help where I can.

~jr

Salamander wrote on 1/25/2008, 3:36 PM

This helps. This forum is great!

UlfLaursen wrote on 1/26/2008, 10:55 PM

Hi

Just watched this turorial:

http://www.infotoday.com/eventdv/mercalli/mercalli.html

Made in PPRO CS3, but the interface should be the same in Vegas.

/Ulf

Grazie wrote on 1/27/2008, 1:02 AM

Ulf, thanks for the link. Now THAT is what I call a tutorial!!

Richard Jones wrote on 1/27/2008, 3:42 AM

Impressive as a tutorial and impressive as a recommendation for Mercalli.

Richard Jones

MarkWWW wrote on 1/27/2008, 6:03 AM

Hmm. That's a very good presentation and nicely shows what Mercalli is good at - ease of use and control.

But it also clearly shows where Mecalli falls down, in my opinion - the way it handles the borders. I'd agree with the tester's opinion that you pretty much have to use the no-borders (i.e. zoom in) method when using Mercalli because none of the alternatives produce a useable result. This is OK when the required amount of zoom is small, but the worse the shaking is the more zoom is required and you may end up with a close-up when you need a mid-shot or a mid-shot where you need a long shot, etc.

It's a shame they didn't show a comparison with DeShaker which in my opinion does a vastly better job of synthesising a plausible border from nearby frames both earlier and later in the sequence. It usually does this so well that you don't need to indulge in any zooming in to disguise it - your mid-shots stay mid-shots, your long shots stay long shots, etc. DeShaker/VirtualDub isn't so easy to use as Mercalli, of course, but John Meyer's excellent script which allows you to use DeShaker from within Vegas takes most of the complication out of things. And of course it's free.

What would be wonderful would be a product that had the usability of Mercalli but the performance (in particular with regard to borders) of DeShaker.

Mark

Videoimpressions wrote on 1/27/2008, 9:23 AM

Well, I tried them both WITHOUT SUCCESS! Both caused excess shakiness to the video and took the video out of focus enough that when compared to my original it looks out of focus. Edges of objects also had movement. I really could not tell a difference between the final output of these two prodcuts except to say that Mercalli was a heck of a lot FASTER!! Here is what I wrote back to ProDad after I uninstalled the Mercalli Demo:

"Despite the green (and no red) during analysis, the RENDERED file is very soft-focused and the video is jerky. This was for walking motion compensation. I tried several adjustments, but to no avail. My original video is sharp as a tack, and the motion on my original video is much less obvious than using Mercalli to remove motion BUT Mercalli introduced soft focus, jittering around object edges and a jerkiness to the video!! Also, while I understand the red x over the video in demo mode, I also experienced either border pixellation or a small rectangle pixelation in the middle of the video, even after rendering. I did not know if this was due to the demo limitations or if the full version would also have this anomaly."

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS