Mercalli SA 3.0 - Well: 9.3 outta 10!

Grazie wrote on 4/17/2013, 1:00 PM

OK:

PROS

1] Much cleaner and workmanlike GUI. It has truly grown-up.

2] The Timeline is now very similar to an NLE Timeline. Much finer and pro graphics.

3] I can type in a T/C window to have the Cursor jump position. Using my Mouse Wheel I can micro adjust through frames. I don't see any of this in 2.1.

4] The Trim-down sliders are now silky smooth. Not so in 2.1 .

5] Batch Processing is a doddle.

6] Workspace adjustment has, again, become more adult.

7] The T/C is now correctly placed WITH the Timeline

CONS

1] I don't see any option other than MP4 as an output. Discuss? Merc 2.1 gives me several output options

2] No hint of this as a Plug for Vegas.

Conclusion: For me, very much worth the Upgrade "offer" having skilled myself up through Merc. If the NAB discount can be used for the actual product, as a new user, it would be near the mark too.

OK, I'm starting to think about never having to stabilize within Vegas. This has advantages and disadvantages. It might just make me better organised and more constructive and logical in the auditioning of my clips. Only time will tell. Maybe, just maybe, stabilizing in VP12 and onwards, could be asking to much.

Woah!. . . . NOW . . If there was a "port-out-from-Vegas" option into Merc 3 SA.... pphorrr! A bit like we do with Audio out to "an audio editor", but here for Video?

Cheers

Grazie

Comments

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 1:56 PM

I just bought this the other day too after reading your post, and like you I really like it.

I am gradually realizing that I have a new phrase to describe myself: "hybrid photographer", which is what a number of users of mirrorless still camera users are now using as a self description. Like most of this new group, I'm not rigging my camera. No loupe, no brackets, no rigging of the camera. When you put a mirrorless camera to your eye, you have three points of contact: both hands and your face. As long as you aren't walking the footage looks pretty stable. Yes there are little tiny shakes even with the camera stabilization, but that's where Mercalli comes in.

From the last two days of mucking around with this I realize that I could do an ad for a small business totally handheld. That would of course mean stabilizing every shot. Yes you could do it on the timeline with the plugin version of Mercalli, but this is a lot quicker and keeps the timeline preview more responsive.

One feature I kind of like is that you can specify the in and out points of each clip while you are stabilizing and trim off the shaky bits at the head and tail ends of the clips as you are stabilizing. This also makes the software useable with Proshow Producer which is very fast for slideshows whith a mix of stills and video, which is exactly what people want to see after an event like a track and field race.

I'm really liking this!

NormanPCN wrote on 4/17/2013, 2:15 PM

CONS

Gotta pay extra for a plug-in version and you might want the plug since they only have MP4 output in stand alone. I did not see anything in the manual about other output formats.

amendegw wrote on 4/17/2013, 2:36 PM

Two questions,

1) Can someone confirm that the Mercalli V2 plugins still work well after the V3 SAL install? Maybe this has already been reported & I just missed it.
2) I think Laurence said he installed Mercalli V3 SAL with the addtional codecs checkbox checked. Did this have any affect on Sony Vegas V12 operation?

Thanks,
...Jerry

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 3:08 PM

Yes the version 2 plugin is not affected.

I just noticed a problem with Version 3. That is that the colors seemed dulled slightly after the conversion. Looks like some sort of color space mixup.

I also just did a test to see if I could see a difference in Vegas CPU load between using the plugin and using a SAL converted clip. They look the same. It makes me suspect even more strongly that what you are working with in the plugin is a temporary (permanent) render and not a real time process. If this is true, using the plugin vs the SAL version is a six of one, half a dozen of the other situation since in either case you would be looking at an extra render.

I just fired off an email to ProDAD support asking about the color dulling. I will post their response here when it comes. Hopefully they will fix it.

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 3:16 PM

Looking with scopes at the original version of the clip and the version processed with Mercalli 3 SAL, I can see that the original clip from the GH3 has cRGB levels and the processed version has sRGB levels. The conversion is actually a healthy fix since I always convert from cRGB to sRGB anyway, but it still bothers me that it was something I didn't ask for or have control over. I would love it if they added a tab or something to select whether or not they converted the colors to where they should be.

amendegw wrote on 4/17/2013, 3:17 PM

Laurence,

Thanks for the reply on the plugins.

Re: the color dulling, any chance of posting a screen grab of the histogram video scope - source vs. stablized? They aren't forcing 0-255 to 16-235 are they?

...Jerry

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 3:19 PM

>They aren't forcing 0-255 to 15-235 are they?

Yes, after scoping it, I realize that is EXACTLY what they are doing. I actually would like this to be available as an option, but not without at least some choice in the matter. If I had the choice, I would most likely always leave it on, but still, there is something about holding my hand to this extent that I really don't like!

amendegw wrote on 4/17/2013, 3:26 PM

Heh, another case of simultaneous posting (or at least 1 minute apart). I guess "great minds think alike" [grin]

Of course, I always end up as the 2nd post and people reading the thread will ask, "What's Jerry talking about, Laurence just answered that question."

...Jerry

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 3:28 PM

Just out of curiosity, I decided to run a Mercalli SAL converted clip through again to see if it would double-convert the cRGB to sRGB ranges. It passed the test. The color range was left alone when the source material was sRGB. Of course this could be because it had no colorspace interpretation issues with it's own codec. This could also be related to installing or not installing their read codec packs. I don't know for sure yet.

Edit: A little more testing.

I rendered my own clips into both cRGB and sRGB versions using the XDCAM mp4 wrapper. Mercalli SAL 3 did no color space changes on either the sRGB or cRGB versions. This leads me to believe that this correction is unintentional and a result of misreading the colorspace of the GH3 clips (which is bad). I am very tempted to reinstall Mercalli SAL 3 but this time checking the tab for their included codec readers. It may well be that the reason they seem to want to insist on us using their own codec pack is to avoid color space read errors.

Edit2: A little more testing and now I know the following:

It is just MOV formats that get desaturated. I was testing on some older clips shot with my Nikon D5100, and then some newer clips shot with my GH3 in the 50Mbps mov mode. Since both of these were Quicktime, both of them got desaturated. Video shot on the GH3 in AVCHD mode has no color desaturation, and in fact, no videos that I convert from any format other than MOV has this issue.

Installing or not installing the ProDAD video decode codecs has no effect on this. I wish I had figured this part out before I reinstalled Mercalli with the codec tab checked! Oh well. The rest of you can learn from my mistake.

Grazie wrote on 4/17/2013, 5:08 PM

So what's the remedy Laurence?

TIA,

Grazie

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 5:18 PM

For now, if you are using mov clips and you want the colors to match, you need to insert a sRGB to cRGB color correction filter. I just sent ProDAD an email explaining this all to them. Hopefully they will fix it.

Coincidentally, most cameras that shoot in mov format probably need a cRGB to sRGB correction anyway, so you could just leave it alone if you were going to add a cRGB to sRGB corrector anyway.

I just did some more experiments. I did the same clip correction in Mercalli SAL 3 and the Mercalli 2 plugin in version on the original clip, then set them over each other so I could switch between them. There is no question that Mercalli 3 algorithms are quite a bit better. Especially if you turn off the zoom so you can see the borders or use the color fill function instead of zooming. You can really see the superiority of the more recent version. Hopefully ProDAD will do a plugin version for Vegas as well.

I do quite a few movie theater ads where the aspect ratio is wider than 16:9. If I use the color fill instead of zoom and then apply my usual mask to give the wider aspect ratio, the mask covers most of the correction, and where it does occasionally peak through, it is hard to notice. If I do this with both versions 2 and 3, you can see artifacts in version 2 on the sides but you can't with version 3. Version 3 handles pans and zooms in particular better than version 2.

Grazie wrote on 4/17/2013, 5:30 PM

Good catch Laurence.

I did comparison of before and after and I can see the histo "clamp" happening. sRGB to cRGB "spreads" the field out further, but this time I'm getting vertical slots or holes in the histo? Why is this?

...one step forward . . . .

Cheers

Grazie

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 5:32 PM

I have just found another bug with Mercalli 3 SAL (or at least what I would call a bug). That is that when I use my GH3 in AVCHD mode, what is happening is that it is 30p wrapped as 60i to keep AVCHD Bluray compatiblity.

The new problem is that Mercalli 3 is reading this like 60i and generating a comb edge on the fast pans. This is going to cause all sorts of problems later on when I go to downsize this for Vimeo or Youtube.

This is in fact why in my previous post I thought that Version 3 looked better on pans. I was wrong. What was going on was that Vegas was doing doing some sort of a preview deinterlace that downrezzed was masking the edge of frame artifacts on the fast pans. At full quality it is bad. I wasn't seeing this on my VLC previews because VLC was applying a deinterlace, thinking that the footage was interlaced.

As it stands, I really can't use Mercalli 3 SAL with AVCHD because it isn't handling the AVCHD 30p wrapped as 60i properly, and I can't use it with MOV because of the color space issues (unless I just live with Mercalli doing my color space conversion instead of Vegas, which I was going to apply anyway).

I would rate Mercalli 3 SAL as a very good, almost ready for release BETA, but it simply isn't quite ready yet for actual use, at least not with either my GH3 or my Nikon DSLR cameras. I guess it would be fine with my Z7 if that was currently not in need of repair.

amendegw wrote on 4/17/2013, 5:45 PM

fwiw, I just posted the following message to proDad's Facebook page:

"Re: Mercalli V3 SAL, someone with some influence with technical support should read this thread:

...Jerry

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 5:46 PM

I just sent off the following email to ProDAD tech support:

OK, this is my third note to tech support because I realize even more of what is going on now.

dalemccl wrote on 4/17/2013, 7:25 PM

I installed the SAL 3 trial. I allowed it to install the codecs because I have a system image less than 24 hrs. old and can easily restore if needed. I found that VP 12 still opens and the Mercalli v2 plug-in still works. (Previously when I let Mercalli SAL 2 install k-lite, VP would not even launch). So it looked promising at that point. But....

When I export the stabilized .mp4 files out of SAL 3 and then try to use them in VP12, VP12 cannot read them. In VP's Explorer tab, clicking on one of these files does not play it in the preview screen. And when I drag any of the SAL exported .mp4 files to the VP timeline, I get a circle with a slash through it indicating VP cannot add it to the timeline.

1. Mirillis Spash Lite can play the .mp4 files that have been exported from SAL 3

2. I have other .mp4 files, not created by SAL, that VP can read.

3. The only difference shown by MediaInfo between the export from SAL and my other .mp4 files is that the video for the SAL export is shown in the "Format Profile" as "MPEG-4 Base Media", and my other .mp4 files, that VP can read, show in the "Media Profile" as "MPEG-4 Base Media/Version 2". Both show a codec of AVC. The SAL exports have AC3 audio and my other .mp4 files have AAC-LC audio.

Maybe the lack of a "Version 2" in the Format Profile is why VP12 can't read the SAL exports?

Has anyone here been able to use the SAL 3 exported .mp4 files in VP12?

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 7:32 PM

On my system, Vegas has no problem reading the ProDAD generated mp4s. They are quite responsive and quick on the timeline as well. Since it is a new install, you might want to see if a reboot helps.

dalemccl wrote on 4/17/2013, 7:43 PM

Good thought, Laurence. Unfortunately a reboot didn't help.

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 8:04 PM

Here is a screen grab showing the Mercalli 3 SAL added interlace comb. To see it properly, right click and select "view image":

For comparison, here is a screen grab from the unstabilized clip which as you can see, is very much progressive (in spite of it's 60i header flag):

Both are taken from the same pan (at close to the same moment). The interlace artifacts went throughout the pan in the stabilized clip.

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 9:41 PM

>fwiw, I just posted the following message to proDad's Facebook page:

Jerry,

I looked up (and liked) the ProDAD Facebook page. I looked for your post but couldn't find it, so I posted my own that said basically the same thing. I just got a personal response back saying that they would be looking into these issues! Hopefully this will make it past the moderator and to the tech team!

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 9:54 PM

Here are framegrabs comparing the saturation levels with MOV sources:

Before Mercalli SAL 3.0 (correct saturation):

After Mercalli SAL 3.0 (decreased saturation)

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 10:00 PM

This is even clearer. Remember, this just happens with Quicktime .mov sources:

Before Mercalli:

After Mercalli:

Laurence wrote on 4/17/2013, 10:04 PM

I could re-correct it, but that is going to be sequential 8 bit conversions. That would cause all sorts of banding in any gradients in the picture.

Grazie wrote on 4/18/2013, 1:15 AM

Laurence great work - thank you very much!

Well, you may notice I have . . er . . readjusted my original enthusiastic "appraisal" of Merc 3 SAL, down from 9.3 to a 2 . . . If the only option is MP4 OUT while using my MOV content, and it is coming back sat-clamped, what's the point? I would be needing to add Levels to correct? And what further issues resulting I can't think. As Merc3 SAL is spread out amongst the NLE community I'd have thought we'd be picking up further recognition of this situ. Anybody want to do some INTERNET research?

OK, this morning I've retested the Merc Plug, and, directly from within VP12 there is no sat-clamp. I repeat there is NO desaturation. Consequently this is my intended approach to proDAD:

Whatever is happening with Mercalli SAL3, this is not my experience with the successful Mercalli Plugin from within VP12 and, as an existing proDAD customer and making use of the upgrade "offer", I should expect the same saturation that I get from within VP12, and would want this corrected ASAP. Please advise.

I shall be providing a video, demonstrating my results, and would kindly wish them to comment and advise.

I have now completed comparisons using, MOV, PAL-DV & Canon XF300 MXF media and it is only the Merc 3 SAL which is desaturating the MOV files, the other two are staying within their saturation. On the contrary, this is not the case with the Merc Plug within Vegas12, MOV files retain/keep their saturation from the original.

Cheers

Grazie