Why does there always have to be one... always one... who feels they have to take the mantle of resident Grinch. DGates, you certainly have posted a helpful message on this forum here and there. Why go negative here? If you have the ability with whatever type of taping you do to set up each shot and never have the need for stabilization, why not just ignore this thread? But not every genre of videography allows for the setups you may be able to work out.

I'll tell you why I could use Mercalli or DeShaker: I taped an interview with an older fellow two weekends back... a Holocaust survivor. He was in his early 80's. He and his wife had no clue as to why I would ask him to hold up a few seconds before he walked out of his house headed to his tailor shop, or hold up for various other situations while I set up for a shot. So for several key moments, I was just going with whatever I could capture. Then, my son (12 years old) was shooting my second camera, and he had a few unsteady movements as he swung the camera. He did pretty well, but I could certainly use a bit of stabilization. But using my son's footage in an irreplaceable documentary on a Holocaust survivor is more important to me than someone considering me a hobbyist. This calls for such a negative reaction from you? What's up... getting coal in your stocking?

Also, I have a Glidecam, but not every situation allows for that. And if John is a "hobbyist," geez, many of the rest of us must not even be on the radar.

Actually "pros" would have a Steadicam (or Glidecam or Merlin), but since you seem like more of a hobbyist, I can understand how stabilization in post would be really "essential".

If by "pro" you mean someone working for a studio with hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment budget, you are correct. However, once again, you don't understand the market at all. There is a huge gulf between what I just described (the pro market) and a true hobbyist. In that gulf you will find corporate video producers, event videographers, and independent producers. Very few of these have the budget for Stedicam. Yet they are the mainstay of the market for Vegas and most other similarly priced editing programs.

Nine years ago, I had a chance for a long private meeting with Bill Loesch the VP of Consumer Products at Pinnacle Systems. They divided the market into Professional, Corporate, and Consumer and had products and services aimed at each of those three distinctly different groups. Sony does not have a product offering specifically aimed at Professional, which is apparently where you operate. Vegas is aimed at Corporate, and MovieStudio at consumer (or "hobbyist" as you call it). This is not to say that one group will not occasionally be found in the other market -- market boundaries are never that hard and fast in any product positioning arrangement.

So, as I said before, you really should hold off on what sounds like a pretty arrogant viewpoint that is not particularly helpful, and simply exhibits a significant lack of knowledge of the amazing professionals (not hobbyists) who operate in the Corporate and Event Videographer market, beyond the limited sphere of your personal experience. I dare say that the skills and creative talents of these people would match or exceed those of most of the people you work with, and I offer as proof the contributions by most of the regulars on this forum, almost none of whom are "professionals" by your definition.

Okay, guys, I think I can see both points of view. C'mon, it's Christmas. Group hug!

DeShaker is a wonderful tool for me because it makes my stuff look really good. For those times when I'm recording while walking, it gives this wonderful "floating" feel that I just couldn't get without an expensive rig and an operator who really knew what he was doing.

Is DeShaker perfect? Heck no. First, it takes a lot of processing power, and that takes time. Secondly, it slightly softens resolution in the vertical axis. If I shoot in HDV and burn to DVD, the loss is never noticed, but it will become more evident if/when I release that footage in an HD format. Thirdly, it has the potential to create some messiness at the outer edge of the video frame, which has to be minimized somehow or covered up--I use a technique that does a bit of both. Then there are times when you want the "feel" of handheld.

Still, I personally just love a well-done SteadiCam 30-second shot in a Hollywood movie, and I also love being able to do something roughly similar with my own work.

Merry Christmas to all.



EDIT:

I've had a chance to download the trial version of Mercalli and play with it a bit. First off, the "personality" of the program bothers me a bit. I can understand the desire to simplify the complex business of stabilization, but when I see choices in the menu such as "Versatile: fastest image stabilization" versus "Versatile: reliable image stabilization" then I think maybe the words are getting in the way. Doing a trial on a couple of hand-held shots and comparing the results to DeShaker leaves me a bit, er, shaken. The Mercalli clips still have a kind of judder to them while the DeShaken ones are very steady, with very gradual motion. Still, I've just scratched the surface of the Mercalli program and perhaps there is a far more suitable combination of settings that I need to tease out before passing final judgement.

The edge correction, too, leaves much to be desired. The best (non zoom) method that Mercalli can do is to take the pixel values at the edge of the usable image and kind of "smear" them over to the edge of the frame. This produces a kind of weird blur that is very noticeable and, to me at least, objectionable. By contrast, DeShaker looks ahead or back by a user-definable number of frames and tries to throw something into the black area that is a reasonably-good match. Surprisingly, most of the time it works, though there are ways to break it.

I also have to agree that it's a lot nicer having a plug-in right inside Vegas with which to do stabilization, rather than rendering to an intermediate format, opening up VirtualDub, loading the video, adjusting the windows, loading the default DeShaker setting for Pass 1, sitting on my hands, appending a dummy video clip, loading the Pass 2 settings, waiting some more, then copying the resulting clip back into Vegas, remembering to sync it with the audio and removing the dummy frames at the beginning. Whew! I assume the process would be a LOT easier with the DeShaker script many of you have used, but I haven't gotten around to it. Yet.

CClub,

Actually, John was much more snide than I ever was. Believe it or not, there are many folks out there that don't put as much effort into acquisition as they should. Whether it's buying a better tripod or keeping their hands off the zoom rocker. Erratic panning or excessing zooming are the trademarks of amateur video. You shouldn't have the mindset that you can "fix everything in post"

DGates,
I think those are all excellent points. There are many of us who have learned much from this forum, and anyone could take these comments and move forward with them. Thanks.

I wonder if we may come back to the question of stabilization using the Mercalli De-Shaker Plug In as we seem to have been distracted by a debate about the ideal of shooting steady footage in the first place. The fact of the matter is that many users of all standards find the need to try to correct unsteady footage. Isn't this is what we are trying to consider here?

I downloaded the demo version of Mercalli but it does not work with Vegas 6.x apparently because it fails to compile the script – a point seemingly born out above by Jordan and Jonny Roy. I understand that there are few scripting changes between Vegas 6 and 7 and that scripts compiled in 6 work fine in 7. If this is the case it would seem reasonably easy for an expert to adapt the script to allow the plug in to work with version 6.x.

I for one would be very interested in acquiring such a script and I suspect a large number of us are still wedded to Vegas 6 (whether because they are not yet ready to move into the HD world for cost or other reasons or because of the number of reported stability problems with version 8 or because of apparent conflicts with Windows Vista). It would be a huge disappointment to those of us still using version 6 if we cannot look forward to using the de-shaker.

My question is really whether anyone knows an expert who could compile the necessary script or whether anyone has this script on offer or for sale?

Best Wishes,

Richard Jones

> I understand that there are few scripting changes between Vegas 6 and 7 and that scripts compiled in 6 work fine in 7. If this is the case it would seem reasonably easy for an expert to adapt the script to allow the plug in to work with version 6.x.

Actually it's more complex than that. Leaving out changes in the actual Script API you still have problems. Vegas 6 uses the .Net 1.1 engine and Vegas 7 uses .Net 2.0 engine and Vegas 8 Pro uses the .Net 3.0 engine. Unfortunately, the way Sony implemented scripting in Vegas 8 Pro, it will not load .Net 1.1 compiled scripts. So you can write a compiled script that works in Vegas 6 & 7 by using .Net 1.1 to compile. You can compile a script that works in Vegas 7 & 8 by using .Net 2.0 to compile but you absolutely cannot compile a script that works in Vegas 6, 7 & 8. It has nothing to do with changed in the Vegas Script API and everything to do with changing the way the script engine works in every single release.

> I suspect a large number of us are still wedded to Vegas 6 (whether because they are not yet ready to move into the HD world for cost or other reasons or because of the number of reported stability problems with version 8 or because of apparent conflicts with Windows Vista)

Well there's a lot more to Vegas 7 & 8 than HD. Part of keeping your software current means getting to use the latest plug-ins that take advantage of new functionality. You cannot expect plug-in developers to continue to support releases that are 2 versions behind the current version although many of us do (VASST supports 6, 7 & 8 with it's latest Scripts). Most developers support the current version -1 (i.e., the current and the last version). It just gets too costly to maintain 3 or 4 versions of the same code and keep them all in sync, not to mention the cost of testing on all of those versions every time you make a fix.

> My question is really whether anyone knows an expert who could compile the necessary script or whether anyone has this script on offer or for sale?

You would need the source code to recompile the script under .Net 1.1 so that it works with Vegas 6. No one but proDAD would have that source code. If the rest of Mercalli also uses .Net 2.0 or 3.0 you would then need all of the source code for the product and even then it may not be possible if Mercalli take advantage of .Net 2.0 or 3.0 runtime functions that are not in .Net 1.1 (which is all Vegas 6 can use).

In short, you need to ask proDAD to add support for Vegas 6. No one else is going to hack this out. If enough people are still using Vegas 6 as you suggest, I assume it would be in their best interest to provide you with a version that works. It can't hurt to ask them.

~jr

JoonyRoy,

Many thanks - why can't life ever be simple?

I've approached ProDAD with the suggestion that they write a version for Vegas 6 but I accept your point about a firm not always being willing to write something for the past.

Best Wishes,

Richard

JonnyRoy,

Just to let you know that I received a quick response from ProDAD to say that they now acept that their Mercalli De-Shaker will not work with Vegas 6 and that there is no intention of adapting the Plug In to make it work with this particular editing programme.A great shame.

The decision now is whether to upgrade to Version 8 (expensive) and install Mercalli (costly) or to accept the cheaper (free) alternative of staying with Version 6 , installing Virtual Dub with its deshaker Plug in and downloading John Meyer's script to adapt it to Vegas.

Thinking time!

Best Wishes,

Richard

Purchaged Boris RED 4 because of the Optical Stabilization which looked good in the demo. And because it was kinda recommended on the VASST site.

Was very disappointed to find it would not work in Vegas 8 due to the Vegas plugin interface. Wish the RED documentation / promo page had mintioned that!

Have problems exporting from RED.
1. Won't write readable AVII > 2G.
2. Preview looks OK, but render shows the image moving around in the frame - that is, there are black bars on the edges that change size AND the image is still not stable as in the preview.
3. RED has memory management problems / a memory leak. Sometimes get 'not enough memory' messages, sometimes not. They can appear at different times in a clip.
Tried to 'render through Vegas':
1. Preview and RAM preview looks OK.
2. Preview to disk or export - the playback is 2x and not all of the clip is played. That is, for about the first half of the clip it appears to play back at greater than normal speed then the last half is blank. Note that it does not play back the entire clip in the first half.

Tried SteadyHand but it fails after startup - just goes away. No messages, error windows - nothing.

Tried DeShake and it appears to work well. But select clip, render out of Vegas, import, deshake, exprot, input to Vegas and align is a real pain.
Tried the script which works OK, but always 'hangs' in step 2. This has happened for each clip tried. It happened at different 'places' that is, location / time into the clip. Have to end the task using Windows Task Manager . Get a message saying it had a probem. Sometimes Vegas ends as well.
The script would be nice if I could get it to work.

Tried the Mercalli demo. Wroks great in Vegas 8a. However, it appears to me that the boarders are 'wider' thatn those using DeSahke - although I could be wrong.

Yes, I do see some blured frames, but that is likely to intra frame movement.

If anyone has any suggestions on any of the above, I would greately appricate any help in getting something to work with as little extra 'workflow' as possible.

Thanks.

Paul Masters

> Tried the Mercalli demo. Wroks great in Vegas 8a. However, it appears to me that the boarders are 'wider' thatn those using DeSahke - although I could be wrong.

Mercalli has three options for borders. Did you try them all? The "dynamic border" option does a good job while the "without border (upscaled)" option will eliminate the borders completely at the sacrifice of resolution. A small price to pay to fix really shaky footage.

> I would greately appricate any help in getting something to work with as little extra 'workflow' as possible.

That would have to be Mercalli since it's the only one that plugs into Vegas. Everything else has extra external steps. I really like the output from DeShaker but I bought Mercalli for the convenience. With DeShaker I found myself deciding which shots I would "go through the trouble" of deshaking and realized that i should not have to make that decision. I should do all of the ones that needed it. Mercalli was the obvious choice to meet that goal.

~jr

JoonyRoy,

Impressed as ever by your knowledge, experience and readiness to help.

I've heard that it takes significantly longer to render when some clips have been stabilized using Mercalli (and far longer than if any of the pre-installed Vegas FX have been used). I suppose some slow-down is almost inevitable but is this your experience? And would you say that the increase in rendering time is of any great significance (I know this will depend on the number and extent of the fixes you have made but does it, for example, increase minutes into hours)?

By the way, I've taken the plunge and sent for the Vegas 8 Upgrade and will download the updates when I install it. Looking forward to trying it.

Best Wishes,

Richard Jones

> I've heard that it takes significantly longer to render when some clips have been stabilized using Mercalli (and far longer than if any of the pre-installed Vegas FX have been used).

Richard,

I have not seen this at all. Of course it depends on what presets you use because some presets on Mercalli are labeled that they will take longer but I have not seen that much of a slow down even using some of those presets.

To do a little test, I just took 15 seconds of hand-held football game footage (one play) and I ran it through DeShaker and Mercalli and here is what I measured:

DeShaker:
Pass 1: 01:35
Pass 2 (Render Adaptive Zoom): 00:10

Mercalli:
Analysis: (Rescue highly shook w/upscale): 00:13
Render: 00:12

I used the adaptive zoom and upscale settings for borders in both because they had this in common. The footage from Mercalli actually looks a little more stable to my eyes and as you can see DeShaker took a total of 1 min 45 seconds while Mercalli only took 25 seconds total.

Mercalli was a whole lot faster to give the same results in my test. Not only that but it took me a second to drop Mercalli onto an event in Vegas and press the analyze button and I was done. DeShaker required me to export the clip, process it in VirtualDub and re-import it into my project. A significant pain in the you-know-what.

When I purchased Mercalli I had just done this football highlight video for a friend of mine's son. I spent hours exporting his shaky footage and processing it in DeShaker and re-importing and keeping track of everything. I left some of the less shaky footage in the video because I just got tired of all the importing and exporting. Mercalli would have saved me all those hours and I would have used it on all the footage that needed it so I immediately purchased it so that I'd have it for the next time (I've done these highlight videos before and it's always from footage that I did not shoot). ;-)

You can try this yourself. If you don't have any hand-held footage it's always easy to make some. ;-) VirtualDub and DeShaker are free and the Mercalli demo runs forever it just puts a big red X on the footage. For my money it's faster and easier to use. The only thing DeShaker does better is the border option that uses previous and next frames to fill in the border. I wish Mercalli had this but other than that I'm really happy with it.

~jr

Many thanks JonnyRoy.

Clear, informative and persuasive. I'm fairly certain which way I'm likely to be going now.

Best Wishes,

Richard Jones

Thanks for the response. Your comments to others were helpfull too.

By wider boarders, I mean that with no boarder processing in either product, the DeShake black boarders appear to be narower / smaller than the Mercalli. I havn't run any test, it just 'looks' that way to me.

Another thing, in Mercalli (demo) I set all values to highest - including the stablity one to tripod. However, there was still some movement in the result - not much but it was there. Their help implies that with tripod setting there is supposed to be no movement (of course the boarder will be larger).

Also, would anyone know? The different profile selections in Mercalli set the user adjustable settings differently for each. But, is there some internal process that is different? That is, if the first profile is used and the user options are set to, say, the higest, is that different from selecting a profile that causes the user options to be set the same?

Thanks.

Paul Masters

OK I have Mercalli now and for the most part like it very much. It stabilizes moving footage much better than the deshaker script. Faster and more versatile too.

The one thing I'm having trouble doing though that I could do pretty well with Deshaker is to stabilize a static hand-held interview where I am holding the camera steady with a shoulder mount, doing my best impersonation of a tripod. With Deshaker I could really steady a static interview shot up. With Mercalli I can't seem to. Does anyone have any idea of what settings I should use to best stabilize a static (or at least attempted static) shot?