I have both Mercalli and the New Blue stabilizer plugIns. And I would agree that Mercalli produces a better stabilized image.

If you don't want to spend any money, give Deshaker a try.

Mike

as mentioned before - try mercalli v2
here's little sample - mercalli 2 in vegas 10, shot with ex1 (handheld):


you can get a demo from here: Mercalli Demo

Mercalli test versions place a red "X" over the output.

thanks everyone, currently testing Mercalli as we speak...not sure about all the ideal sttings though, I'll have to try them out. Shame they don't really offer any presets.

Here's a test I did a while back with my Panasonic TM700 (handheld) and Mercalli V2. As you can see, you can get near tripod like stabilization.



....Jerry

Mindmatter - try that:
mercalli settings
that's what i think i used for the helicopter shots

I have Syntheyes I could run it though. I'm assuming you have a piece or two you want to stabilize and don't want to spend much $$, eh?

I too would be happy to stabilize the clip with Mercalli v2 or Deshaker. However, if you didn't use a high shutter speed (at least 1/250) while filming, I think you are going to be disappointed with the results. Aerial footage from a low-level airplane or helicopter usually has some fairly abrupt bumps, and even if the stabilizer can handle it, the "bumped" frames will be blurred because the motion exceeds what the normal 1/60 (or 1/50 for PAL) shutter can sharply capture.

Also, if you use Mercalli, you definitely need to use the purchased version. The excellent settings given above are for the purchased version. The clip that Jerry posted above is what convinced me to purchase the full version (well, the full plugin version).

The fX included with V10 is scaled down and doesn't have all the necessary settings.

So, post a clip if you want one of us to stabilize it.

"The clip that Jerry posted above is what convinced me to purchase the full version (well, the full plugin version). "I'm going to repeat something that I've posted serveral times before. I've never been able to get the Standalone Version of Mercalli V2 to work well on my AVCHD source - 1 second renders, glitches in output, hangs in render.

However, once I learned the "secret", I found the Vegas plugins work great. The only foolproof method I've found for the Vegas stabilization has been to make sure Source Footage, Project Settings & Render Settings are all identical - then one can obtain outstanding results.

...Jerry

Jerry,

This may be related to what you are describing, but just yesterday I tried to stabilize some 16 fps progressive film captures, but the Mercalli plugin told me that it could not find a matching render template and that it was going to use the 15 fps progressive template (the "multimedia" template). Well, the stabilization failed to do anything with this template. I attempted to figure out how to create my own custom template, but apparently that is not possible. I searched the Internet and also search the ProDad site, but couldn't find anything either. I sent an email to ProDad support but haven't heard back from them yet, and somehow I have a hunch I'm not going to hear from them.

So, it appears that Mercalli works fine if your source footage exactly matches one of their render templates (which are used during the motion analysis phase of the stabilization), but if not, you will not get any stabilization at all.

I may try to hack one of their predefined templates (using a hex editor) and see if I can come up with something that works.

"I attempted to figure out how to create my own custom template, but apparently that is not possible"John,

I successfully created (and used) a custom template here:



In my case, Mercalli V2 tried to use the 29.97 fps Template to stabilize a 30.00 fps video event. So I used the 29.97 fps Template, changed it to 30.00 fps, saved it as a custom template and it worked fine.

Suggest you start with the 15 fps template & change to 16 fps.

Let us know if this works.
...Jerry

Wow this forum really stands out!

Thanks so much all of you gents for ll the input and offers to help, which I'll gratefully accept!
All my tests with the Vegas internal mercalli plug as well as the trial mercalli 2 were rather disappointing, it either crashed on the AVC file in spite of me installing all the additional codecs it asked me to, or did funny artefacts and lots of blurry stuff.
I have to admit that, as johnmeyer stated, there's quite a bit of jumpiness and heavy shakin' going on in this footage, so I kind of knew not to expet all too much , but I had hoped for better results. I honestly doubt there is much to save without paying a price on artifacts and such, but I'm open to whatever surprises there may be...
I'm currently uploading the file to my server, it's gonna take another hour or so for the roughly 4 min. 200meg AVC file ( HD 1080x720 in 25p, rendered from a full HD .mov file from my Canon), so if anybody wants to give it a try, please do so, I'll be happy to pay for your time via paypal. Don't quite wanna spend $250 just for this one clip...
The weather was very good but there was much morning haze in the air, so I slightly decreased the brightness, added some color saturation and contrast. If i had known that the IS on my Canon lenses works for video too, I could have reduced the dammage to some extent I guess. ( I used a Canon 17-85 IS , and a Tamron 11-16 without IS)

Here's the link:
http://claudepauly.net/claudeftp/naturpark%20ULMunst-notext.avc

edit: file is online now.

redpaw, thanks for the sttings - I'll give them a try in the demo version just to see how they work out.



thanks again to all of you and I'll keep in touch.

John, I ran into a different issue that is somewhat related. I often shoot 720p60, and then render to 720p30 for the web. You can use the Mercalli plugin to stabilize the 720p60 and it looks good on the timeline. But when you render to 720p30 you get the original unstabilized footage. I contacted ProDad support and they said the only way to do what I was trying was to render the stabilized 720p60 to a 720p60 intermediate, then bring that in and render it to 720p30.

/jerry (the other one)

>This may be related to what you are describing, but just yesterday I tried to stabilize some 16 fps progressive film captures, but the Mercalli plugin told me that it could not find a matching render template and that it was going to use the 15 fps progressive template (the "multimedia" template). Well, the stabilization failed to do anything with this template. I attempted to figure out how to create my own custom template, but apparently that is not possible. I searched the Internet and also search the ProDad site, but couldn't find anything either. I sent an email to ProDad support but haven't heard back from them yet, and somehow I have a hunch I'm not going to hear from them.

Jerry,

The first thing I tried is what you suggest. However, I cannot get Mercalli to recognize any render template. When I click on the "Start Video Analysis Here" button, I get the dialog that states that Mercallit cannot find a matching template.

I just tried again, and did exactly as you suggest above, but still no luck (note the alert box on the right side of the screen grab below):



I'm downloading the clip from the OP and will try stabilizing it in a moment.

John

Okay, here's a really quick-and-dirty attempt. MercalliTesting.zip

I'd really like to do a redo on this with the original source footage as it came out of the camcorder. Stabilizing across transitions make really crappy transitions (a technical term). Also, some of the final scenes may need more intensive analysis.

If you'd like to upload some of the original footage, I'll take another shot (and take some more time fiddling with settings).

...Jerry

johnmeyer said, "I just tried again, and did exactly as you suggest above, but still no luck (note the alert box on the right side of the screen grab below):"John,

Can you post or email me a couple seconds of your 16 fps footage? I'd like to take a shot at setting up the template.

...Jerry

I just tried, and Mercalli completely and totally failed to stabilize the clip. There was zero improvement. I am using the purchased v2 plugin version.

I then tried using Deshaker, and it worked perfectly. I'll post the result when I get a chance.

In both cases, I used "Rolling Shutter" compensation.

Jerry, if you were able to get any improvement whatsoever, I'd sure like to know your secret.

I tried downloading your clip, Jerry, but kept getting a "Server not found" error message.

Cool john, thanks a lot. Could you keep the file size settings as is, that'll be the final output for their screen, i'll just add some text underneath.

Jerry, it'll take me some time to locate the original single AVCHD clips, probably not before tomorrow afternoon. I'll try and zip them , upload the zip and keep you posted. Many thanks, downloading your quick'n dirty version just now.

"I tried downloading your clip, Jerry, but kept getting a "Server not found" error message. "Ha! You caught me! I purposely put an error in my URL until the upload finished. Try now. MercalliTesting.zip

...Jerry

WOW Jerry that looks amazing! I'd never thought it'd be that good...all the mercall attempts realy pale in comparison!
Could you do the whole clip with that setting? I agree the transitions are slightly crappy but I'm already really relieved with what I got now -do you still think it's worth the trouble doing every single clip?
Thanks ever so much!

Jerry,

I'm downloading your stabilized clip. I'm still wondering how you did it.

Here's a very short clip of my 16 fps film transfer:

16 fps raw film transfer

I've done no restoration on this, although it is the result of combining two captures, done at different exposures, effectively giving me an HDR version of the film capture.

Let me know when you get this. Since it is for a client, I don't want to leave the link out in the public space for too long.