Hi Jillian and thanks for the reply. I upgraded to MS12 so I could have the benefit of the 64 bit version on my W7 64 bit PC. It renders more quickly than before but I am not happy with some features that were fine in VMS11; stabilisation being one. In VMS11 stabilisation was easy and worked very well, but in MS12 it is a real pain. I will investigate Mercalli. I see there is a Mercalli Easy at about $15 as well as the Pro version. I will open a ticket with Sony just for the hell of it and see what they say. I will post again if and when I have some answers.

Regards BobH

Hi again Jillian, well I got fed up and bought Mercalli Easy (£12 approx in UK). It is very easy to use and I am trying it now and will post again afterwards. One question, my source video is AVCHD 50P from a Panasonic TM700. When I render in Mercalli, what options could I use and which would be the best option to use?
BobH

Hi Bob,

I've never used Mercalli Easy, only the Plug-in with Avid and Adobe, so don't know what options Easy offers. But, since Easy is intended to be an "easy" program, I don't imagine it will have many settings. I'm sure it won't have any AVC capabilities, but it should have mpg, wmv and avi. You're using progressive H264 video, so mpg would probably be your nearest match and avi a non-starter. If it's available, I'd start with mpg at the highest quality setting.

What I would do is select a clip that needs some stabilization. Load it into Marcalli Easy and let Mercalli process the clip. Then render the processed clip to all the available codecs at their highest settings.

Now, open MS12 and see if you can import and add to the timeline any of the processed and rendered clips. I would also add the original clip between each processed clip so you can easily compare each processed and unprocessed clip/event. Finally, render the timeline to a high-quality AVC or MPG file. Studying the resulting video will tell you if Mercalli is improving the clip, and which codec is giving the best overall results in the finished product. After all, that's what you're after, the best looking final product!

Once you decide on the best codec to use, then I would select a half dozen or so clips with different stability problems, and repeat the test with the selected codec to see which are helped and which are hurt by being stabilized. Some clips are improved by stabilization, and some are made much worse. In all cases, you will lose resolution and frequently contrast with stabilization.

If a clip has too much horizontal or vertical movement, stabilization will remove the small shakes and exaggerate the big movements because you've zoomed in, and soon your audience will be sea-sick!

Again, sorry I can't give any specific advice on Mercalli Easy. As I said, I use the Mercalli Plug-in with Avid and Adobe, but the plug-in for Sony is too rich for my blood, especially since I already have two versions.

Best of luck.

Jillian

PS - I tried 60P from a Panasonic 900, but have gone back to 60i since the final product actually seems to look a little better on a BluRay or DVD, which is where my videos end up.

Hi Jillian and thanks for the suggestions, I will investigate. Mercalli Easy offers the following options to render:

WMV Progressive at Low, good, high quality,
WMV Standard ditto
Microsoft MPEG-2 ditto
Video for Windows with options DV Video Encoder, MJPEG Compressor, Cinepak Codec by Radius, Helix 1420 YUV Codec, Intel YIUV Coec, Microsoft RLE, Microsoft Video 1, Helix YV12 Codec.

ATI-Avivo MPEG-2 with Low, good, high and also options for SVCD and DVD.

ATI-Avivo MPEG-4 with MPEG 4 Low, good, high and also MPEG-4 DivX ditto.

ATI-Avivo AVC/H264 with low, good high.

ATI-Avivo Sony PSP with low, good, high.

So quite a few options although some mean very little to me. You select an option; there is no way to set bit rate etc. I used ATI-Avivo AVC/H264, high quality on my first attempt and it seemed to do a good job. Wondering whether the WMV-Pr5ogressive might be better. Any further comments appreciated.

BobH

Hi again,

It looks like Easy uses your installed codecs, rather than being limited to its own. It also looks like you have K-Lite(?) installed, so you have enough options to meet any needs.

I haven't used the ATI-Avivo codecs, but the AVC/H264 should be a great match for your video at high quality. Your only real way of knowing is to try it out and see 1) how it looks, and 2) if Movie Studio will import your stabilized clips.

Since Easy looks like it will use any codec on your computer, you should be able to get great rendering results... the only question will be how well Easy actually stabilizes the clip. I look forward to hearing your results.

Jillian

Hi Jillian and once again thanks for the comments. I will need to do some further study with the various options using a few clips. The AVC/H264 seemed to do a good job and it works fine in MS. Stabilisation seems to be pretty good thiugh probably not as good as the Pro version.

BobH

Bob H....
As I don't seem to be able to use the FX Stabilizer "apply " button I downloaded the free version of Mercalli easy....as a trial...
How do I stabilize a shaky short clip of my movie?
From within SVMS 12 64bit plat.version, (How?)
or do I have to render that clip and import it onto Mercalli? and import it back into VMS 12?
Thanks....

Hi Nel, The Easy version does not install into MS12 and is a stand alone version. Open Mercalli and drag your clip to the window. Stabilisation will start straight away. Then save the stabilised clip using one of the options available. If your clip was BobH.MTS then the saved clip will be BobHmercalli.MTS (if you used this save option). So it adds mercalli to the name. Then replace the clip in MS12 with this new clip. Rename it if you want. It does not take long and I guess the number of clips you want to stabilise will be quite small. I hope this helps.

BobH

Mercalli Easy zooms in quite a bit.
I uploaded a test comparing it to Youtube stabilization.
This would be considered "worst case" handheld footage.
Pardon the audio sync, it was my oversight.



I've also uploaded 1080p to Youtube, stabilized there, then downloaded the result and used it in projects with surprisingly good results.

Thanks, Bob,.... I "stabilized" the clip.... but once back into VMS 12.... it lost its HD quality.... reduced to mpeg.... and shrank the picture..... not really what I want....
I guess the purple lines across the screen is because it is a trial version? ...

Hi Nel, my footage is AVCHD 1920x1280 progressive (50), so when I save using Mercalli I select the ATI-Avivo AVC/264 option at high quality. Yes some reduction in quality but at least the clip is stabilised very well.

BobH

Thanks,,,, I tried the 4 format options offered...... didn't see ATI-Avivo AVC.... I guess it is not available in the trial version..... There are 2 options WMV , one mpeg and one for video for windows.... the only "decent" seems mpeg with profile high quality....
It seems simple enough to use on the trial version.... I hope it is so, in the easyt version.
Nel'

I see the same. I suspect that the other options come from the graphics card software.

Hi again, my post above gives the options I have. On my W7 64bit I have a Radeon 5770 graphics card if that helps.

BobH