Functional question re Ultimate Stabilization Features

[george7054]

Gawd, this would be the most uncontactable organization selling products I have ever experienced.
I wish to ask a question about VideoStudio Ultimate before I purchase it, so is this the only or right place to so that?

I'm primarily interested in the Mercalli stabilization in Ultimate.

I have downloaded the trial of ProDad Mercalli SAL, and trialled the options, which include the three cameras, Universal, Glide and Rock Steady, plus an option it ignore filling in borders.

Q1) Advertising of Ultimate keeps referring to Rock Steady Stabilization. Are all the camera options from Mercalli SAL available in VideoStudio Ultimate, because I have problems with the Meralli trial using it's Rock Steady camera option against moving subjects in my videos, so if that's the only selection in Ultimate, I'm out of luck.

Q2) Does Ultimate integrate other Mercalli options / settings like Avoid Borders Y/N etc?

Thanks in advance

[Ken Berry]

First off, if you think you are addressing Corel here, you would be wrong. Although on the Corel servers, as the name of the Board implies, we are a user to user Board, staffed by users who volunteer their time to help out others. None of us are paid by Corel. So any response here to your question is thus limited to what we as users have experienced with Mercalli.

First off, the version that comes with VS X6 is "2.1.106 Tech r. 68". I have no idea how this correlates to the latest stand-alone version of Mercalli that you have tested.

It includes the three camera modes you mentioned, plus one labelled "Alternative Camera". My own use of the filter relates mainly to footage from my GoPro Hero 3 which by its nature tends to get a lot of shake both in shots when it is fixed to a mount and in hand-held pans. Although I have used the Rock Steady option, my own preference for the Hero footage is the Glide camera since it seems to suit the idea of the Hero 3 better and appears to give smoother output. Moreover, with Glide, you get more options for the Avoid Borders function ranging from less zoom to more steady. This function also has a box which allows for "signalizing frames where a higher stabilization could be possible using 'Avoid Borders'". I confess, though, that I am not really sure what this means in practice.

As for your Q2, apart from my comments on Avoid Borders above, the VS version of Mercalli also provides options such as Roll Compensation, Zoom Compensation, Horizontal Tilt Compensation and Vertical Tilt Compensation. It also provides an option for Border Handling (Best Border/Best Stabilization/Fix Border).

I hope this helps.

[george7054]

Ken

Thank you VERY much for your informative reply. What others have actually experienced is usually better than what the marketers tell us, and you have answered all my questions, and your description of your experience 'gels' with what I think I got out of the trials.

I'm pretty ignorant on all of this stuff, and am not making feature movies. My usage is to take video of horse riders in lessons with hand held cheap camcorder, and I don't in the end care if there is a wobbly border, but want the clearest output where the subject is as steady as possible, and I was getting pretty close with the Glide camera myself.

Not yet up on the impact of the other things like roll and tilt compensation, but it sounds like if it gets important, I have access to the features within Ultimate.

I am looking at Corel VideoStudio because my experience of 30 years ago was the Ulead software was pretty good, and certainly the codecs in video studio are the ONLY ones out of the products I tested and bought (decided buying cheap packages like vReveal and Wondershare that only do part of the job, is just not cost effective in the end), where was I, yes, the VideoStudio codecs were the only ones that easily read the TS streams of all my favourite Red Dward episodes recorded on my LG PVR, where even the freeware TS Doctor couldn't read some of the recordings.

Thanks again for your time and effort

Ken Wakefield

[Ken Berry]

One thing I didn't say above is that I am quite impressed by the results I get using Mercalli with my Hero 3 footage. Some of the original footage I would simply have discarded if I had not known about this filter. It was unwatchable. Yet with the filter, while not being totally smooth, it nonetheless looks pretty smooth and not dissimilar to hand held video shot by someone who has a pretty firm grip (and some even better than that). I should note here that I often use a floating head tripod for some of my video, so I know about smooth!!

In addition to my Hero footage, I have also used Mercalli in X5 (as opposed to X6) on a long video I shot in Belgium using a Canon HV-20 (HDV) camcorder. The Canon has good inbuilt stabilisation, but on that particular day it was very cold and I am afraid that caused my hand to be more unsteady than usual. After applying Mercalli, you could almost believe I took it all on a tripod.

One other thing worth noting, though which you may already be aware of, the filter apparently produces progessive (i.e. frame based) video, as opposed to interleaved. It uses the mp4 extension, though is in effect equivalent to AVCHD. The footage I have produced from both the Hero and HV-20 uses 25 full frames per second (I am in a PAL country), and though progressive, it works just fine when I mix it with interleaved 25 fps (or 50i) video, be it HDV or AVCHD.

I have to confess that I have not yet tried it on full 50P/60P video, though I suspect there would be no difference in end quality. And I have used 50P Hero footage quite successfully in 50i video (both HDV and AVCHD), and also down-converted to standard def DVD quality mpeg-2 -- the latter also including quite a bit of footage processed by Mercalli.

As I say, I am impressed by the filter!

[wkf94025]

Ken,

First, I greatly appreciate your many informative posts throughout the forum. I have only been a VS Pro X6 customer for about a month. I cruise the forum for insight into better, faster, smarter ways of working, and I have learned a lot from your contributions.

I am shooting from a Hero 3+ attached to a Phantom quadcopter, or occasionally underwater. Image stabilization is my #1 issue (and #2, and #3...). I am learning a lot in the space of smooth flight, gimbals, etc., but will always need good post methods to improve image stability. I've read a fair amount about Mercalli and the other tool out there from Germany (can't recall its name at the moment). PhD level stuff that is fun to learn about.

I am downloading VSX6 Ultimate now, to get the additional filters for image stabilization, etc. It will take a couple hours on my slow pipe. In the meantime I continue to read about image stabilization on the forum, and found your post above. Questions:
1) I am amazed at the resolution/clarity and color saturation of the GoPro shooting in 1080p 60fps, and once addicted to that format, it's hard to watch it get muddled by rendering to 30fps and/or image stabilization. I have let YouTube stabilize some of my footage, and not all that impressed. I also have had a consultant use FCP on some of my footage, including whatever stabilization is in that tool, and I also see substantial loss of clarity/crispness, though the end result is substantially more stable than the raw footage.
2) My instability is 99% due to yaw (left/right panning) due to movement in the quadcopter. Curious if I can tell image stabilization only focus on fixing left/right instability, and it that reduces the muddling impact of stabilization.
3) Given the above, is it possible to carefully, surgically review a clip and apply image stabilization only to the second or so of yaw in the drone? Ideally without compromising the resolution and quality of the raw image.
4) I saw online somewhere a slick technique for taking one stable frame as a "base mask" to be underlain behind image stabilization by cropping, without zooming or other blunt sledge hammer methods of IS. Is such a technique possible in VSPX6?
5) Love to get a cook book script from anyone that can guide me through the best method of "yaw correction" with minimal damage to the crisp clear resolution coming off the Hero 3+

Sorry for the rambling, somewhat repetitive post. Very curious what you or others can advise.

Kelly