ProDad Mercalli V4SAL

[pepegota]

I agree with you Ken. Too much obfuscation with next to no improvement, the high cost notwithstanding.

[RobertOZ]

I would have been disappointed if I had paid $US299 for this program, but reasonably happy with $US99
Have been testing Mercalli V4 and the results are somewhat better than V2 included with VSX9, a comparison of the 2 versions plus the original video are shown in the attached link. I could possibly do some more tweaking to see if it can be improved

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kachj4hruwzrp ... n.m2t?dl=0

[Skipper]

Well done Robert! Your example shows a clear benefit - are you sure you are not on ProDAD's payroll? (Just joking) , but that is a very good show of the potential from V4. It puts the use of "fair" video into the category of "very usable", something which I have not been able to comfortably say about the V2 pug-in. My original thread eludes to the use of video recorded whilst on both trains and boats but equally applies to any moving platform being extremely hard to get quality recording without quite sophisticated equipment which is out of the reach of most of us. V4 may not be the cure all for every need and miracle worker it is not but you have just proved it can be a very effective tool for those who take the time to learn how to use it. Good on you! I now need to get to that level myself. Skipper

[Ken Berry]

Thanks Robert. Shows things can be done. In my own experiments mentioned above, I certainly managed, like you, to get rid of just about all the jerkiness/vibration from my own test clip. But I could not help but notice that at your 12 sec mark in the Mercalli 4 clip, you had a momentary occlusion in from the left hand side of the screen. I had that happen too, and not just once but two or three times in a similar length clip. Nothing I did at the time seemed to eliminate it. And I have to say that the defect effectively made the clip annoyingly unusable for me.

When I play around some more, hopefully that will disappear. But as I said above, while my Mercalli 2 clip still came out with some jerkiness -- about the same degree yours shows -- it did not have the occlusion(s) and thus to me could still be used immediately in a project.

I still have to find the time, though, to play around some more!

[RobertOZ]

Managed to remove the occlusion from the 12 sec mark, by changing Best Stabilization to Best Border, however with some reduction in stabilization, the area between 7 sec and 14 sec needed intensive repair, so that's the area I am still working on

[Frogman]

Hey guys just wanted to jump in here. I just registered for the forum on the recommendation of Skipper (Noel). My name is Philip and I actually work for ProDRENALIN and have done most of the tutorials you find on our YouTube channel. I would be happy to answer questions. It appears you have been working with the Mercalli V4 SAL+ a bit.

First let me say Mercalli can do some pretty good fixes on your footage but like any filter it's not a magic bullet that fixes everything. I occasionally find a clip that just can't be fixed or the fixes are minimal. The clips that have the most problems are footage with high differences in contrast. Stuff like sun shining through trees or bright sun and dark shadows.

I see you did find it working pretty well in your dropbox clip. That section that was mentioned at 12 seconds where you see the left get "filled" in....You found some of the functionality causing that. There is a check box for Video Color Filling. If the bump in the footage is so bad (like in your example) it will fill in color based on your video to try and cover the black. You can untick that box and use the Avoid Border or other tweaks to eliminate that. However, sometimes a large jump in the footage like that may just be ok to leave in or just calm it down a bit.

If you check our YouTube channel out at ProDADUSA there are a number of tutorials I created for Mercalli V4 SAL+ that dive into some of those features and how they work.

Below is a clip some friends shot for me on some ATVs over holiday last summer. It was shot with a Sony 4K action cam and I used V4 SAL+ to fix it up. You can see in some of the comparison that there are a few spots where the shake was so bad it just left some in but the surrounding footage was much much improved. These are pretty extreme examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxMZOw2lXu0

There is a clip from RC cars on our channel as well that really show V4 SAL+ at work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0enPQg5xgAQ

The biggest difference in functionality between V2 and V4 was the addition of the CMOS correction for jello and wobble. This is where V4 really stands out. The stabilization was improved as well but the big wow factor was the jello/CMOS fix functionality.

I also saw the comment on a plugin for Video Studio and Corel products. I can explain a little on that. It's not that we don't want plugins for all the major apps like Corel, Adobe, Avid etc. The SDK plugin that passes the functionality back and forth is limited. In V2 the full functionality could be passed through the SDK easily and plugins were super easy to create. With V4 the SDKs limit the functionality that can be passed back and forth and in the 2 plugins we were able to create for Vegas and Edius, the output doesn't have the full power of V4 so the footage doesn't get fixed as much in the standalone version. I can't give much more of a detailed explanation on how that works or doesn't work as I'm not a developer other than to say the developers have really tried to make plugins for the major NLEs and many just didn't work (Adobe was not possible).

Hope that helps answer some questions. I hope to be of assistance if I can help you guys out.

[Collector]

Hello all,

For those who would like to buy ReSpeedr timeshift and extreme slow effects by ProDad, a tip:

type "Respeedr" ProDADin in Ebay.de. It costs initially 65€ but one can make an offer and we had it at 55€.

Good luck.

Collector