Sharpen FX

[wsmyth]

I cannot find a thread that explains how to do this. I have a clip, attached. I have a VSP, attached. Both are in the ZIP file It is me waterskiing.

It is all one clip. I took out the Mercalli to be sure that this was not causing the problem. I drag and drop the Sharpen icon to the clip. I click Customize Filter. NewBlue Sharpen panel appears. I uncheck Use Keyframes. I set Strength to 100. The Preview Pane looks much sharper. I click OK. There is NO CHANGE in the sharpness of the clip or the project.

What am I doing wrong?

[lata]

Thanks for the VSP and sample video
I am seeing some unusual effects when trying to open your project.
The program 2018 is showing a re-link is required which is to be expected yet re-linking is disabled.
It is targeting a VSP on a One Drive when I expected to be looking for the MP4 video.
As though your project has been nested, (VSP added to timelines)
2018 08b Water Ski-007 make help.VSP.

I skip re-linking and can now see the Project Properties as using 1920 x 1080 yet set to 4:3 ratio, very odd.
Not being able Relink, I was able to Replace the clip which now showed some attempt to resize/crop the video frame from 4:3 to 16:9.
Your original video shows as 4:3 yet with borders in black, left and right to create the 16:9 frame

Can you upload your files again.
First download the video file from your One Drive to your pc, then using 2018 create the sharpen effect again, save the VSP to your PC, attach both files to your post.

Ok
Irrespective of the above the Sharpen tool does seem to be working.
If I double click the clip the options panel opens, I select the Effects tab
Here I see the filter list Sharpen is showing there.
I can now hit the X to remove the filter, Immediately I see the Preview screen change, a little blurred.
Hit Ctrl X to undo adds the filter, again I see the preview screen show a sharpening effect.

I assume you are trying to do several things here, crop out the black borders to create a 16:9 video.
I would use Customise Motion to do that, Add Mercalli Pro stabilisation, then render that to a new video file.
Using the new clip add Sharpen.

[wsmyth]

Thanks for responding, and I am sorry I did not get back to you sooner.

After many hours of testing, I found that the way to make the sharpen work is to either... 1) do the mods in this exact order: sharpen, customize motion, mercalli, or 2) do the customize motion and mercalli in one VSP edit and save an intermediate file, then do the sharpen in a separate VSP edit.

Doing the edits in this order in one VSP edit does not apply the sharpen: customize motion, mercalli, sharpen.

Be well and keep looking for birds. You have helped me with some other edits in the past.