ProDad sells an upgrade of the Mercalli stabilizer that is supposed to work with high definition video.  However, the information does not clarify whether it encompasses any HD clips one drags to the Studio timeline, or only HDV-MPEG2 at 1440x1080i.  Will it stabilize AVCHD without prior transcoding?  How about other h.264, QT, MOV, and MJPEG HD formats?  How about 1920x1080?

Two months and no comments?  I must be the only guy who shoots any action or high-zoom shots with any shake, jitter, or waver.

All I know is that when I try to stablize an AVCHD clip with Mercalli "lite," it lets me toy with the settings and "stabilize" (with a watermark) but the things I want to stabilize just plain don't.  Example: a bird, whether flying or sitting on a branch.  I tried again after converting the clip to HDV2, but with no improvement.  To alter the settings seems merely to add or remove an element of lag or blur to the shakiness, not iron it out.

Either the "lite" version does not function at all with AVCHD or HDV (despite yielding "sample" results with watermark) or the "expert" version does not work either and to pay for the upgrade would be futile. 

Comments or guidance welcome.

 

 --- I must be the only guy who shoots any action or high-zoom shots with any shake, jitter, or waver ---

Or the only one to admit it. I'll downloaded the light version last night so will try and find some shakey HD work of mine (shouldn't be too hard to find) and try out.

Regards

Keith

JKoch

I've fiddled with Mercalli lite on some dodgy Canon HV20 1440x1080 m2v videos being trying to interview someone while using hand held and walking, and a light aicraft taking off using a tripod but with pretty rough pan motion.

Despite comments that lite will not render HDV files, apparently it does albiet with the watermark. Now the walking hand held shot was dramatically improved and could almost be useful. No sucess at all with the pan shot though. In regards to HDV shots, mine are now all using tripod or hand held for effect only so not much use for full blown Mecalli.

Tried lite on some old 8mm converted film shots and we all know how jumpy they are. Lite performed OK at best but certainly improved the overall effect. For fixing up such video, I could almost consider the full version. Interesting that watermark still appeared in SD project using lite. What use is lite then if everything is watermarked.

Does expert work with HDV? Dunno. Does lite work with HDV? In some tests yes, in others not so good.

Sorry can't be much more help

Regards - Keith H

Mercalli Expert works with AVCHD. I have used it several times and it works very well.

For a plugin as Mercalli the video format of the source and the destination video format does not matter as the plugin only gets full decompressed frames that are independent from the used format. The only thing what matters is the frame size.

I hope this helps.  

Harold

 

JKoch:

Two months and no comments? 

I must confess I missed the original request, but given the number of requests I've made that haven't been responded to, I wouldn't get too depressed.   If it weren't for Peter (Colour) or Jeff(JJN) there'd be lots more orphans out there.

Getting to your question:  Yes, Mercalli Expert works with AVCHD.  I usually convert to HDV before editing, but I just ran a trial on a 1440x1080 AVCHD clip so I could answer your question and it worked fine, with the caveat that as with all movement adjustment, there was a trade-off.  If you want the movement fixed in the centre of the screen, you either have to go for a lower quality overall (sluggishness) or a dynamic border.