[Fabio Mereghetti]

Just because I like to understand, let me ask you something.

1) If I don’t generate any media in a DV + HDV timeline and I would like to render to a deinterlaced output, which of the following settings will be part of the process and will influence the output results?

Thanks again.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

It doesn’t work.

Even putting Mercalli in “pre”, with the static border output, when I open the pan/crop window I don’t see the black borders. And if I set “dynamic border” ON, in the pan/crop window I don’t see the cropped frame (by Mercalli) moving around as in the preview window.

I think the only way to apply a manual cropping after applying Mercalli is to render to lossless and import the rendered clip in place of the dry one and then apply your manual pan/crop.

It seems that pan/crop is always put before the effects chain. I tried with cookie cutter and it’s the same.

Thanks.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

With just Mercalli and pan/crop I see no arrows.

If I add another FX then I can see the arrows appear.

Thanks.

Do you know if it is possible to apply Mercalli to different events in batch?

Thanks again.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

Thanks.

Am I doing something wrong or it is not possible to have Mercally in “pre” and pan/crop in “post”?

Shall I have to render to cineform before being able to apply a manual crop?

So, in order to get the smoothest slow motion effect starting from an HDV 1440×1080 50i 1.3333 footage shot by hand to be outputted to DVD widescreen 720×576 50i (or it is better 25p?) which is the more productive (in terms of quality) workflow?

I will attemp my one:

1 – capture as it was shot – 1440×1080 50i m2t
2 – apply Mercalli with static border and no scaling
3 – render to Cineform HD or other editable lossless codec
4 – apply manual cropping (and occasional pan, if you need) with “Stretch to fill” ON
5 – render to Cineform HD 1440×1080 50p with interpolation and smart resampling ON [Eugenia’s hint] (or use a dedicated plugin, if you have)
6 – apply your slow motioning with playback speed and/or velocity envelopes
7 – render to Cineform HD 25p (progressive or interlaced?) to be able to insert the slowed clips into the main 25p project
8 – enjoy!

@John: how did I score? Did I get the 50% right, at least?

Thanks.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

I would apply Mercalli before the slo-mo. Mercalli is expecting the video to be real-time when it estimates the motion. It will see a fast camera jerk and smooth it out. If you slow it down, it might see a slow jerk, think that it’s a deliberate camera move and keep it in.

So, it is better to apply Mercalli to the original HDV 50i (50 “half-frames”) then to the interpolated 50p (50 “full frames”)?
Of course, in this case the project settings frame rate will be 50 fps.
I made a copy of the template I’m using in my project and created a new template with the same exact name but with “prodad mercalli” at the beginning: is this the only way to tell mercalli which template to use when rendering the effected clip?

What about interlacing? Shall I have to leave the clip interlaced or it is better to do some de-interlacing before applying Mercalli?

Thanks.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

If you rendered using Vegas’ DVD PAL Widescreen setting then your render is 720×576 PAR 1.4568. If other programs are interpreting that incorrectly then that’s their mistake. the video is “physically” 720×576 and if you take a snapshot from the Vegas timeline it will correctly give you a 1049×576 still image.

Gspot says the file PAR is 1.422.

I tried with Mainconcept and CCE but the result is the same.

I also see a lot of this kind of issues (1.422 vs 1.4568) but
I haven’t found the ultimate answer.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid, this would lead to a quality loss even
at the last stage when the DVD player or the TV will stretch the
1024 to fill the 1049 width.

This is really strange…

Now, let me take advantage of your vast experience as a Mercalli user;-)

I have many clips I shot with a Canon HV40 in my hand, mostly with my arm stretched over my head. I was shooting an essay gymnastics and there are a lot of trembling, quick nasty movements and trials to follow the performer resulting in uneven panpotting. To me, it sound as the best source Mercally would like to deal with…

All these clips were shot and captured in HDV 1440×1080 50i (Italy is a PAL land).

I’m using Expert v1019. I tried some of the presets but it’s not easy to know if there is one that works better than the others.
I read the Mercally manual but I think people experience it’s always the most valuable thing to seek: have you any advice to give to me?

I see you gave me the first one already – to convert to 1920×1080 PAR 1.0: why are you giving me this hint? Just to be able to crop to 1/1920 instead of 1/1440 or for some other reason too?

I’m doing some “Extras” to put into the DVD I will distribute to the other parents involved. The nicest is a slo-mo to 1/4 of just the somersault after a normal speed run. To get the smoothest slo-mo effect I’m following the advice to transform the clip from 50i to 50p and do the slowing after that: is it better to apply Mercalli before or after the 50i to 50p conversion?

I’m using Cineform HD during all my editing process: will Mercally introduce any softness when applied even if I don’t use its scaling function?

Thank you.

Maybe I will try to put a clip somewhere to let you see the defects I’m working on.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

Thanks again.

I tried and rendered a 1440×1080 1.3333 clip to a Mainconcept DVD Widescreen mpeg 2 (720[1049]x576) format and I got this results:

1 – If I crop to match the ouptput aspect ratio, the output I get is 1024×576, measured with a screen capture utility with the file open in VLC or MPC HC.

2 – If I don’t crop to match the output, I get an image of the same size if I consider the two black bands on the sides (pillarboxed?).

So, in fact, no 1049 but 1024 instead: how do you explain that?

If I crop to, let’s say, 1216×890 and render + project settings are at DVD wide (720 [1049]x567), will I loose more quality than rendering the original 1440×1080 to the same DVD wide template?

I’m asking this because I’m deshaking some hand-taken clips with Mercalli Expert v1 but I want to have the complete control over the cropping. Since I’m starting from a 1440×1080 clip to get a 720×576 output I think there is room enough to avoid upscaling and borders rebuilding. Am I correct?

Thanks.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

First of all, thank you for the time you’re spending to help me. Second, double thank you for your taking me “by hand” through the little misteries of digital video standards.

Now, let’s dive into the matter…

I created a new project with Widescreen DVD PAL settings. Then I imported an HDV clip (1440×1080 50i) into the timeline.

At this point what do you see? When I start a PAL DV Widescreen project and I drop HDV 1440×1080 PAR 1.3333 footage into it I see two black pillarboxes on either side of the preview. Is that what you see?

Correct. Provided that “Scale video to fit preview window” is ON (right clicking on the preview window).
Let me mention here also that if “Simulate device aspect ratio” setting is OFF the content of the frame is vertically stretched (a circle will look as a vertical ellipses). I mention this because only very recently I started to know that each format has its own “pixel shape”, has,n it?.
With different preview settings we see different “Display” dimensions:
with “Simulate…” OFF and “Scale…” ON circle=ellipses and dims 686×549
with “Simulate…” OFF and “Scale…” OFF circle=ellipses and dims 720×576.
with “Simulate…” ON and “Scale…” OFF circle=circle and dims 1049×576.
With “Simulate…” ON and “Scale…” ON, circle=circle and dims 781×429.

Is all that correct?

I selected the event and then opened the pan/crop window. After I right clicked on the frame, in the crop window, and chose “match output aspect”, I can see the crop area has become 1440×1054.4.

That’s exactly what I see and it makes perfect sense when you do the math. HDV is 16:9 and PAL Widescreen is slightly wider that 16:9 (1049×576 is wider than 1024×576 which is 16:9).

Sorry, I was expecting to see a cropping area with the same dimensions of the output. Now I understand that it matches just the output aspect ratio.
While we are here, let me clear one doubt.
As we’ve seen above, the same video can be said to have different dimensions and so aspect ratios, according to different project and preview settings (not to mention rendering ones): if I want to crop “by numbers” (instead of “by contents”), which one I have to take as reference?

In the preview window, set at “Best”, I can now see two small black lines at top and bottom of the frame.

I can’t imagine how that happened.

I unchecked both “Mantain aspect ratio” and “Stretch to fill frame” in the crop dialog.

Before going on to talk more of cropping, I have another main concern and it is about the Preview window and the “Video preview in external monitor” feature.
I would be happy with just the Preview window but, if I understand correctly, there is no color management there so you see very different color than the ones you’ll get in the ouput. So I need to use the color managed external monitor preview, right?

I’m working on a 1600×1200 LCD monitor and I don’t have any other output devices so I’m using the “Windows secondary display” as output device. Now it is set like that:
Display adapter = 1600×1200 (60) – no othere choices
Display mode = Pick custom settings (1600×1200 (60) – no 1440×1080 settings in the list, here
Scale output to fit display = OFF – 1600×1200 is bigger than 1440×1080 so no scaling required, right?
Apply deinterlace filter = no
Use color management = ON – I use a custom profile

With project settings like HDV 1440×1080 PAR 1.3333, the preview on the external monitor is always using all the 1600 pixels for the width: do I have to think that 1440×1080 is always rendered as 1920×1080ù’ (as the “Display” dims shows if I set the “Scale video to fit preview window” at OFF) If yes: why? And then: how this will influence the cropping?

Thanks again.

P.S.
If you think this subject, and the way we are treating it on this thread, could be useful for other people too, I’ll be glad to help taking it on a more general path along the way.

Fabio

P.P.S
Isn,t there a “Quote” button in this forum? I see only “Replay”, “Like” etc…

[Fabio Mereghetti]

mmm…

I created a new project with Widescreen DVD PAL settings.
Then I imported an HDV clip (1440×1080 50i) into the timeline.
I selected the event and then opened the pan/crop window.
After I right clicked on the frame, in the crop window, and chose
“match output aspect”, I can see the crop area has become 1440×1054.4.
In the preview window, set at “Best”, I can now see two small black lines at top and bottom of the frame. I unchecked both “Mantain aspect ratio” and “Stretch to fill the frame.

Shouldn’t the crop area size become 720×576 as the project properties video settings?

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

[Fabio Mereghetti]

Would it be possible to mod the script to make it assign the media name to its region?

I created many named subclips and I have to convert them all from 50i to 50p as a first step in order to get a smoother slow motion effect.
I put them all on a single track and I would like the 50p files created automatically with the “Batch render with region names” script could retain the original subclip name.

Thanks.