[Rich Kutnick]

Here is a link to the clips and the veg file:

https://www.cubby.com/p/_a199215092f4463398bf86fda4829631/Sony+TEMP

My PC specs:

Windows Version:7 64-bit
RAM:16GB
Processor:Intel i7-3820 CPU, 3.60GHZ
Video Card: NVIDIA 560GTX
Sound Card:Built in to motherboard
Video Capture: OHCI compliant IEEE 1394 built in to motherboard
CD Burner:
DVD Burner:Lite-On Blu-Ray Burner

Interestingly, when I view the veg file in Preview/Full the moving pics look great; in Best/Half the photos look good but are a bit soft; in Best/Full they are blurry with horizontal lines in them. Regardless how I render the veg, too (Logarith, Sony AVC, Sony AVC Blue-Ray, XDCam EX, WHATEVER!, the moving pics in the rendered file ALWAYS are blurry with horizontal lines in them!! In addition, the movement of these photos tends to be jerky, too!! Please look at the veg with the accompanying files and see if you can figure all of this out, per your gracious offer. Thanks in advance.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Thanks for the offer. I will need to get back to you and everyone else next week, as I may be on to something…

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

I hope so. My project properties are 1920 X 1080 60i as is some of my video footage(although the balance of the HD video footage is 1440 X 1080 60i 1.3333PAR, I was told that this is functionally equivalent to 1920 X 1080 60i). The photos, of course are progressive (they are JPG files taken by a professional videographer).

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Hi, Mike. I tried this same technique for a wedding video opening montage (2 JPG stills horizontally criss-crossing one above the other over an HD video clip–7 seconds), and I am experiencing a problem with the stills. The static PIPs over the video look great, but when I introduce motion via keyframing, the two stills become blurry and have thin, black horizontal wavy lines in them. The edited clip therefore is useless. Even viewing the edited clip in Best/Full, as well as pausing, shows this anomaly. I matched the stills to the output format and of course had to make them smaller (keeping the aspect ratio) to fit the screen for the criss-crossing. This happened when I created two unique edited clips with two unique stills and a unique HD video for each edited clip. The first video clip needed Mecalli stabilization and the second clip did not need any tweaking. I believe that I also followed each step of your method to the hilt. So do you have any idea why these two pics are going ballistic on me? Thanks in advance, Mike.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

No. Sorry for the confusion. I’m saying that once I perform the stabilization I check the quality of the enhanced clip in the Best/Full mode to confirm that it looks the way I want it to look finished. It doesn’t matter which preview mode you are in when you create an effect/transition, to the best of my knowledge. My problem was that the event look horrible even BEFORE I stabilized it in Vegas, yet it looked fine in Windows Media Player and VLC Media Player. Again, the trade off is speed/smoothness vs. resolution when editing, and I guess that we just have to keep switching back and forth between our editing and post-editing views (when using effects/transitions). Sometimes I forget which preview mode I’m in…

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Clip stabilized after your advice! How amazing it is that most of my problems are resolved by the uninstall/install routine!!! It also helps if the preview is put into Best-Full instead of Preview-Auto when confirming the effect (got rid of the jaggies–operator error on my part to have complained about the undulating video in the first place).

So, unlike the SAL, which requires that the new stabilized file be created and manually placed into the Vegas timeline, the event stabilized with the plug-in does not create a new file but rather references the original and the stabilization changes are done internally by Vegas (as with all other plug-ins), correct?

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

It’s weird! With the plug-in, processing appears to do nothing. With the SAL, it works like a charm. Also, the video in the original file on the Vegas 12 timeline (and the file processed with the Mercalli plug-in) have wavy lines that undulate, whereas the corrected SAL file on this same timeline is rock steady. However, the original file played back in Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player looks great in both players (albeit, with the shaky footage, though). Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

I hope that someone may be able to help resolve this issue soon. In the meantime, what the heck is wrong with the folks at ProDad? Here is their response to my like inquiry to them:

“Hello,

Thanks for your request.
Please install this codec pack K-lite.
https://www.prodad.de/support/files/K-Lite_CodecPack.exe (without any Updates)

Please import your clip in Mercalli SAL and check again.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / with kind regards

Uwe Wenz
Customer Support Manager”

Of course I did not install K-Lite, on the sage advice of my esteemed colleagues here, but what does it take to get this plug-in to work in Vegas 12? Perhaps I should try another stabilizer–any suggestions based upon actual usage? Thanks again!

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Thanks, Geoff! Mercalli 2.1 SAL works like a champ, and I saved the resulting stabilized file as a Logarith AVI to the same folder as the raw footage. I had no problem placing it into the Vegas timeline either (a 5 second clip at 45.1 MB).

HOWEVER, it’s a different story with the Mercalli plug-in FX in Vegas!! No matter how many times I start the video analysis there, when it is done analyzing it automatically writes an AVI to the Users-Richard-AppData-Local-Temp folder, the file is only 158KB and it is unreadable–in other words, it is a junk file. Throughout this whole process, the Mercalli Event FX screen does not change one bit, either, as you can see!! Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

I had the same problem when I upgraded to V11 last year (I am now using V12, BTW). Steve Rhoden suggested that I uninstall V11 and remove ALL plug-ins, VST files and any other files associated with Vegas from my hard drive (I backed them up off-line), as he noted that sometimes they can cause such an anomaly. IT WORKED!! I reinstalled Vegas and ran it before putting back the aforementioned files, and it loaded the first time I ran it. I put back a few of the 3rd party plug-ins at a time (the Sony plug-ins of course installed when I installed V11). Needless to say, V11 continued to boot each time I ran it and I never have had this problem with V12, but perhaps V12 is giving you the same problem that V11 gave me?

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS