Vegas Stabilization- worth upgrading for?

M. Gilden

M. Gilden

Canon DSLR Moderator
I'm currently on V9, and although I tried the demo for V11 once, I've been happy enough with this version's stability to just stick with it.

But lately I've been handed a few projects with a lot of handheld B-roll to incorporate, and I'd really like to streamline my stabilization process. Currently, my process is to export to After Effects, run Warp Stabilizer, and Render intermediate clips and swap footage in Vegas. Its a bit of a hassle, but in the past I did not have to stabilize much so it was OK.

Now, I'm finding this a very silly bottleneck in my workflow. There's a special upgrade price for Vegas 13 so I've been considering it, but is the built-in stabilization worth a darn?

From what I've seen, this isn't really one of Vegas' strengths. The stabilized footage seems to jump and glitch in many of the examples I've seen- I don't know if v13 is any better, but I don't see much chatter on this topic from other Vegas users (perhaps they gave up trying it?).

What do you seasoned Vegas users think? Stick with V9?
 
I would strongly recommend ProDad Mercalli as a stabilizer. You can use it as a Plug-In within Vegas or as a Stand Alone but the results are truly excellent. I've used it with film that had been professionally transferred by Telecine to AVI where a broken sprocket drive ha caused huge juddering and Mercalli dealt with it well.

Using it will save you the rigmarole you describe as you can work within Vegas throughout. And most people regard Mercalli as far superior to Sony's own built in stabilizer.

Richard
 
Richard Jones said:
I would strongly recommend ProDad Mercalli as a stabilizer. You can use it as a Plug-In within Vegas or as a Stand Alone but the results are truly excellent. I've used it with film that had been professionally transferred by Telecine to AVI where a broken sprocket drive ha caused huge juddering and Mercalli dealt with it well.

Using it will save you the rigmarole you describe as you can work within Vegas throughout. And most people regard Mercalli as far superior to Sony's own built in stabilizer.

Richard
Click to expand...

Without trying to hijack this thread when you use Mercalli do you usually use the default settings or tweak them? I use mine mainly on GH2 footage and now on my GoPro Hero 3 black footage from my Phantom 1 quadcopter.

cheers

bill
 
I work mainly in SD, I'm afraid and tend to stick with the default settings although I do vary these at times and might, for examp0le, want to use the "glide camera" setting for a pan shot. On the two or tree times I've used it in HD it has never disappointed.

The on-line instruction manual is very helpful and I ended up printing this off.

Richard
 
Sad thing is that buying mercalli is more expensive than an upgrade to Vegas, which has some watered-down version built in. For the current upgrade price, I was willing to give it a shot.
 
As with so many things in life, you get what you pay for. You will have a much improved editing programme but may be less pleased with the stabilizer. So often one's decision has to be a compromise :)

Richard
 
Richard Jones said:
As with so many things in life, you get what you pay for. You will have a much improved editing programme but may be less pleased with the stabilizer. So often one's decision has to be a compromise :)

Richard
Click to expand...

Much truth in your words, sir. I'm currently using Adobe's Warp Stabilizer tool for my shaky footage, which is working quite well however cumbersome. I'll just continue with this for now, although a new version of Vegas is tempting nontheless.
Is it "much improved"? I've heard everything past v10 is a gamble in stability.
 
Most people who have upgraded speak very highly of Version 13 and claim that it has solved any stability problem they may have had (although perhaps I've been
lucky with VPro 12 as I've had very few crashes - let's hope I'm not tempting fate!) You will find an A/B Roll facility, Proxy Editing and Cloud access to allow a project o be handled on an iPad along with a host of other goodies. Their site will tell you much more.

Richad
 
I have both ProDad Mercalli and Vegas 12. I've been using vegas stabilization for years now, and after extensive testing I actually found that, in most situations, Vegas does a better job than Mercalli. I have a quite old version of Mercalli though, like 2 years old and don't know of it's been upgraded.


Having stabilization built into the NLE with a flick of a switch on the Timeline is extremely convenient. It's also very simple andthus will save you a LOT of time compared to fiddling with Mercalli for example, you just can't keep yourself from fiddling when the sliders are there! :D


I suggest going with Vegas 13. Download the Trial version (fully functioning for 30 days) and if you find it good for "you", upgrade.
 
Ebrahim Saadawi said:
I have both ProDad Mercalli and Vegas 12. I've been using vegas stabilization for years now, and after extensive testing I actually found that, in most situations, Vegas does a better job than Mercalli. I have a quite old version of Mercalli though, like 2 years old and don't know of it's been upgraded.


Having stabilization built into the NLE with a flick of a switch on the Timeline is extremely convenient. It's also very simple andthus will save you a LOT of time compared to fiddling with Mercalli for example, you just can't keep yourself from fiddling when the sliders are there! :D


I suggest going with Vegas 13. Download the Trial version (fully functioning for 30 days) and if you find it good for "you", upgrade.
Click to expand...

From what I've read, unlike Mercalli the vegas 13 stabilizer is a media effect (as in, the entire media file). So if I only want stabilization for a clip taken out of a larger video in my timeline, I have to apply it to the entire media file first (ie. any other instances of clips from that media file are effected and cropped as well). I don't see that being all that useful. The project I'm working on right now, for example, is a live event with one camera facing the audience. The camera was hand held for a few minutes and then placed back on a tripod later. I just want to stabilize some of the hand-held clips, but if I stabilize the entire thing I end up with a severely cropped FOV, not to mention the amount of processing time it takes to run the stabilizer over a 1+ hour media file!

Someone else had mentioned that you can embed the media in a nested project and thereby break it up into pieces to apply the media effect, but that doesn't seem all that much better than what I'm doing now (export to After Effects, bring back in). So I don't think I'd upgrade for that alone.

I'm glad to hear V13 is getting better. I might try it, I just hope I'll find time before the promotional pricing is over!
 
Last time I used Vegas stabilization that was not the case (Vegas 10 I believe). Actually, when you apply stabilization to a cut section of a media, vegas open up a dialogue saying "You've selected to stabilize only 30%-40% of the media, would you like to continue, or stabilize entire media?"

Maybe 13 is different now. I'll check 12.
 
Ebrahim Saadawi said:
Last time I used Vegas stabilization that was not the case (Vegas 10 I believe). Actually, when you apply stabilization to a cut section of a media, vegas open up a dialogue saying "You've selected to stabilize only 30%-40% of the media, would you like to continue, or stabilize entire media?"

Maybe 13 is different now. I'll check 12.
Click to expand...

Yes, as I understand it, V10 was a watered down version of Mercalli built in. But then Sony developed their own, I'm not sure at what point, and it was much more basic without anywhere near as much control. Then I heard the most recent versions (not sure if exclusive to 13 or also an issue in 12) only allowed the effect to be applied on a media level (not an instance one). There's a thread on the Sony forum I found lamenting this "downgrade" from previous versions regarding stabilization.

Which is a shame. I'm coming from v9, which has no stabilization at all, and I'm wondering if I'm not really missing anything. My version also predates some of the acceleration for compressed DSLR media that I believe came later (and might be worth having), as well as some interesting features such as color match. But from the demonstrations I'm seeing on these features in my (admittedly limited) research online, it looks like they are whiz-bang novelties at best (Very limited customization options, if it doesn't work as you want out of the box you're SOL), and the acceleration caused stability problems unless you are lucky enough to have hardware it plays nicely with.

Anyone else feel this way? I'm trying to find features I'm looking forward to enough to warrant an upgrade before the promo period is over! :)
 
I have to apply it to the entire media file first (ie. any other instances of clips from that media file are effected and cropped as well).
Click to expand...

You can create a subclip and apply the stabilization only to the part of the media file
 
The only stabilize function I can find in Vegas 13 is "Sony Stabilize". It crops the image. Not acceptable. Anyone know why it crops?
 
This is how stabilization works...

Quote from here:
So if you don't want tilt and zoom adjustments and only the major shift adjustments, then do not set Stabilization amount to 0 to turn it off, but use 0.01. Set Pan smoothing to get your best stabilization and crop amount compromise.
 
kwkeirstead said:
The only stabilize function I can find in Vegas 13 is "Sony Stabilize". It crops the image. Not acceptable. Anyone know why it crops?
Click to expand...

You can't stabilize without cropping. In order to stabilize, you need to fix a set a pixels, and being unstable footage, they move around in the frame. To keep them in the same spot, the image has to be moved around, and that will often mean the edge of the original frame will move into the image. You don't want black areas in your image, you so have to crop out the edges.

This is what happens when you stabilize an image (though this is an extreme example):

star-trek-motion-stabilized-02.gif

This one illustrates it better:

star-trek-motion-stabilized-06.gif
 
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