User manual PINNACLE MERCALLI APPENDIX

[. . . ] © proDAD, 2007 Mercalli & Video Shaker © proDAD GmbH, 2007 Autor : Uwe Wenz 1 © proDAD, 2007 Table of contents Welcome Copyright / legal Information General information What is Mercalli?Why choose Mercalli rather than another stabilisation program?Innovation unseen What Mercalli can do and what it can't do?Mercalli Light / Mercalli Expert Video-Shaker Video-Energy ? [. . . ] Imagine a beam of light illuminating an entire image area. This would correspond to the setting "neutral". Now imagine a spotlight illuminating only the centre of the image area. This would correspond to the setting "centre". Any movement in the area that is not illuminated would be ignored. With the setting "border", on the other hand, only the border area would be illuminated. Any movement in the centre of the image would be ignored. You might think that movement detection should always include all available information to achieve the best possible result. That is how many other stabilisation solutions work. Mercalli offers a small but significant difference. Imagine that the filmed object you want the viewer to focus on is a duck, swimming in the centre of the screen. This duck would therefore be the object that needs to be stabilised. However, the waves around the duck also create movement, which would interfere with the stabilisation of the duck. If movement analysis focuses on the duck (and therefore ignores the waves), the stabilisation result will simply be much better! Special video analysis Detect shapeless contents Mercalli generally tries to include the high-contrast contents of an image in the movement analysis. But what if there is no high-contrast content?In such a case, you could include, for instance, clouds in the analysis, which would serve as fixed points for detection of movement. Detect fast motions In action-filled video sequences, certain fast movements during filming may be unavoidable. Such movements are not generally included in the analysis. Depending on the effect you are aiming for, you may wish to select this checkbox to compensate fast movements. 23 © proDAD, 2007 Detect micro motions Again, you may wonder why this is not selected by default. Here's the simple answer: because the detection of slight movements may sometimes be useful, but at other times distracting. Example: Imagine you have filmed a scene with low lighting. The camera has been relatively steady, but the footage is a little grainy. [. . . ] The upper slider control determines the level of shake, ranging from reduced to extreme. The lower slider control lets you define the type of shake, ranging from jittery to vibrating. These settings let you achieve the effect you require. Important: the effect depends very much on the movements in the original footage and will thus vary from case to case. [. . . ]