More info. I did not havy SD clips to play with so I imported one tonight. When I selected deshaker as the tool, it rendered it just as before, and then started deshaker. One immediate difference was that the "Show Output Video" actually worked. Before when I would select that alpone I justgot a freeze frame of the input. So.. I thought... hmm maybe this IS going to work.

But,at the end I get a black frame on the timeline (no take 2 or anything) and it says in the middle "DESHAKER: This frame was not processed in pass 1."

Not sure if this adds anything other than to suggest the culprit is not the HD stuff.

OK, I finally got around to playing with this. First, I installed VirtualDub, then Deshaker on my V64 system. No problems there. Fired up Vegas Pro 8.0c and opened an existing 1080i project. Selected a clip on the timeline and then clicked Run Script from the menu. Had to navigate to the Deshaker script (why does Deshaker force installation into the root directory?) and clicked on it. Immediately a progress box opened up, a new video track was placed in the timeline, and the clip began processing. When it was half way done the VirtualDub program opened and processing continued from there. When it was done I had a 2nd take where my original clip was and the added video track was gone. The new processed clip is now an .avi and it appears in my Project Media pool as a new clip.

So, although it seems to have worked properly, I am not entirely thrilled. First off, the processed video plays back extremely choppy from the timeline within Vegas. I rendered a loop with that portion and a portion of the same clip processed using Mercalli as a 720P WMV clip. While the rendered Deshaker portion looks and plays great (and considerably better than Mercalli) in Media Player, I don't know why it plays so choppy within Vegas from the timeline. The same is true if you preview the .avi clip from the Project Media pool. Even with the viewer on Draft mode at half resolution the Deshaker clip looks terrible.

The other disconcerting thing is the .avi file size of the prcoessed clip and the time to process. This was a 30 sec., 125mb .m2t file that ballooned up to over 7gb after Deshaker was done with it. I have probably 50 clips I need to Deshake at over an hour total. At this ratio I will run out of hard drive space long before I finish this project. It took almost 15 minutes to process this one 30 sec. clip.

So while this solution worked as advertised, it may not suit my workflow. Shame, because it really did do a good job with removing the camera shake. :(

OK, I finally got around to playing with this. First, I installed VirtualDub, then Deshaker on my V64 system. No problems there. Fired up Vegas Pro 8.0c and opened an existing 1080i project. Selected a clip on the timeline and then clicked Run Script from the menu. Had to navigate to the Deshaker script (why does Deshaker force installation into the root directory?) and clicked on it. Immediately a progress box opened up, a new video track was placed in the timeline, and the clip began processing. When it was half way done the VirtualDub program opened and processing continued from there.
:(

Rick.. up to this point your experience mirrors mine exactly. WhatI am gathering though is that Deshaker is a two pass routine and mine apparently only runs the first pass.



When it was done I had a 2nd take where my original clip was and the added video track was gone. The new processed clip is now an .avi and it appears in my Project Media pool as a new clip.:(

This too happens for me, but the clip is black with the small lettering I have described above. I wonder why we are having different results when we appear to be following the same routine?

This too happens for me, but the clip is black with the small lettering I have described above. I wonder why we are having different results when we appear to be following the same routine?

When previewing the clip from the timeline I do not see the lettering nor does it show in rendered footage. But if I preview the .avi clip from the Project Media pool or open it in WMP the lettering is displayed. I'll see if I can get a screen cap of my timeline so you can see how it looks in comparison to yours.

Rick, thanks for providing both clear and constructive observations.

Here are my results in a SD 4:3 project using 26 second media of 97mb size

Final output:
Deshaker: 1.12GB
Mercalli: N/A
Steadyhand: 0.814GB


Observations:

Deshaker - I now have a LARGE but globally available high quality file.

Mercalli - No reference as to how big the file is. This makes me think there IS no file and this leads me onto 2 conclusions, which I would invite you to consider:

1] Unlike Deshake (and see below Steadyhand) the Mercalli "output" is not globally available. It does not exist as a finished rendered file. However I can, and have, saved a Mercalli Fx as one of my own presets and have used that to good effect on other media. So the Mercalli Fx can be ONE-To-MANY. This is a good thing.

2] It WILL require rendering in the final sequence - it IS an Fx - yes? Do we get to SEE the file size when we audition an Event has an Fx added to it?

SteadyHand - This file is now Globally available. It allowed me to select a CODEC. I choose the default of Uncompressed so that is most likely why it is a large file too.

Conclusions:

A] Outcome: All of these do a job of great value. Deshaker is fast and high quality. Mercalli has a comprehensive GUI and the ability for me to save my own preset; does not produce a large file and allows for the Fx to remain while the project is needed. Steadyhand was my first steadying software and can produce quality output if I fiddle with the settings but it DOES allow me to pick up the CODEC I wish through a simple GUI.

B] Tool Selection: I can choose the "tool" for the job in hand. If I want the file to be available outside of the "project" then it is Deshaker and Steadyhand. If the results are ONLY needed while the project is "alive" then Mercalli, with the proviso of knowing I COULD render out the Mercalli Fx to create a globally available file.

C] "File" Size: There must be a way to fiddle with the VD program to pick up a CODEC that will produce a smaller AVI file out of Deshaker. I wouldn't know how to start! But that is the point here. It would appear that Deshaker is set up to produce uncompressed files.

So, Deshaker does what it does to serve up a finished AVI file of high quality and subsequently allows us to then further render or place within another project for further editing. Oh yeah? The other thing .. did I say it was free? It's free!

HTH

Grazie

Grazie, great response. I can see the benefits of both Deshaker and Mercalli, but they are very different. Basically, Mercalli is just a set of instructions attached to the clip that are executed upon render. That's why no intermediate file is created. This is good if time and HD space are an issue. Deshaker is great if you need that created file and have the HD space to spare.
After reading up more on Deshaker it appears there is a way to edit the script to use a different output codec, but the process is over my head at this point. I'm no programmer. If only VDub supported m2t files I could process my video clips directly. Oh well...

At this point, I'm probably stuck with using some combination of the 2. Mercalli works well inside Vegas, but the results are not quite as good as Deshaker. Deshaker works great, but is time-consuming and requires way too much disk space to be my only choice. I also don't understand why the Deshaker created .avi file looks nothing like the rendered output.

I have to look into SteadyHand. Does it support HD?

Rick and Grazie,

First off, thanks for taking the time for your investigation and excellent "commentary." Sharing of your knowlege/experience is greatly appreciated by us "newer" folks.....soaking it up like a sponge. Thanks again.

Question: DESHAKER: So when the black section of video(deshaked) shows up on the timeline (working with HD)on the newly created clip, do I trim it away or do I just ignore it?

Note: "Readme" file does give instructions on how to make it work off another drive. I did it; it was quite simple procedure....just explained in a funny way.

Rick.. up to this point your experience mirrors mine exactly. WhatI am gathering though is that Deshaker is a two pass routine and mine apparently only runs the first pass.

This too happens for me, but the clip is black with the small lettering I have described above. I wonder why we are having different results when we appear to be following the same routine?

I had no problems with deshaker and Win XP in the past but moving to Vista 64 bit seems to require some more work. I've been struggling with exactly the same problem as you with Deshaker/Vista 64/Sony 8.0 and 8.1. From what I scrounged in Google, it *seems* there's a log file that needs to be redirected to somewhere else from C: and Vista makes that difficult.

I haven't yet figured out how to do that.

Maybe John Meyer will have some pity on us and adjust his script to install more easily on 64 bit machines.

I am on a Vista 64 PC and had no problem with Deshaker working. My issues are with other aspects.

Michael, while I do see the intro panel that gets added to the Deshaker-ized clip in my Vegas timeline, it does not show in the rendered footage.

this is what I get... a pop up.

"Despite planning for all possible contingencies Deshaker script had the following errors.

ERROR: Value cannot be null."

It made an exact copy of the clip, but it was not deshaken.

Here's the answer I got from the guy at SteadyHand:
Rick,

It does run on Vista 64.
It handles some HDV -- there are many formats.
No it doesn't open m2t files. Only AVI in AVI out.

:(

Erik.... I too get that message in Vegas 8.1, so dropped back to 8.0c, where I experience the problems described above.

i dont have time to play w/this yet. is it true that it won't handle m2t? i need this on HD 1440x1080i .m2t footages =(.

can som1 confirm?

Here's the answer I got from the guy at SteadyHand:
Rick,

It does run on Vista 64.
It handles some HDV -- there are many formats.
No it doesn't open m2t files. Only AVI in AVI out.

:(

I think that's it.

i dont have time to play w/this yet. is it true that it won't handle m2t? i need this on HD 1440x1080i .m2t footages =(.

can som1 confirm?

If you mean Deshaker, yes it will work with m2t files so long as you are using the script from within Vegas Pro.

so u can use deshaker on .m2t only if u have 32-bit OS, otherwise people w/Vista64 (like me) won't be able to use it unless it's .avi yeah?

Actually, the script in Vegas is rendering out to AVI even in the 32-bit version so the same procedure should work in 64-bit.

so u can use deshaker on .m2t only if u have 32-bit OS, otherwise people w/Vista64 (like me) won't be able to use it unless it's .avi yeah?

I use Vista 64. The OS is not an issue with Deshaker, but VDub does not natively recognize m2t files in standalone mode. You have to use the Deshaker script.