I have been using Pinacle Dv500 which incorporates Adobe Premiere 6.5 foe quite a long while and am quite happy with its performance. However as I can't manage to do steady pan shots nowadays without the aid of a tripod, and during filming at the Alhambra Granada, tripods were banned. My last production has some unsteady shots. Where no people were in shot I have tried to reduce the speed of the shots so as to give a slow motion effect which I hoped would take some of the unsteadiness out of the shot. This certainly worked in that respect but unfortunately the result also showed nasty flickering,shimmering, or twitching, its hard to explain but it is unsightly to look at. Does anyone know if this is usual or have I caused it by reducing the speed down 50%. Is there a problem with the programme and does it need to be re-installed. It is noticeable during Tests that as the speed is used higher towards 100% then the image gets better. Roy
Hello Roy. You could try selecting the clip and right click on it. From the menu select Video Options > Field Options > then tick the box for Flicker Removal, then OK.
It's worth a try and might do the job.
Cheers.
I now seem to spend a lot of time arguing with inanimate objects
Hi Fergie, Tried Flicker removal, made no difference, I don't think it is flicker, I just can't put a name to the trouble, it's more like image corruption. Cheers Roy
Hi Roy,
Not familiar with your camera - so no comment there.
Monopods seem to be gaining popularity - although I've never used one.
It may help you be with panning and get past security if used like a walking stick at entrance.
Hi Roy
I still have P6.5 with a Canopus Storm card. When I first bought it from DVC, they told me that the slow-mo in P.6.5 was enhanced by the Storm card and I had no problems. The reason was that the Storm used frame blending to achieve good slow motion. I now use CS3 with a Matrox Axio which has frame belnding and the slow motion is good.
The upshot of all this...
I would have a look in the various Pinnacle options to see if there is anything about frame blending.
Hope this helps
Steady Hand works well in Prem. 6.5. You can get a demo below.
Pretty sure that I tried steay hand once - was impressed
I seem to remember from a posting on this forum some time ago, that adding a filter effect like colour balance or Brightness / Contrast and keeping them at zero value ( no adjustments ) helped to smooth the jerky slomo effect. Commen speeds being 50 ,33 & 20percent.
Thanks John for info about steady hand. I have looked at the side by side demo videos. It works ok but I do detect a decrease in sharpness in the steadied pics. My eyes are 80 years old and I wonder if younger eyes will see a bigger difference. However I am going to download the trial programme and see what happens.
Thanks Graham for info about Storm Card working with P6.5. What exactly is Storm C and what is it meant for. Does it take the place of some other software installed? Roy
Hi Again. John I have tried the trial version of Steady Hand and am very impressed with the results. It's amazing how it transforms an irritating jerky pan into a very smooth operation without the appearance of slow motion and without altering the speed of any persons or cards etc, and allowing the normal speed of any dialogue in the shot. Very clever indeed. There is a slight disturbance on some areas of the screen image, but that was what I was complaining about before with other programmes. I am using shots from a brand new 3 chip camera, so it's not the camera at fault because the original camera shots are near enough perfect. It's the DVD pioneer burner as I get the same result transferring the adobe premiere timeline direct to a Panasonic DVD recorder. Reults on DVD's burnt without slow motion or similiar FX are perfect. So is it the Premiere 6.5 programme or is it the Graphics card in the PC or What ? Anybody got any ideas.?
Roy
Hi Roy
I have only used the transfer from Adobe Premiere to DVD once and considered it to be rubbish. It might have been the settings I used but I prefer to import the AVI into Adobe Encore and let it do the conversion. Much better quality. BTW I have a monopod (jessops) which you can have if you want. Just let me know and I will find a box to post it in.
Harry
Roy.
I find Steady Hand irons out the camera bumps, and there is always some degradation. I have used it on a shot from a train and it was only slightly better than the original. But that was pushing it beyond it`s capabilities. It does make a big difference to the hand held shots.
I can't help with the disturbance problem, unless something is running in the background. I use a duel boot system to avoid this.
Hi
Another programme that maybe worth a look at smothing out footage is "Mercalle" by "Prodad" it has been talked about on the forum before and is reasonable priced.
Again there is a demo and DVC stock it.
http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=42897&highlight=prodad
DVC showed it at the Video show a Earls court and it looked good and was quick.
Hi Mick.
I don't think Mercalle works with Prem.6.5. There was talk on here about it not working with CS3, but it works with PPro 2 and a few other NLE`s.
You are right about not working with 6.5 I did edit my post afterwards but it did not update properly !!
Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions. I have now purchased Steady Hand and am quite pleased with the performance. It's not perfect on pans but it certainly improves the image. The slight disturbance I have noticed on some of my shots I will have to live with, but, funnily enough, I've noticed it on some professional features broadcast on the television. Roy
Roy, a trick I used for some years until I got Canopus on my side to give me beautifully smooth and fluid slo-mo is this.
Copy and paste your slo-mo clip onto a higher video track. Now move this clip one (or maybe two) frames to the left or right - it matters not which. Now reduce its transparency to half and have a look at the result. It may be worth doing this again, moving the third clip another frame out of sync and reducing the transparency of the two upper clips with the rubber band to maybe 20% and 15%.
tom.
Thanks Tom I will give your suggestion a try. Actually I have heard of it before but not for the purpose you mention. I have been told to use this method to avoid flicker when transferring Super 8 Films from film projector to Timeline of 6.5. I never used it because I can alter the speed of the projector to match that of a camcorder. Roy