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Okay, no problem. We look forward to helping you further and solving it on your computer, once we know more details. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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Just to add to the above post from Tony... Our new Blur-Sharpen Tools plugins and FilmTouch 2 film looks plugin will also appear in the FX section under the Pixelan tag.
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We need to know which plugins you bought from us.  Please fill out our tech support form at http://www.pixelan.com/help-tech-support-form.htm with that info, then we can happily assist you more specifically. Thanks.
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Sorry for the confusion. ALL of our PowerDirector plugins, which is our entire range of video effects and transitions plugins, are fully compatible with PowerDirector 13. My guess is that you are unfamiliar with where to look to find the plugin(s). Please see the "Getting Started" file that was shown after installing the demo but it also available anytime in your Start > All Programs > Pixelan > [plugin name] > menu. If there is still a problem and they are not appearing there, it could be a minor Windows Registry issue on your computer that is easy to fix. In that case, please email us directly at support@pixelan.com and we can walk you through the steps of solving that in a few minutes. Thanks.
Please let me know if you have questions.
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Lawrence,
Thanks for posting your update! Awesome to read your findings and that a useful solution was found with GrainPlus 2 from our CreativEase video effects plugins suite. Thanks for persevering through that process. With lower bitrate renders, film grains can surely be tricky to get "just right". As you found, upping the bitrate helps quite a bit. I'm also glad that our FilmTouch 2 film looks plugin worked out for you as a solution for your longer movies.
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Nice example!  What I see there (very subtle moving filmic grain) looks possible with the GrainPlus plugin of our CreativEase video effects, too... try tweaking the settings as I suggested above to get such a look within your bandwidth requirements. There's no way I can see the size or bitrate of the original vimeo movie, unfortunately. The only other factor I can think of that might be affecting you is something in the PD12 range of available codecs and compression settings could be limiting your possibilities.
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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Please point me to one or more of the streaming movies you are referring to with good looking grain. It would be interesting to see their bitrate, frame size/rate, and what codec was used.
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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Thanks for the extra info. There's nothing wrong with your setup... it is essentially an unavoidable compression problem. Compression is generally based on the assumption that:
-- Many neighbor pixels have a similar value.
-- Many pixels have similar value in adjacent frames.
A film grain's random, dynamic noise makes both of the above conditions challenging for a codec. To keep the bitrate sufficiently low in such bad conditions, the codec will discard some information which will lower the visual quality, thus either mushing the filmic grain or making it hard to see at all. This is why it is not generally useful for web streaming movies, and why you are seeing the problem.
Try reducing the strength of the grain and/or lowering the grain's density and movement speed. That might help somewhat.
Sorry we do not have a better answer for you. It's basically an inherent issue with streaming movies.
Please let me know if you have questions.
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Sorry to hear of the issue. Sounds like it might relate to source > output sizing... although streaming web codecs inherently make fine details such as grain mushy anyways. To help me answer better, please tell me your:
-- Source clip frame size
-- Final output frame size & bitrate
-- Web playback frame size
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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We do not use OpenCL in any of our effects plugin code... it isn't flexible/powerful enough to do all the cool things we want to do in our effects plugins.
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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Just to notify PowerDirector (version 12 or later) users, our all-new Blur-Sharpen Tools plugins were released last week. These are fast GPU-accelerated plugin effects for PowerDirector that add new blur and sharpen capabilities never available before. Three plugins are part of the release -- BlurBlender Pro (and regular), Smart Sharpen Pro, and Smart Blur Pro.
Finally, SMART blurring and sharpening optimized for high-res video. And BlurBlender Pro includes 650+ presets of unique blurs that can be easily masked to blur only where you want within your image. BlurBlender Pro is also optimized for titles/text to create numerous title blur looks not possible previously... great for organically revealing and fading out a title, for example.
The plugins start at $24, or you can get all three Pro versions as a bundle for $69. The bundle also includes the bonus of the Photoshop version of Smart Sharpen Pro. To learn more and try our demo version of Blur-Sharpen Tools in your PowerDirector system, see http://www.pixelan.com/blur-sharpen-plugins/intro.htm To see all of our PowerDirector plugins, please visit http://www.pixelan.com/cyberlink-plugins.htm
Thanks for reading. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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Thanks for the suggestion. Yes indeed, color matching would be a natural addition to FilmTouch Pro for us to consider.
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Yes, this is very true and welcomed news. Good job, CyberLink engineering!
Our page that summarizes ALL of our CyberLink PowerDirector plugins is here: http://www.pixelan.com/cyberlink-plugins.htm
Please let me know if you have questions. We are also always very open to ideas and suggestions for other effects plugins that CyberLink PowerDirector users in particular may need. So please suggest here or directly to me at michael at pixelan dot com Thanks!
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Thanks for asking. Our time-based effects with ghosting or trailing effects are unfortunately not available for Power Director at this time. The plug-in architecture and minimum hardware requirements for doing that do not exist yet in the PD environment. Sorry!
Please let me know if you have other questions.
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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Sharon,
I'll chime in here, even though you asked Dafydd. Yes, all of the various versions of PD12 work fine with all of our plugins.
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Hi everyone,
Just wanted to let you know that in our 3D Six-Pack transitions plug-in for CyberLink PowerDirector 12, we added a few days ago a very handy "Reverse" check box in the plug-in's controls that reverses the flow of a 3D transition's action. Thus, every 3D Six-Pack preset now has double the usefulness for PD users.
For those of you who already have bought 3D Six-Pack, to get this update simply go back to your download email and freshly download the plugin. Install over your old build. No need to uninstall the older version first. The enjoy the improvements.
Don't have your download email, or your link has expired? Then go to our "Request a Re-download" form at http://www.pixelan.com/help-redownload-form.htm and you will get a fresh link within the same day.
Please lt me know if you have questions.
Sincerely,
Michael Feerer
Pixelan Software
http://www.pixelan.com
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Thanks for your reply, so other users know there is not a problem with our plug-ins when used this way. The current PD12 behavior makes certain PageFX or DepthFX preset choices from 3D Six-Pack work at the head and certain ones work at the tail, as you discovered. Fortunately, we offer plenty of presets in each category so this is not really a problem.
Please let me know if you have other questions.
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Hmmm... that sounds odd. Please email to us ( support@pixelan.com ) an example of your title clip where you see the problem, and a couple of screen images showing the problem, then we can look into it further. Also tell us in that email what build of PD12 you are using and what flavor of Windows you have (and is it 32-bit or 64-bit). Thanks.
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Video effects still cannot be applied to a PD12 title directly. But there is no technical reason why this has to be this way. We have put in a request to our friends at CyberLink to improve that as soon as possible.
Our RiseShine plug-in within our CreativEase video effects suite for CyberLink PowerDirector, which is primarily designed for titles, DOES however work directly on any external title source file that includes an alpha channel, such as a title created in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements that holds an alpha channel and is saved as a .png file. Note that currently in PD12 you'll need to set such a title clip's channel to Luminance, and its background cannot become white/light.
For PD12-generated titles, here's the best workaround technique we've seen which works with ANY of our video effects plug-ins and is nicely demonstrated in the youtube video here: http://youtu.be/2ppYghIhLPI
Basically, in an unused part of your timeline, create the title text over a simple color matte background, then:
a) take a snapshot of the title screen,
b) Insert the snapshot in the timeline overlapping part or all of the title's duration,
c) Apply the desired video effect, such as any of ours from CreativEase,
d) Produce/render the segment as a video file,
e) Insert the newly created title clip where desired in the timeline, overlapping your background clip.
f) Apply a chroma key to the title clip.
Let me know if you have questions.
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In case you haven't checked out our movies or demos yet... Yes, SpiceMaster does indeed offer it along with hundreds of other transition geometries. And our 3D Six-Pack plugin does the same thing with realistic 3D looks. For more details, see http://www.pixelan.com/cyberlink-plugins.htm
Thanks.
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