Gooder Video is the US distributor of software by Dynapel, a Munich-based company that produces patented hardware and software solutions for fixing messed up video. Gooder distributes three of DynaPel’s offerings, including SteadyHand(which I reviewed in the previous issue of Microfilmmaker, and really liked), SlowMotion, and MotionPerfect. All of these are standalone programs, not plugins, so they can run on any system without worries about platform compatibility.
MotionPerfectis supposed to do a ton of great time-based processing, including slow motion, fast motion, and frame rate change (to any frame rate you desire). It’s also supposed to be able to fill in gaps in jerky or corrupted video. When I saw this impressive list of features I was really excited, and after watching the videos on the website I became even more excited! It seemed like this program could not only do incredible slow-motion, but also maybe create a great film-look. Even better, it could salvage footage that I’d deemed unusable because of artifacting or dropouts.
Unfortunately after trying the product, reality set in, and although SteadyHand is a solid product,MotionPerfect doesn’t fare so well.
The wizard that MotionPerfect starts with is intuitive and visually interesting, making it very easy to change the length or frame rate of your video.
Ease of Use
Installation is super-easy, with a step-by-step wizard. Upon opening the program you’re asked to provide your license key, and that’s the entirety of the authorization process. Since it’s a standalone, there’s no loading up a plugin in a host program; you just double-click the icon on your desktop and you’re ready to start working!
When you start MotionPerfect, you’re greeted with a wizard that walks you through either changing the frame rate or the speed of a selected clip. You can then exit out of the wizard to the regular program, and the settings will be filled in for you, or you can just process the video straight out of the wizard. Once in the program you’re given more options, such as changing the quality/speed of processing or changing the output compression settings. So far, all of this is extremely simple and well laid-out. MotionPerfect makes adjusting the length, frame rate, or speed of your video very easy and intuitive.
If you want to get deeper into the settings, the main interface is also well laid out and easy to use.
However, it’s when you switch to the “X-pert Mode” and try to mend any gaps in your video that the program takes a turn for the worse. In this mode you see the individual frames of your video laid out in a series of green blocks at the bottom left corner of the screen. MotionPerfect sometimes automatically detects where there are gaps in your video, and labels them with red blocks. I never figured out why sometimes it detected gaps, and sometimes it didn’t. Regardless, you’re supposed to select the gaps by dragging across the frames that need to be mended. There is a little window on the right that lets you monitor your video frame by frame so you can select only the frames that need to be processed. If MotionPerfect has automatically figured out where your gaps are, you can also just click the “mend all gaps” button at the bottom and it will auto-select the frames for you.
