Review of vReveal software, to stabilize and color-correct video
 

Yeah...I dont like this software.

I've been playing with this technology since fixmymovie was out (a website from the same company, running at a time before vreveal existed. People could upload their videos to this website, where they were enhanced remotely, and available for download afterwards). Over the years, the software has been getting worse.

- They have been promising a "frame rate doubling feature" since the days of fixmymovie.com (Shut down late 2008, I think?).
- Upon release of version 2 of this software, they reduced the functionality of the clean feature, saying that the higher clean levels were taking too long for "consumers" and thus was removed as a feature (wtf!)
- Vreveal is only good for improving "edges" within the video. It makes textures worse.
- Vreveal unnecessarily butchers the audio from most video clips that get processed by this software unnecessarily
- Their support is poor/non existant
- Its a video enhancer that only runs in 32 bit (compatible with x64 machines, but still runs in x32)
- They dont listen to their customers!
- They constantly use the $8000 ikena software that uses the same technology as vreveal as a selling point. Vreveal is either a shonky product that pales in comparison to ikena, or they're both stuffed. I cant tell, as motiondsp will not provide demos for people to use. They will however provide demonstrations of their software, or give uss access to a fully functional product for a certain period of time, for a large deposit (According to the australian supplier for it anyway).

Its probably debatable as to whether or not the deshaker is better in vreveal or not, as I rarely play with deshakers. Apart from that though, this is all I can think of in regards to vreveal off the tp of my head at the moment.

Not recommended for general use.


EDIT: To get an idea of what Vreveal support and issues are like, you can view their support forums at forums.vreveal.com.

Its consumer software, not prosumer/professional software

Moved this to it's own new post. :)

vReveal is really only good at two things: stabilizing video (camera de-shake) and the "auto contrast" feature.
I would not use anything else.

I cannot say that I disagree with any of this:
I'd add this:
- The denoise is really nothing more than a blur filter, so don't use it.
- I never run a program stream (audio + video) trough vReveal, only elementary streams (video only, no audio).
- Support should not be a consideration -- you get what you get, and that's really it. Rhyme not intended.
- The stabilize feature did get worse, from version 1.1 to version 2.x. But it still works much easier than VirtualDub, and without any of the odd side effects.

Definitely consumer software. (Not that a pro won't find use in it.)
Definitely not for general use. You would never want to run videos through it without good reason.

All in all, spot-on review. Thanks for sharing. :)

Hmm...the stabilisation filter might be ok (again, hardly experimented with deshake filers myself), but the auto-contrast feature still has a lot to be desired. I mean, it works...when it works. You can see in the final output video though that the output from this particular filter is worse during the first second of footage (approx), and when the lighting from within the footage changes drastically.

I was actually under the impression that the denoise filter (or 'clean' filter) was based off of the motiondsp technology, and not just a blur filter :P

Well, yeah...unless said product has a bug that one cannot bypass, forcing us clients to wait for a patch about half a year or so down the track :P

Just to confirm though, said bug appears to be fixed now :P

No worries. That'll be $5 :)