As stated previously, I couldn’t get the missing frames feature to work, but I’m assuming there is some way to make it happen, since the demonstration videos on the website look great. As for the other features… well, they work, but only the fast motion produces consistent enough results to be useful.
3X slow motion. Notice how the background warps around the photographer's arm and the model's hands when they move.
Performance
On my Athlon 64 3200+ PC with 2GB of RAM, MotionPerfect took about 15 minutes to change a 6-second clip into an 18-second clip (3X slow motion) using the high-quality setting. That’s a pretty hefty render time, so I assume it’s doing a lot of complex calculations under the hood.
Whatever it’s doing, though, it looks pretty awful, to the point of being useless. Whenever there is any sort of fast motion, especially if the background is moving (i.e., the camera is not locked down), the background warps around the foreground, creating a weird motion trail goop effect. This same thing happened during frame rate conversions. I tested this on a variety of footage, and got the same results. Progressive video seemed to fare a little better than interlaced, and at first glance some of the footage looked pretty good. But when played on a larger monitor or TV, the warping effects were obvious on all of the footage.
The gap mending feature rendered pretty quickly, but then again I was only processing about 10 frames. Also, it didn’t actually appear to do anything, so who knows if it was actually trying to make changes to the footage, or if it was just re-exporting the video.
Fast motion worked just fine, although not any better or worse than what’s built into all editing programs.
A comparison between 3X slow motion using MotionPerfect and Adobe Premiere Pro. At first glance, MotionPerfect looks smoother, but, upon inspection, the background and shirt warp whenever the singer moves his arms.
Value MotionPerfect does only cost $49.66, and if you could get the frame-mending feature to work that would be well worth the price, since that would be a life-saving feature for some people. However, since the only thing MotionPerfect does well is fast-motion, and since that comes free with all editing programs, there really is no reason to spend any money to purchase this software.
Final Comments
Given better documentation, or perhaps better programming (assuming I was doing things properly), MotionPerfect could be a great software package at an excellent price. Imagine getting a dropout, glitch, or stutter on your wedding video or some other once-in-a-lifetime video, and being able to recreate the faulty frames! If Dynapel can get this working properly, I could wholeheartedly recommend it for that feature alone, but until then there really is nothing about this product that makes it worth purchasing.
Ease
of Use
5.0
Depth
of Options
7.0
Performance
1.0
Value
1.0
Overall
Score
3.5
Ryan Graham is the director of Livelihood, a critically acclaimed ultra-low budget zombie comedy. He also runs 37.5 Productions, a post production company specializing in giving a Hollywood sheen to independent films. In his spare time he is the lead guitarist for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.
