Review: proDAD ProDRENALIN

View My Results

The ProDRENALIZED footage I produced in my tests is shown in the embedded clip below. In the clip I took the ProDRENALIN processed file that had the stablization and fisheye removal and put it next to the raw footage so you could see the quality of the finished product out of ProDRENALIN.

ProDrenalin Review for Streaming Media Producer from Philip Hinkle on Vimeo.

You can see how much the footage is cropped to compensate for stabilization and removing the fisheye look. You will notice around the edges of the ProDRENALIN footage the content is noticeably distorted and blurry from the processing used to remove the fisheye. I found this to be consistent with the quality of output from the proDAD DeFishr utility.

Overall, ProDRENALIN does a pretty good job of stabilizing and removing the fisheye even with the small amount of blur around the edges. Unless they’re looking specifically at the edges of the footage, many viewers may not notice the small distortion there.

Since I started with 1080p footage, the cropping still keeps the footage above the 720p HD threshold. If you shoot 720p, the cropping is going to drop your resolution down into Standard Definition territory. If you have a Hero3 camera or other POV camera that shoots 1080/60p, the quality of your footage is going to be even better than mine.

ProDRENALIN does what it claims to do and does it pretty well. For casual users, this may be a big help to clean up their footage and do minor edits. At a price point of only $48.99 (USD), it’s a nice little utility (Windows-only, for now) to add to your editing arsenal.