Difference between types of stills and flickering

thomaskay wrote on 10/6/2004, 8:21 AM

I am on my first project for the DVD format. My first DVD had flickering in the stills. I followed the advice of the forum and got rid of the problem on some of the stills. But there are a few stills that are giving me fits.

Now I've realized that the problem ones are stills that are created from the actual DV footage. I just made a snap shot and then stretched them to my desired length. Looking at them gives you a headache. The stills that are scanned, however, do not have this problem. The effect I am going for is simple: the video stops on a frame so I can do the familiar "display the name under the character" shot.

I'm using a TRV-900 (Sony) for my camera.

How can I correct this problem? Is my assumption correct about the difference in the types of stills?

Thanks,

Thomas

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 10/6/2004, 8:43 AM

If your pictures flicker, here are some solutions to try:

1. When you render the video, in the Render As dialog box, click on the Custom button, and in the Project tab, change the “Video Rendering Quality” from Good to Best. This option is very poorly labeled. It really doesn’t produce a “Best” render for most video, and it takes a lot longer to render. It really should be labeled “render for still pictures.” If you have still pictures in your project, use “Best” rendering; if you don’t have any still pictures, leave it set to Good and your renders will look just as good and will go much faster.

2. Right-click on the picture, select “Properties,” and then put a check in the “Reduce Interlace Flicker” box. This is a simple thing to do. Try rendering this one picture and check it out on your external monitor, hooked up through Firewire (you always should check on a real TV monitor, because your computer monitor displays video in a totally different way and flicker problems in particular won’t show up until viewed on the TV).

3. Assign a Gaussian Blur fX to the problem picture event and set the vertical and horizontal to the lowest possible value of 0.001.

4. If you don’t plan to zoom in on the picture, but are merely panning horizontally and vertically, use a photo editor to reduce the resolution to 720x480 (for NTSC).

DVDeviations wrote on 10/6/2004, 8:47 AM

Instead of making a snapshot (jpg or png image), you can also copy the clip, insert it at the desired location, make a velocity envelope, set it to "0" then stretch it for the duration desired, afterwards continue with the action footage.

Actually, you don't even need to "split" the action event, you can also put points on the velocity envelope and make it stop where you want.

I have done these and not had problems with flicker.

thomaskay wrote on 10/6/2004, 4:07 PM

Now that I look at the video more in depth, I notice that I can have two different stills that I have from the same video. One is fine and the other - the subject is fine but the background (not in focus) is wavering , jiggling, just going nuts.

Same source. I have "Maintain Aspect Ratio", "Reduce Interlace Flicker" and Force Resample" checked.

Why would one still act differently considering the source and the same settings?

PeterWright wrote on 10/6/2004, 5:54 PM

You could try deinterlacing the still - interlacing can cause jitter where there was movement in the original video, and particularly if there are thin horizontal lines.

johnmeyer wrote on 10/6/2004, 8:19 PM

I didn't hear in your last post whether you had rendered using the Best setting (click on the Custom button in the Render As dialog), and whether you had tried Gaussian Blur of somewhere between 0.001 and 0.003. I just did a lengthy still photo montage for a wedding that I finished yesterday and -- as it always has -- these settings completely fixed all the flicker.

Did you try them?

thomaskay wrote on 10/6/2004, 8:28 PM

Yes, I've tried everything I know to try. Question: I'm am testing via doing short renders just over the problem still. So I render the section and then put it back in the timeline (taking away the SS and GBlur). When I replay it to the monitor via my sony trv-900, I should be seeing how it's actually going to look? Right?

This is damn frustrating. I know it's my error. I just can't seem to figure it out.

johnmeyer wrote on 10/6/2004, 8:51 PM

So I render the section and then put it back in the timeline (taking away the SS and GBlur). When I replay it to the monitor via my sony trv-900, I should be seeing how it's actually going to look? Right?

Yes, you will see how it is going to look. When you render the section, did you click on the Custom button and select Best? Sometimes it is easy to forget to do that. Best will make the render go much slower, but it helps still photos look much better. Also if, when you say "SS," you mean SuperSample, I don't know whether that helps stills or not. Someone else will have to chime in on that. It sure as heck will slow down the render.

thomaskay wrote on 10/6/2004, 9:27 PM

Yes, I checked Best. I'm lost at what to try next. Here is Quicktime Sample of the clip:

http://www.thomaskay.us/Video.html

The end of the clip is the offender. All I did was cut the scene at where I wanted the freeze to occur and drug it out for the length you see. Of course, on the Quicktime it does not flicker. I'm going to pull my hair out trying to figure this out.

corug7 wrote on 10/7/2004, 8:30 PM

This is a real pain in the ass, but it works. Save all your video stills to the same folder. When you are done with editing the video, but before you render, open Photoshop (or Elements, which I use because it does everything I need) and just apply the NTSC Deinterlace filter to each of the still pictures. It is the ONLY way I have been able to get rid of that darned flicker, even with the "Reduce Interlace Flicker" option. Hope this helps.

Corey