Movie flickering in newer Windows media plyers but not the older ones?

Fred93 wrote on 9/3/2004, 7:56 AM
Yes, some of you have seen this subject before (sorry about that) but I'm reposting and giving some more background information this time.

http://hem.bredband.net/frejah/ovn9demo.mpg
(maybe you have to download the movie to disk to see what I mean)

Above you see a link to a mpeg-1 movie which was compressed from a 720x576x24 25fps interlaced DV-PAL.

The compression I used was made in Vegas 5 using these settings:
http://hem.bredband.net/frejah/settings.jpg
(project properties not included)

The movie looks just fine with Windows Media Player Classic (ver. 6482).
But it flickers with Windows Media Player 9. Why is this?

*It is not because of any kind of resizing, I've even tried it at at 2 other computers/screens with the same flickering result.

* Its not just me. Two other people have complained about the flickering =)

* There is no flickering in the original DV.

* It is not because of any other than default setting made in WMP9

Do you have any idea how to get rid of this flickering? I've tried compressing it with Vegas 5, TMPGEnc and Premiere pro. With a lot of different settings. All with the same flickering result. It only seems to appear with the mpeg format. (The flickering is quite subtle but still there. And yes I believe I have to use the mpeg1 -format).

How do I fix the compression for good results (mainly no flickering) in both players?

Please don't ban me from the forum for beeing such a persistent guy =)
Sincerely, Fred.

Comments

farss wrote on 9/3/2004, 8:28 AM
No flickering on my PC but I have only LCD monitors which would smooth it out anyway.
Are you 100% certain there isn't any in the original footage, go frame by frame along the TL and look at the histogram, does the luminance stay the same?
See you there maybe something in the original that you cannot but is apparent when you go went from 50i to 25p, or did you force the encoder to interlaced? If so maybe that's the problem, displaying interlaced on progressive monitors.

Either way the results look damn good to me, I'd not let the 'client' give you too much grief, this isn't a hollywood blockbuster, they're supposed to be watching the content not the pretty pictures.

Bob.
Fred93 wrote on 9/3/2004, 4:24 PM
Thanks Bob. Yes I agree with you that it looks good. The boss seems to think otherwise though.

What do you mean by:
"See you there maybe something in the original that you cannot but is apparent when you go went from 50i to 25p, or did you force the encoder to interlaced?"

Could you please clarify?

/Fred.
farss wrote on 9/3/2004, 7:19 PM
I'm really guess here, but for example if you shoot under fluros with iron ballasts you can get a flicker problem. Now bear in mind that almost all PC displays are progressive scan so the two fields get merged. I'd suspect that that would alleviate any flicker porblems but you never know.
Also running it at 25 fps when most PC monitors run at 60-80Hz refresh could be anothher issue and then you've got the possibility of the PC display developing flicker / strobing with the room lighting. Lots of possibilities, I'd start by viewing your stuff with the lights out. If that doesn't make a difference, try changing the refresh rate of the PC monitor, when you've eliminated the possibility of the problem occuring due to a dispaly anomoly or even if you know that's what it is you could try changing the frame rate you've encoded at, maybe at try 20 fps or 30 fps, just a short bit and see if the problem changes in any way.

Also go over the original footage, frame by frame, while watching the levels on the scopes. That's a good way to check for problems like flicker. On the footage you put up on the web, the luminance should be very stable between frames.

Bob.