I was able to reduce it some using Motion Blur on the video buss.
Use sparingly!

John, here is the link for an 8 sec sample. I appreciate you taking a look at it.
Paul

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10967333/Toast.m2ts

Ah, that is a very interesting challenge. If I had a little more time I'd tackle it today, but at least I can tell you how you can fix it.

It might be possible to use the same technique I used for that football game, but limited via masking to just the two places affected by the flicker. However, with the speaker moving back and forth, that masking would get to be quite laborious because it would have to be keyframed.

A somewhat easier solution, which is made possible by the fact that you have the camera locked down, is to simply substitute a static background (which will remove the people moving around in the background shadows). Vegas lets you do this with a nifty trick called "difference masking." You can search this forum for that term, but you can also go directly to this wonderful tutorial created by forum member "FrigidNDEditing" (a.k.a., Dave Hadden):

Difference Masking Unmasked

The one sentence version of what this technique does is that it lets you do a green screen, but using an unchanging, static background as the green screen. If nothing changes in the background, then let the background show through. Otherwise, let the foreground show through.

If you happen to have the entire background before the speaker steps in front of the microphone then you are 95% of the way to having the problem fixed. What you do is take a frame grab of the entire background and then, if needed, Photoshop it so you get exactly the exposure you want on the two areas that are flickering. You then follow the tutorial and you will be left with the static background with the speaker in front.

However, you will have to do one other thing. The tutorial is designed for a background that never changes and, of course, your problem is that there are two areas that are changing. This is where it will get tricky because you'll need to make a second composite that looks for chroma differences. You are fortunate because the speaker is wearing black & white, and his skin is quite red whereas the two bad colored areas are very strong colors that do not appear on him.

Here's a link to something I did many years ago where someone asked me to composite him into the "American Idol" set. I've posted this before. He sent me footage taken in front of a wall in his house, and he just started the camera, walked into the scene and did his shtick. I used a still photo of the American Idol set as the background. Right-click and "save as." Then play the file.

Difference Matte Example

Here are a few, really old, discussions about difference mattes:

Help with difference key technique

Key difference technique-Look at the results!

I had a few minutes and decided to simply apply some AVISynth filtering. I was able to completely eliminate the flickering in the center, and somewhat reduced the other flickering.

One side effect of this filtering is that it removes the considerable noise that is present in your video. There is a very slight loss of resolution around the microphone windscreen, but that is about the only downside. At first I thought it was filtering details from his face, but I then recognized that most of what I thought was detail was actually noise.

Here is a link to an AVCHD version of the result.

Deflickered Version

If you want to spend money, RE:Vision, maker of Twixtor, just announced a product to to exactly this.

rocky

That looks really good John, thanks! I assume it will work just as well if the subject is walking around. I've never used AVISynth before so It looks like I'll need to learn it.
Paul

I removed the YouTube before/after comparison because either YouTube or the Vegas MP4 encoding ended up reducing the flicker somewhat on the "before."

Here is a revised version of the AVISynth code I used. This actually works somewhat better and actually almost completely eliminates the residual flicker on the left side of the clip.

If you use the multi-threaded version of AVISynth, you can remove the "#" comment from the two "SetMTMode()" lines and the script will run about five times faster.

#Deflicker for interlaced video using MDegrain2



Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\MVTools\mvtools2.dll")

Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\Film Restoration\Script_and_Plugins\Deflicker.dll")





#Modify this line to point to your video file

#setMTMode(5,0)

source=AVISource("E:\fs.avi").ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true).killaudio().AssumeTFF()

#setMTMode(2)



output=MDegrain2i2(source,8,0,1)  #The DCT=1 setting really helps nail the flicker

return output





#-------------------------------

function MDegrain2i2(clip source, int "blksize", int "overlap", int "dct")

{

overlap=default(overlap,0) # overlap value (0 to 4 for blksize=8)

dct=default(dct,0) # use dct=1 for clip with light flicker



fields=source.SeparateFields()



fixed_fields=fields.deflicker(debug=false,scene=200,percent=60,lag=25,lmax=225,lmin=20,noise=10,border=0)



super = fixed_fields.MSuper(pel=2, sharp=1)

backward_vec2 = super.MAnalyse(isb = true, delta = 2, blksize=blksize, overlap=overlap, dct=dct)

forward_vec2 = super.MAnalyse(isb = false, delta = 2, blksize=blksize, overlap=overlap, dct=dct)

backward_vec4 = super.MAnalyse(isb = true, delta = 4, blksize=blksize, overlap=overlap, dct=dct)

forward_vec4 = super.MAnalyse(isb = false, delta = 4, blksize=blksize, overlap=overlap, dct=dct)



MDegrain2(fixed_fields,super, backward_vec2,forward_vec2,backward_vec4,forward_vec4,thSAD=800) #original setting 400



Weave()

} 

I edited my earlier post where I posted the deflickered result. The newer version is a high-def AVCHD file, rendered directly from Vegas. It uses exactly the AVISynth script that I just posted above. I wanted everything to be consistent from one post to the next. I hope that doesn't confuse too many people.

The deflickered version looks pretty good.

I did take a brief look at the demo of that software from the makers of Twixtor. It is primarily aimed at reducing flicker in timelapse video, but it should work on this as well. If they have a trial, you might download it and see how it works.

The "Deflicker" plugin for VirtualDub wasn't able to do anything to improve your clip.