50 cycle flicker elimination

[RonnieMartin]

A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of shooting in Ireland. The camera was the Ex-1R and the video was beautiful with the exception of clips that were shot indoors with available light. This was my first opportunity to shoot in Europe. One particular group of clips was shot in the Celtic Crystal Factory of a gentleman demonstrating grinding a design on a crystal bowl. I forgot about the 50cycle lighting and my clips display a good bit of flicker on my Sony monitor. However, on the HD TV monitor it is clean without flicker. The end result with be both a DVD and a Blu Ray disk for distribution. Is there away in Edius to eliminate the flicker? I tried the flicker filter with out good results. The camera was shooting full HD 1920x1080i.

Thanks

Ronnie

[THoff]

I've never had to work with footage as you describe it, but I would try one of the following: applying a bit of motion blur or duplicating the video track and offsetting them by one frame and then adding transparency through the keyer to blend them.

[antonsvideo]

I don't know of a way to fix it in EDIUS

I had the same problem when shooting with Pal camera in Japan inside factories, I saw the flicker in my camera and I then adjusted the shutter speed to 60 and that cleared the flicker while still shooting in Pal

in your case, a shutter speed of 50 would have fixed it on the spot

[RonnieMartin]

I don't know of a way to fix it in EDIUS

I had the same problem when shooting with Pal camera in Japan inside factories, I saw the flicker in my camera and I then adjusted the shutter speed to 60 and that cleared the flicker while still shooting in Pal

in your case, a shutter speed of 50 would have fixed it on the spot

Thanks Anton: Having never shot under 50 cycle lighting before I completely forgot to set the shutter speed to 50 rather than 60. It was a run and gun situation with very little time to set up the camera. Some of the clips of the crystal inside the display room were without flicker. I thought I noticed something while shooting but really didn't realize what was going on until I reviewed the footage. I wonder why the TV monitor (flat screen 42inch LG) looks fine? I expect that most of the people viewing this footage will have a flat screen monitor of some type. The Sony monitor is a multi format 20 inch CRT monitor that is connected to my NX component output via a component switch box that allows the TV monitor to be in the line at the same time.

Thanks

Ronnie

[Ron Evans]

Is the monitor a 120hz interpolating display ?

Ron Evans

[Alade]

There is/was a program i used to use, can not remember the name now, that I used a few times...long ago, to correct this issue......I would place the clip in the program, and tell it to convert to 50hz, and it did a pretty good job, the flicker went, but there was a small something that I cant quite remember now, since that was a while back, and would then import that clip into Edius.......wish I could remember the name.......but that is no problem here, as we use the same system as Japan....50hz....crazy system, but it works....and as Anton said, it is just a matter of changing shutter speeds in camera.....



Actually, in a lot of cases, when confronted by some flourecent lighting conditions, since we are 50hz, some importers buy from europe, and we end up with 60hz. tubes, which give us this flicker, but my camera is constantly set to shutter speed of 100, when shooting inside of buildings, therefore I seldom have that issue....most cameras come with a default setting for the shutter at 60.....but I think experience bears out in my case.....lol....

[RonnieMartin]

There is/was a program i used to use, can not remember the name now, that I used a few times...long ago, to correct this issue......I would place the clip in the program, and tell it to convert to 50hz, and it did a pretty good job, the flicker went, but there was a small something that I cant quite remember now, since that was a while back, and would then import that clip into Edius.......wish I could remember the name.......but that is no problem here, as we use the same system as Japan....50hz....crazy system, but it works....and as Anton said, it is just a matter of changing shutter speeds in camera.....

It you can come up with the name of the program I would appreciate it. These clips were once in a lifetime shots for me. I probably will never have the opportunity to shoot in a 50 cycle setting again. This was my first time to shoot out of the USA. The rest of the video is outstanding. I used the paint settings recommended by Doug Jenson on the Ex-1R. The people of Ireland are very hospitable and the country is beautiful and really green!!!

Thanks to everyone that tried to help

Ronnie

[SoundFreak_HD]

The country is beautiful and really green!!!

That must be from all the excessive rain the are getting :):)

[dpalomaki]

I forgot about the 50cycle lighting and my clips display a good bit of flicker on my Sony monitor. However, on the HD TV monitor it is clean without flicker.

This has me confused. Do I understand that the footage looks good on a NTSC HD TV, but flickers on a Sony multi-format computer monitor? Is this when viewed in the PC from the NLE time line?

Is this a problem that will go away once the footage is actually encoded to DVD and/or Blu-ray and played in standard BD/DVD player?

[NakedEye]

If you have AE then download the latest version of Boris Continuum Complete which has a flicker removal plug-in... the trial is valid for 14 days.

Best
Dave.

[RonnieMartin]

The output from nt NX card goes component to a switcher. The Sony monitor and the HD TV (1920x1080) are both connected to the same switcher. If there is a flicker on the HD I cannot detect it. However, on the Sony monitor it is very obvious and bothersome. since I always use the out board monitors I don't remember if it shows on the computer screen in edius or not.

Is this a problem that will go away once the footage is actually encoded to DVD and/or Blu-ray and played in standard BD/DVD player?[/QUOTE]

This is a very large project and I am in the initial stage of the edit. I had over 80gigs of footage from the Ex-1-r. Much of the raw footage was given to a local TV producer and he used a lot of the footage in his program. It will go on for a while in little 5 minute segments. I don't believe he has used any of the clips I am concerned about as of yet. I think you have a good idea and I will export some of these clips, down convert them and burn a short test DVD to see if it sill shows up. I was hoping that maybe one of the plugins in Edius might be able to help. If I figure out a way to get rid of the flicker I will post my results.

Thanks so much for you input and the input of others

Ronnie

[dpalomaki]

I would expect flicker cause by interaction between 50 Hz lighting and NTSC video to exhibit a steady flicker or perhaps a back and forth color drift, or rolling synch-like bar at the beat frequency, e.g., ~10 Hz, and then only when under discharge or flourescent lighting. And it would probably be very apparent on any TV as well. And I woud expect to see it in the individual frames on the time line on the computer monitor as I single step frame-by-frame.

Interesting that the Sony monitor is effected but the TV not when fed the same signal. Wonder if the Sony sees something in the Green or Y that it is interpreting incorrectly while the TV is blind to it? Perhaps something sort of like a VITC, closed caption, or Macrovision signal that isn't. Does the Sony have any configuration settings/filters? Does a TBC have any effect on it? If you look at a composite or s-video signal is it still there?

[Ron Evans]

It is more likely the TV is a 120Hz interpolating TV and in deinterlacing effectively removes/smoothes the fields that are affected. The Sony monitor is likely 60hz interlaced display so sees the problem all the time.

Ron Evans