Flicker Free Plugin Examples of Rolling Bands (Camera/Light Sync Issues), Time Lapse, Slow Motion & More

We're always looking for gallery footage! Do you have some awful flickering footage that Flicker Free saved the day on? We'd love to see it and give you a hat tip! Email sales@digitalanarchy.com with a link to your video clip!






Flicker Free automatically fixes pulsating flashes and drone footage


With an impressive portfolio of clients and work licensed for intros on Top 10 Trending Netflix shows, British filmmaker Ian Anderson first became known in the industry for filming B-roll for crime documentaries. His preference for a minimalistic approach and love for storytelling is easily seen on any of the videos he makes: the images are uniquely creative, purposefully placed in each scene, always with high attention to detail.

The pursuit of always finding the best angles led Anderson to also specialize in drone filmmaking. “Shooting and editing footage for real life crime scenes can certainly be both gripping and creatively challenging. However, the drone content has been an important way for me to bring overall life balance - in shooting more adventure based content” says Anderson. He now shares drone cinematography reviews and tutorials on Youtube, and has grown his following to 3.28K subscribers in just a year.

While producing content for his Youtube channel, Anderson has experienced moving image flicker in many different situations, which made him avoid filming in large cities or often deleting big chunks of footage he thought could not easily be fixed. Recently, while editing a review of drone accessories, he noticed pulsating flashes on the footage - a nuisance that was really distracting to the viewer - and decided to try deflickering the video in post-production. “For years I would either avoid situations where flicker may happen or delete footage instead of dealing with the problem. This time I tried a few 'plug-in free' fix tutorials on YouTube but for me they didn't work so I gave Flicker Free a try”, explains Anderson.

Quick and easy flicker removal: preset settings and GPU acceleration

Luckily fixing the flicker on Ian Anderson’s footage was easier than he imagined. The filmmaker could instantly save the footage from flickering by using the default settings in Flicker Free 2.0. He says it was a matter of dragging and dropping the plugin to the timeline. “I didn’t change anything. The plug-in did a really good job of analyzing the footage itself, removing the flicker without ruining any of the video quality. Also I left ‘Use GPU’ on because I was working with 4k and that made the process quite fast”, highlights Anderson - who recently also used Flicker Free on a hyperlapse shot in Scotland and keeps recommending the plugin to other filmmakers.

Flickering caused by background lights and propellers’ shadows are very common in drone footage and cannot always be avoided. Sometimes, like in the video review of drone accessories that Anderson was editing, it can only be seen in post-production. Flicker Free is quick and easy to use, and the motion compensation feature in the latest 2.0 version of the plugin makes it possible to deflicker video that was previously unfixable. Download the free demo, choose a preset, and see how Flicker Free 2.0 can save your footage!

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Origami artist uses Flicker Free to create high end stop-motion animations for Pixar, Samsung, Red Bull and others.

White On Rice - a company that creates stop frame origami and paper animation for brands around the world - is clear proof that magic happens when we do what we love. Founded in 2014 after a 365 day Origami challenge that grew to over 100K followers in less than 2 years, the company is now a full time business for Origami Artist, Instagrammer and Filmmaker Ross Symons. From start to finish, Symons conceptualizes and creates custom origami designs, origami installations, stop motion animations, ads, and social media content for big brands and companies such as Samsung, Pixar, Red Bull, Nordstrom, Adidas and Mcdonalds..

When we first look at the short, but colorful, clean, playful videos posted on White On Rice’s Instagram account it’s easy to think they are quick and easy to create if you have the right software and technology. What people don't realize is that those productions require time, patience and precision (not to mention amazing origami folding skills!) so a frame perfectly matches the next and there is no flicker on the image. A small bump of the camera and sometimes you need to start again. “Also tripod heads sometimes move so slightly that you only notice it in the end result. Removing rigs from frames is another challenge since doing this incorrectly creates a bit of flicker and “jumpiness” to the animation in the sections where the rigs are”, explains Symons.

To deliver high end videos consistently, the White On Rice team has been applying Flicker Free to every stop-motion animation they have done since 2017. Flicker was a recurrent problem no matter how careful Symons was while filming his videos so after testing different flicker removal software and techniques he chose to buy Flicker Free. According to him, the plugin worked like magic the first time and he knew he would use it over and over again. “Even though we use very specific techniques and high end equipment, some frames are often slightly brighter by such a small margin that the switching between the frames causes a very subtle strobe effect. Stop frame animation has that as a charming, jerky type side effect but it looks unprofessional. Most of the time it’s only noticeable to me but I like having clean flicker-free animations”, he says.

Delivering high-quality, flicker-free animations

Slight fluctuations in light is the main cause of flickering in Symons’ work. He explains that “filming everything in one day makes it easier to keep the lighting consistent and is preferable. Also there are tricks to detach the lens from the camera so it is completely manual and no light changes happen but that doesn’t always work”. Flicker can also come as a result of shadows on the set, which is very hard to avoid and requires that the White On Rice team use Flicker Free to deflicker the videos in post. Having that option makes it easier to focus on finishing the production in a day and meeting deadlines since less time is spent modifying the set to avoid flickering.

Symons did test different flicker removal options, but he explains Flicker Free worked better than other apps like LTR timelapse because of the easy to navigate interface. The available presets also made a huge difference since they save him quite a bit of time in editing: the Timelapse preset on its own - or with minor tweaking - gives Symons clean footage at a manageable rendering time. “For the most part I conceptualize and animate all the videos we create so working quickly and efficiently is very important. Usually the default (8) timelapse preset is perfect. But if not I bring the sensitivity down to between 11-15 and sometimes fiddle with the time radius to improve the results. It can take some time to find the perfect settings depending on the flicker, but the presets always give me a good starting point even if they don’t completely fix the flicker right away”, he says.

Saving time in post is gold for any production: it means video editors can meet deadlines with ease and invest more time in creating unique films. For Ross Symons, plugins like Flicker Free are worth the cost because they raise the image quality of each production he delivers. Flicker Free also allows the White on Rice team of creatives to focus on what’s unique in their work - origami folding perfection, smooth animation, and the magic of watching a square sheet turning into fully formed objects to tell a story - instead of monitoring every single source of flicker in a production.

To learn more about Symon’s visit http://white-onrice.com .

To download a demo of Flicker Free and see how well it works with your footage: https://digitalanarchy.com/demos/psd_win.html#d9

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TwoDollars
TwoDollars

Award-winning director uses Flicker Free to fix fast flickering

Filmmaker Emmanuel Tenenbaum started making movies 8 years ago and has received numerous awards since he started Studio Tenebaum in 2011. Recently, his Canadian/French short film Two Dollars (Deux Dollars) was selected in 85 festivals around the world, won 8 awards, has been broadcasted on a dozen TV channels worldwide and won as Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere of the week. An impressive accomplishment that was both a challenge and a surprise.

Two Dollars is a short workplace comedy originally made during the Quebec Kinomada, where filmmakers write, produce, and direct a short film in 10 days. The event is a huge challenge even for the most experienced film Director. “Two days prior to our shoot, we still had no location and no actors! We were calling local actors that we had never seen and who had never heard of us. There was almost no time for production and resources were very scarce”, recalls Tenebaum.

The very short production deadlines and limited equipment made Tenenbaum’s crew consider discarding Two Dollars completely. “The Kinomada screening was great and the film well-received, but once the whole event had finished, we didn’t really know what to do with the film: we surely had a strong story but there were some severe technical issues, and there was no way any decent festival would accept it”, explains Tenenbaum. Flickering lights were a big part of the problem.

Flicker Free saves the day one more time

In order to finish “Two Dollars” on time, the production team had to make the lighting for the shoot work with only two kino flows and a very tight timeline. “The shooting was fun. However, when I started editing, I found out with horror that one of the bulbs of the kino flow was flickering. The flicker was everywhere, especially on faces. It was subtle but very fast, and everybody would have noticed in the theater. I started applying Flicker Free to every single clip and it worked like magic”, remembers Tenenbaum.

This was not the first time Tenenbaum was able to save his footage with Flicker Free . He purchased the plugin a few years ago for “I'm happy to see you”, another well-received short film from Studio Tenebaum, and has been applying Flicker Free to a few commercial projects since then. “At the time I used the - Flicker Free - demo version and was happy with the results, so I gave it a go. No regrets. It takes zero time to set-up, it's intuitive, and the results are beyond expectation. Thank you Digital Anarchy for making great plugins”, concludes Tenenbaum.

Emmanuel Tenenbaum is also a Beauty Box user. Learn more about his work at http://studiotenenbaum.com

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Applying Flicker Free to fix LED Flicker on documentary-style footage

Handcraft Creative co-owner Raymond Friesen is known in Winnipeg, Canada, for his creative ideas and attention to detail. After working on film sets for 5 years, he realized documentary filmmaking was his passion and decided to start his own business so he could focus on developing outside of the box concepts with a team he trusts. "Handcraft Creative was founded in 2008 and have focused on documentary, tourism, not for profit work and various other commercial endeavors across Canada. Documentary style videos are my passion so we decided to apply a reality-based approach to the commercial work we were doing. It worked great and this has been the niche for us since then”, recalls Friesen.

Recently, Friesen decided to experiment stripping back to the bare necessities of filmmaking and shoot a personal project with a Sony A73, 1 lens (16-70mm), and nothing else. The result was beautiful images captured with very basic equipment, but also lots of flicker due to various light sources and his camera being out of sync. “I made a video from a recent trip to Egypt and noticed horrible flickering from older LED lights in the tombs. I've used de-flicker software in the past to remove flickering from time-lapses, but I've never found it to work perfectly and I couldn't get the settings right. Flicker Free worked beautifully !”, says Friesen.

Besides completely fixing the flicker on his footage, Friesen highlights Flicker Free was a breeze to use. “The process of downloading, and installing the plugin, as well as applying the de-flickering settings, was very quick and easy. I am amazed by the results and would 100% recommend the plugin to other content creators”, explains Friesen. In order to make it easier to fix a variety type of flicker, Flicker Free comes with presets for most types of flicker and only a few parameters that need to be tweaked if the presets aren’t perfect. Download a free trial today!

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De-flickering Reality TV: The Amazing Race Australia - Fluorescents and LED Lights

Marcus Herrick is a magician. He takes some of the most difficult footage and turns it into something visually appealing to hundreds of thousands of viewers. Marcus Herrick was also the Online Editor & Colorist for three series of The Amazing Race Australia (TARAUS).

Given the globe spanning scale of The Amazing Race, Camera operators for TARAUS are on the go for huge stretches of time, doing everything The Amazing Race Australian contestants do, only doing it backwards while shooting! What this means for Herrick and others in Post is you have to accept that while the camera operators are doing their best, you will on occasion get dark, soft, shaky and flickering footage. “Being able to fix flicker at the touch of a button is amazing! Being able to fix flickering as part of the grade a big time saver as well as being able to see how the effect impacts the grade. Flicker free has become my go to tool.”

The Amazing Race Australia shot with Panasonic Pro cameras and a variety of specialty cams, and edited with Avid Media Composer and graded with DaVinci Resolve.

Marcus Herrick’s company Haiku Post provides post production finishing services in Melbourne, Australia. marcus@haiku.com.au

Red Tape Pictures: Music Video for All India Radio (song: Fall)

Red Tape Pictures, a post production house based out of Brisbane Australia, created this beautiful video for the band All India Radio. They used Flicker Free on portions of it and really did a marvelous job. The song is beautiful and haunting as well.

All India Radio - Fall from Red Tape Pictures

bloody beatroots

LED Light Flicker: Agata Alexander Directed Music Video for The Bloody Beetroots feat. Tommy Lee

Music video from the Bloody Beetroots featuring Tommy Lee (of Motley Crue fame). Some of the LED lights on the set were causing severe strobing in some shots. According to Agata, the director, Flicker Free was the only plugin that got rid of the LED flicker and really helped saved the production.

This isn’t regular flicker, it’s sort of rolling bands. It’s something that's caused by the camera shutter speed and lights being out of sync. You can see other examples of rolling bands on the Flicker Free Examples page. Just another big problem the plugin can solve.

Check out the video on YouTube!

Willy B!, TV for Radio: Television Commercial (flickering 3D render)

A commercial for radio station WTTS, that uses a logo that was rendered in a 3D package. Unfortunately there was some flickering that occurred in the render. Editor Willy B! used Flicker Free to eliminate the problem and meet the deadline. This video breaks down the problem, shows the solution, and then the entire commercial.

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De-flickering Sports Slow Motion Footage: Flicker Free & Griffin Wing Productions

Great example of the flicker you get when shooting slow motion at sporting events. In this case, Griffin Wing Productions shot a Championship high school football game, shooting a lot of 240fps slow motion footage. As often happens, the stadium lights caused a lot of flickering when shot in slow motion. They used the Flicker Free plugin to eliminate the flicker.

Aaron Griffin is the owner and Creative Director at Griffin Wing Productions. Griffin shoots a lot of sports with a Sony FS700 and when shooting at 240fps under stadium lights, flicker is a big problem. Stadiums usually have low quality lights and the high frame rate captures the lights oscillating in brightness at 60hz (or 60 times a second). “I was shooting for a local high school in the North Carolina 2AA Championship game. I got some really great shots but aesthetically the flicker was bad, really bad.”

Griffin Wing Productions is a full service video company based in Raleigh, North Carolina and can be found here: http://www.griffinwingproductions.com/index.html

The final video this footage is from is here: https://youtu.be/6NHSlYyELsM

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ACE Enterprises: Computer Screen Flicker

Gabriel Spaulding, ACE Enterprizes: Corporate Videos

Creator and Director, Gabriel Spaulding, is often producing video content for large and small companies including promotional videos, training videos, how-to-videos, music videos and more. He recently shot an entire video at 23.98, which captured some flicker in the various video screens recorded for a corporate promotional video.

This is a common problem when recording any type of screen as the refresh rate of the screen can be difficult to sync with the shutter speed and frame rate of the camera. “Flicker Free did a remarkable job of solving our problem.”

Technical aspects of the video: Shot in 4k with two Panasonic GH4s over a period of three days and edited in Final Cut X.

For more on Gabriel and ACE, go here: www.aceenterprizes.com and you can see the final video here: https://vimeo.com/138654537

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Eddie Oberg, Steddy Films: "Iceland Postcard"

Filmmaker Eddie Oberg went to Iceland with the goal of shooting a film of the epic, beautiful landscape the country is famous for. With friends and a lot of camera equipment he succeeded in capturing Iceland, but ran into a few problems in the process.

"We landed in Reykjavik, hopped in the car and didn't go far before we found beautiful landscape to shoot. Every corner seemed more beautiful than the previous corner. I brought my tripod and glide-cam. Every time I was in the passenger seat I was ready with my glide-cam. Because light was different in each shot, it was very difficult to match it in post. It was especially difficult to go from time lapse to regular film. Flicker fucking awesome Free is great. I applied flicker free on all the time lapses. Flicker Free seems to fix everything with ease…amazing!”

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Peter Yuen - Wildlife photographer: LED Flicker Filming Animals at Night

Pangolins are very rare animals, and the Critically Endangered Chinese Pangolin is even more so than others. Getting night-time footage of these animals is very difficult, and I never use flash or bright lights on animals, especially on nocturnal animals, so I carry a soft head-lamp. The previous night releasing pangolins in the forest, my head lamp broke, so we used an LED lamp to record a bit of video of these amazing animals instead.

Although it didn't show up on the screen when checking the video, this LED lamp caused a terrible flickering on the end result, so be warned, never make the mistake we did! I may never get another chance to film this species, but luckily, I was able to salvage the video thanks to Digital Anarchy's Flicker Free plugin!

Here's a link to his blog post discussing how he removed the LED flicker with Flicker Free.

Below you can see the video comparing the Flicker Free result to the original LED flicker problem:

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Big Mouth Media Digital: Projection Screen Banding

“I shot a stage show recently on our GH4 which had projection running in it. This gave me terrible banding (which I didn’t see at the time). Flicker Free got rid of it in minutes with no quality loss to the footage, and saved an expensive reshoot. Flicker Free is now part of my editing arsenal!”

Paul Seidel
Producer / Editor / Cameraman
Big Mouth Media Digital
Australia

Robbie Allen, Lobster Pictures: Time Lapse Videography

This plugin is fantastic - effortlessly wiping out time lapse flicker straight out of the box, with no visible degradation. It's great value and we use it in all our edit suites - it saves hours!

Check out their work at: www.lobsterpictures.tv

Tang: A US Camera Goes to Europe: 30fps & 50hz Big Adventure

Tang, an author/musician living in Germany, had a minor problem. He bought a Panasonic GH4 and set it up to record 30fps with a 1/60th shutter speed. Great for smooth motion of performers on a stage, but really NOT great for Germany's 50hz lighting! Enter Flicker Free or as he says:

"This little clever and resource-friendly programmed plugin worked great out of the box! I set it to the preset for my problem - stage light - and like miracle the flicker was almost undetectable! And everything with relatively moderate rendering time. So Flicker Free now is my clear favorite!"

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Both Hemispheres: Fixing localised flicker for impeccable time-lapses

Cinematographer Charles Gervais uses Flicker Free for almost every sequence he creates in After Effects and Premiere Pro. For him, the default time-lapse settings offered by the plugin have been enough to get rid of localized flicker. Gervais uses Flicker Free mainly to deal with flicker introduced by LR when he applies sliders like shadows, highlights, clarity etc. Flicker Free is a life-saver for those!

BothHemispheres
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