Tag Archives: flicker

Removing flicker from concert videos (or anything with stage lights)

LED lights are everywhere and nowhere moreso than concerts or other performances. Since they are a common source of flicker when shot with a video camera, it’s something we get asked about fairly regularly.

Other types of stage lights can also be problematic (especially in slow motion), but LED lights are the more common culprit. You can see this clearly in this footage of a band. It’s a slow motion clip shot with an iPhone… which will shoot a few seconds of regular speed video before switching to slo-mo. So the first five seconds are regular speed and the next five are slo-mo:

To remove the flicker we’re using our plugin Flicker Free, which supports After Effects, Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Resolve, and Avid. You can learn more about it and download the trial version here.

The regular lights are fine, but there are some LED lights (ones with the multiple lights in a hexagon) that are flickering. This happens in both the regular speed and slow motion video portions of the video. You’ll notice, of course, the flickering is slower in the slo-mo portion. (mixed frame rates can sometimes be a problem as well but not in this case)

Usually this is something Flicker Free can fix pretty easily and does so in this case, but there are a few variables that are present in this video that can sometimes complicate things. It’s a handheld shot (shaky), there are multiple lights, and there are performers (who, luckily, aren’t moving much).

Handheld shot: The camera is moving erratically. This can be a problem for Flicker Free and it’s something the Motion Compensation checkbox was specifically designed to deal with (in addition to the Detect Motion settings). However, in this case, the camera isn’t moving quickly which is where this really becomes a problem. So we can get away with only having Detect Motion on. Also… with stage performances there is also often a lot of movement of the performers. Not a problem here, but if there is a lot of performer movement, it’s likely you’ll really need to turn Motion Compensation on.

Motion Compensation increases the render time, so if you don’t need to turn it on, then it’s best not to. But some footage will only be fixable with it on, so if the default settings aren’t working, turn on Motion Compensation.

As is often the case the default settings, the preset Rolling Bands, works great. This is very common with LED lights as they produce a certain type of flicker that the preset/default works very well on.

Multiple Lights: It’s possible to have multiple lights in the scene that flicker, and do so at different rates. Flicker Free can usually handle this scenario, but sometimes you need to apply two instances of Flicker Free. If you do this, it’s highly recommended not to use Motion Compensation and either turn Detect Motion off or set it to Fast. If you have Motion Compensation on and use two instances of FF, you’ll get exponentially longer render times and you might run out of memory on the GPU causing a crash.

Slow Motion: Slo-mo footage can really slow the flickering down, requiring you to max out Time Radius. Again, this is a setting that can increase render times, so lower values are better if you can get away with them and it fixes the flicker.

This clip was fairly easy. Only one light was an LED light and flickering, So the default settings worked great. If the default settings don’t work there are a few other presets to try: Stage Lights, Projection Screen, etc. But, even if those don’t work right off the bat, hopefully this gives you some tips on how to fix even the most challenging videos of performances.

The Problem of Slow Motion Flicker during Big Sporting Events: NCAA Tournament

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Shooting slow motion footage, especially very high speed shots like 240fps or 480fps, results in flicker if you don’t have high quality lights. Stadiums often have low quality industrial lighting, LEDs, or both. Resulting in flicker during slow motion shots even on nationally broadcast, high profile sporting events.

I was particularly struck by this watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament this weekend. Seemed like I was seeing flicker on  half of the slow motion shots. You can see a few in this video (along with Flicker Free plugin de-flickered versions of the same footage):

To see how to get rid of the flicker you can check out our tutorial on removing flicker from slow motion sports.

The LED lights are most often the problem. They circle the arena and depending on how bright they are, for example if it’s turned solid white, they can cast enough light on the players to cause flicker when played back in slow motion. Even if they don’t cast light on the players they’re visible in the background flickering. Here’s a photo of the lights I’m talking about in Oracle arena (white band of light going around the stadium):

Deflickering stadium lights can be done with Flicker Free

While Flicker Free won’t work for live production, it works great for de-flickering this type of flicker if you can render it in a video editing app, as you can see in the original example.

It’s a common problem even for pro sports or high profile sporting events (once you start looking for it, you see it a lot). So if you run into with your footage, check out the Flicker Free plugin for most video editing applications!

Avoiding Prop Flicker when Shooting Drone Video Footage

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We released a new tutorial showing how to remove prop flicker, so if you have flicker problems on drone footage, check that out. (It’s also at the bottom of this post)

But what if you want to avoid prop flicker altogether? Here’s a few tips:

But first, let’s take a look at what it is. Here’s an example video:

1- Don’t shoot in such a way that the propellers are between the sun and the camera. The reason prop flicker happens is the props are casting shadows onto the lens. If the sun is above and in front of the lens, that’s where you’ll get the shadows and the flicker. (shooting sunrise or sunset is fine because the sun is below the props)

1b- Turning the camera just slightly from the angle generating the flicker will often get rid of the flicker. You can see this in the tutorial below on removing the flicker.

2- Keep the camera pointed down slightly. It’s more likely to catch the shadows if it’s pointing straight out from the drone at 90 degrees (parallel to the props). Tilt it down a bit, 10 or 20 degrees, and that helps a lot.

3- I’ve seen lens hoods for the cameras. Sounds like they help, but I haven’t personally tried one.

Unfortunately sometimes you have to shoot something in such a way that you can’t avoid the prop flicker. In which cases using a plugin like Flicker Free allows you to eliminate or reduce the flicker problem. You can see how to deflicker videos with prop flicker in the below tutorial.

Removing Flicker from Drone Video Footage caused by Prop Flicker

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Drones are all the rage at the moment, deservedly so as some of the images and footage  being shot with them are amazing.

However, one problem that occurs is that if the drone is shooting with the camera at the right angle to the sun, shadows from the props cause flickering in the video footage. This can be a huge problem, making the video unusable. It turns out that our Flicker Free plugin is able to do a good job of removing or significantly reducing this problem. (of course, this forced us to go out and get one. Research, nothing but research!)

Here’s an example video showing exactly what prop flicker is and why it happens:

There are ways around getting the flicker in the first place: Don’t shoot into the sun, have the camera pointing down, etc. However, sometimes you’re not able to shoot with ideal conditions and you end up with flicker.

Our latest tutorial goes over how to solve the prop flicker issue with our Flicker Free plugin. The technique works in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Avid, Resolve, etc. However the tutorial shows Flicker Free being used in Premiere Pro.

The full tutorial is below. You can even download the original flickering drone video footage and AE/Premiere project files by clicking here.

Removing Flicker from Stadium Lights in Slow Motion Football Video

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One common problem you see a lot is flickering from stadium lights when football or other sports are played back in slow motion. You’ll even see it during the NFL football playoffs. Stadium lights tend to be low quality lights and the brightness fluctuates. You can’t see it normally, but play video back at 240fps… and flicker is everywhere.

Aaron at Griffin Wing Video Productions ran into this problem shooting video of the high school football championship at the North Carolina State stadium. It was a night game and he got some great slomo shots shooting with the Sony FS700, but a ton of flicker from the stadium lights.

Let’s take a look at a couple of his examples and break down how our Flicker Free plugin fixed the problem for him.

First example is just a player turning his head as he gazes down on the field. There’s not a lot of fast movement so this is relatively easy. Here are the Flicker Free plugin parameters from within After Effects (although it works the same if you’re using Premiere, FCP, Avid, etc.)

Video Footage of Football Player with Flickering LightsNotice that ‘Detect Motion’ is turned off and the settings for Sensitivity and Time Radius. Well discuss those in a moment.

Here’s a second example of a wide receiver catching the football. Here there’s a lot more action (even in slow motion), so the plugin needs different settings to compensate for that motion. Here’s the before/after video footage:

Here are the Flicker Free plugin settings:

Football player catching ball under flickering lights

So, what’s going on? You’ll notice that Detect Motion is off. Detect Motion tries to eliminate the ghosting (see below for an example) that can happen when removing flicker from a bunch of frames. (FF analyzes multiple frames to find the correct luminance for each pixel. But ghosts or trails can appear if the pixel is moving) Unfortunately it also reduces the flicker removal capabilities. The video footage we have of the football team has some pretty serious flicker so we need Detect Motion off.

With Detect Motion off we need to worry about ghosting. This means we need to reduce the Time Radius to a relatively low value.

Time Radius tells Flicker Free how many frames to look at before and after the current frame. So if it’s set to 5, it’ll analyze 11 frames: the current frame, 5 before it, and 5 after it. The more frames you analyze, the greater the chance objects will have moved in other frames… resulting in ghosting.

With the player looking our the window, there’s not a lot of motion. Just the turning of his head. So we can get away with a Time Radius of 5 and a Sensitivity of 3. (More about Sensitivity in a moment)

The video with the receiver catching the ball has a LOT more motion. Each frame is very different from the next. So there’s a good chance of ghosting. Here we’ve set Time Radius to 3, so it’s analyzing a total of 7 frames, and set Sensitivity to 10. A Time Radius of 3 is about as low as you can realistically go. In this case it works and the flicker is gone. (As you can see in the above video)

Here’s an example of the WRONG settings and what ‘ghosting’ looks like:

Blurry Video Caused by incorrect Flicker Free settings

Sensitivity is, more or less,  how large of an area the Flicker Free plugin analyzes. Usually I start with a low value like 3 and increase it to find a value that works best. Frequently a setting of 3 works as lower values reduce the flicker more. However, low values can result in more ghosting, so if you have a lot of motion sometimes 5 or 10 works better. For the player turning his head, three was fine. For the receiver we needed to increase it to 10.

So that’s a breakdown of how to get rid of flicker from stadium lights! Thanks to Aaron at Griffin Wing Video Productions for the footage. You can see their final video documenting the High School Football Championship on YouTube.

And you can also view more Flicker Free tutorials if you need additional info on how to get the most out of the Flicker Free plugin in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, or Resolve.

Flicker Free and the Bloody Beetroots feat. Tommy Lee

I think the most exciting thing about Flicker Free plugin is that people are willing to let us talk about it when they use it. Beauty Box Video gets used all the time on very high profile projects but no one wants to admit it publicly. It’s not worth some video editors job to say so-and-so pop star doesn’t have the flawless skin it looks like she has.

Flicker Free isn’t even officially released yet and we’re getting producers emailing us, letting us know it saved a shot (or shots) in their video AND they have no problem with us posting it. It’s awesome!

Such is the case with the music video from the Bloody Beetroots featuring Tommy Lee (of Motley Crue fame). One of the LED lights on the set was causing severe strobing in some shots. This isn’t regular flicker, it’s sort of rolling bands. It’s something we’ve seen only from LED lights and possibly electrical interference (the iPhone example in the FF demo reel is a good example of the problem). Flicker Free was the only thing that got rid of it. Just another big problem the plugin can solve. You can check out the final video below.