How to use Flicker Free 2.0 presets to save time deflickering your video

Flicker Free 2.0 can solve a wide variety of flicker issues, and the presets available in the plugin are good starting points for finding the right settings to deflicker your footage. No matter what type of flickering you are dealing with – from rolling bands caused by out of sync cameras to time-lapse strobing – selecting a preset from the dropdown menu at the top of  the Flicker Free effect controls allows you to automatically change the rest of the settings (Time Radius, Sensitivity, etc) so you quickly try several different configurations. Once you find one that looks good, you can tweak the settings from there to make the flicker removal more efficient and minimize any blurring, ghosting or “shadow” effects caused by the preset settings. 

The presets themselves are named after common types of flicker and divided into “Faster” and “Slower” categories to make it easier for video editors to choose a starting point, but you can start with any preset really. It’s possible that a “Rolling Bands” set of settings will work better on slow motion footage than a “Slow Motion” preset, so try cycling through different options even if the name of the preset does not seem to match the type of flicker you see on your footage. 

With most types of flicker you can follow those steps:

1. Choose a Faster preset to reduce rendering times: these presets aren’t using Flicker Free’s Motion Compensation or advanced Detect Motion options. Some common issues don’t need these, and choosing a “Slow” preset will only add to your rendering times. So in most cases you’ll want to try the “Faster” presets first.

2. Increase Time Radius and lower Sensitivity: if you still see flicker after applying one of the faster presets, try increasing the Time Radius and lowering the Sensitivity. These two settings have the greatest impact on how Flicker Free detects and removes flicker – higher Time Radius analyzes more frames, and lower Sensitivity is better at targeting flicker like rolling bandsor flashing in a specific part of the frame.

3. Play with Slower presets: if the flicker is removed but you see motion blur, try applying a slower preset. They will take longer to render, but use Motion Compensation and Advanced Motion Detection to better identify moving objects/subjects, camera movement and high/low contrast areas. 

For example, if you have a clip with horizontal rolling bands, try the Slow “Rolling Bands” (default) and “Rolling Bands 2” presets. Use whichever one looks better as your starting point. If that doesn’t fix the flicker, the next step is to add more flicker removal by either increasing the Time Radius (to a maximum of 10) and/or decreasing the Sensitivity (try the 3-10 range). Changing individual settings will change the preset dropdown to “Custom”.

If those presets remove the flicker but add motion blur to the shot, select the slower “Rolling Bands – Motion” or “Rolling Bands – Motion 2”  presets. These presets have the Motion Compensation option turned on, which analyzes moving objects to remove motion blur. You can adjust the Time Radius and Sensitivity settings here as well to increase the flicker removal.

Working with presets will save you tons of time when getting started with Flicker Free. They are just starting points, but can often fix problems with minimal or no adjustments. They also give you an idea of how different setting combinations look, so you can start to customize individual settings to fix more difficult cases of flicker. 

For a more in-depth explanation of what each individual Flicker Free settings does, you can check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKoz5VnF5rE


And this video has more info on how to use the Detect Motion and Motion Compensation settings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlbRcp8sWKo


Also, if you have a clip you’re having trouble with, you can send us a sample of the origins footage at cs@nulldigitalaanrchy.com and we can test Flicker Free 2.0 on it to see if we can find settings that work.

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