Time-lapse footage is supposed to feel magical. Clouds race across the sky, cities come alive with light, shadows paint entire landscapes in minutes. But nothing pulls viewers out of that cinematic experience faster than flicker—the distracting brightness shifts that pop up frame to frame and turn otherwise beautiful shots into something that looks unstable or poorly exposed.
If you’ve ever shot a sunrise, a night-to-day transition, a cityscape, or anything lit by inconsistent sources, you’ve probably encountered flicker. And if you’ve tried to fix it manually, you know how frustrating (or impossible) that can be.
Flicker Free was originally developed to fix Time Lapse videos. I used to shoot a lot of sunrise and sunset shots and flicker was a constant problem. The camera settings you want before sunset are very different than what they should be after sunset. So you need to have the camera automatically adjust the shutter speed as the sun sets. This results in flicker since the shutter speed fluctuates somewhat.
Since there wasn’t a good plugin to fix this problem, we developed one. And it does a great job on time lapse.
So the way to fix time lapse flicker is to:
1- Apply Flicker Free
2- Switch to the Time Lapse preset
3- That’s it. Fixed. Vast majority of the time, it really is that easy.
You can download Flicker Free here
But wait! There’s More!
Ok, well, not much more but let’s go a bit more in depth.
* Rather watch a video than read? Here are a few five minute video tutorials for some of the different host apps we support! (or scroll down to read) *
Davinci Resolve Premiere Pro
After Effects Final Cut Pro
Seriously, the Time Lapse preset works for most time lapse videos. That’s why so many filmmakers, photographers, and editors rely on the Flicker Free plugin. It really is designed for fixing time lapse footage.
There are some exceptions where you might be able to get slightly better results with Detect Motion turned off or using Motion Compensation instead of Detect Motion. But in most cases you just use the preset and you’re good to go.
The videos above show how all this works on actual footage. They’re only about 5 minutes, so I recommend watching them.
The videos show some examples of the artifacts/blurring thet happen if you turn off Detect Motion. Basically if you have a large fast moving object in the scene, say a car that’s in a few frames, you’ll potentially see some problems with Detect Motion off. But there’s no need to turn it off unless you still see flicker with Flicker Free applied. Those cases are rare though.
But the real test is to try it on your own footage. We encourage you to download the free trial and see the results yourself. You can download Flicker Free here.
But Why is Flicker Free So Good?
Flicker Free uses specialized algorithms built for time-lapse—not generic color correction.
Standard exposure tools can’t always fix flicker because brightness shifts aren’t consistent across frames. Flicker Free uses motion-aware smoothing and temporal analysis to detect the pattern of flicker and remove it while preserving detail, texture, and natural motion. This is important because many plugins/techniques that deflicker video cause artifacts or blurring of the source footage.
If you’re still struggling to fix flicker on a time lapse shot, you’re welcome to send us a few seconds of the footage and we’ll recommend settings. Email us at cs@digitalanarchy.com
