After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, and DaVinci Resolve. It should also work in other OFX apps like Vegas, but those are not officially supported, so make sure you test with the demo version before purchasing.

Yes. While you may get realtime performance in some cases, usually it is not realtime and requires rendering. Flicker Free works by analyzing the pixels in multiple frames for each frame of video, so playback speed depends on resolution, frame rate, the Flicker Free settings, GPU speed, and other effects applied to the timeline. It’s usually best to render a short section of your timeline to preview the results.

You can contact us at cs@digitalanarchy.com for help finding the best settings for your clip.

Flicker Free 2.0 and 3.0 use your GPU. Renders will be much faster than they were with Flicker Free 1.0.

However, it is usually not a real-time effect and will increase render times.

Multiple factors can increase or decrease your render times – the resolution and frame rate of the footage, your computer’s hardware, which video application you are using, and if you are running renders using CPU or GPU.

Additionally, Flicker Free’s settings affect render times. For example, a larger Time Radius equals a longer render time. If you have Time Radius set to 10, Flicker Free is asking the host app to render 21 frames at once (the current frame, 10 before, 10 after) when processing a single frame. It then has to analyze all the color information in those frames. If Time Radius is set to 3, it only has to process 7 frames. Rapid flicker can be fixed with lower Time Radius that renders faster, but slower flicker requires a larger Time Radius which will render more slowly.

Flicker Free settings that have a significant impact: “Motion Compensation” and “Detect Motion: Slow” can both result in slow performance and longer renders. These settings often provide the best results, and can be tested on a short section of the footage to avoid long renders. Also, the increased maximum value for Time Radius in Flicker Free 3.0 can also dramatically affect render times. Ideally, the Time Radius value should be as low as possible. 8 is usually a good value for most things. But for slow-moving bands you’ll want to increase it to its maximum of 19. Just know that 1) it’ll slow down renders and 2) is extremely memory/resource intensive. If you don’t have a good GPU it may cause your editing app to run out of memory.

If you’re using a high-resolution image sequence, it will be slower because Flicker Free is analyzing more pixels than it would for HD footage. It shouldn’t be THAT much slower, so if you’re experiencing an extreme slow down, or want help finding the best settings, please email us at sales@digitalanarchy.com.

For more information on the best settings for Flicker Free check this video tutorial: https://youtu.be/8FFJONfE12I?si=g9j1GhDyLiQHr2Uq&t=62

Make sure that Background Rendering and Timeline Scrubbing are turned OFF.

Since Flicker Free is GPU accelerated, if Flicker Free behaves really slowly, you are probably still using your CPU instead of your GPU for rendering (see “How long are render times?” FAQ).

Keep in mind that Flicker Free is requesting a lot of frames from the host app. For instance, if you have Time Radius set to 10, Flicker Free is asking the host app to render 21 frames at once (the current frame, 10 before, 10 after) when processing a single frame. It then has to analyze all the color information in those frames.

Especially with 4K or larger footage, it can take awhile to render even a short clip. If background rendering is on or scrubbing is active, FCP will start trying to request all those frames for multiple frames at once. This can bring FCP to a crawl or even crash it. Move to a point on the timeline, let it render, then make adjustments. Clicking around the timeline without letting the current frame render will just slow things down even more.

Dropping the 4K sequence into a 1080p timeline doesn’t make a difference in render speed. It still has to access the 4K source file. However, rendering a 4K file out to a 1080p file and then re-importing it WILL make a difference. Now, FCP will just be dealing with HD frames — which is many fewer pixels. If your final delivery is to 1080p or 720p, consider rendering out an intermediary file at that resolution. It’ll work much faster.

If you are working with multiple effects, make sure you are applying Flicker Free BEFORE applying other effects.

If you apply it afterward, the host app or graphics card may run out of memory and return a render error, black frames, or some other odd behavior. That’s because Flicker Free requests a lot of frames from the host app –  If you have Time Radius set to 10, Flicker Free is asking the host app to render 21 frames at once.

If other effects are applied before Flicker Free, that means you’re rendering those effects on 21 frames at the same time!  The host app might fail to render all these frames at once resulting in problems.

If you are working with multiple effects, make sure you are applying Flicker Free BEFORE applying other effects. If you apply it afterward, the host app or graphics card may run out of memory and return a render error, black frames, or some other odd behavior. That’s because Flicker Free requests a lot of frames from the host app –  If you have Time Radius set to 10, Flicker Free is asking the host app to render 21 frames at once. With other effects applied, the host app can fail to render all these frames at once. 

If you are getting black frames without other effects involved, this may be a CPU render issue that affects playback. Make sure that the effect is using GPU and not CPU. To see if it is only affecting playback, you can test it by exporting the clip and checking if the black frames appear on the export. Another reason for render errors is outdated graphics drivers. Update your graphics driver and check to see if your issue persists. If you are still running into the issue, contact sales@digitalanarchy.com.

Reducing the Time Radius will help significantly, as the main problem is that FF is trying to blend too many frames when there is a lot of motion or camera movement. Also, try adjusting the Threshold to a lower value, or turning off Detect Motion and checking Motion Compensation. You can also try lowering the Time Radius. Play it back in real-time and see how it looks. 

Frequently the problem is only noticeable when you turn Flicker Free on and off in the host application since you’re looking for a difference. When played back normally much of the time it’s not noticeable by the viewer. For low-contrast areas, shading can also happen, but it looks more like a blur. For example, if someone moves their head very quickly, you may see some softness in areas like the eyes.

Ghosting is more of an issue with high-contrast areas of the scene (e.g. a bright tennis ball moving across a black background). The object will appear in a frame with ‘ghosts’ or ‘echoes’ of itself at the positions it was at in prior frames. Reducing the Time Radius and adjusting the Threshold to a lower value, or turning off Detect Motion and checking Motion Compensation, will also help with this.

Davinci Resolve relies heavily on using your GPU for its renders. Because Flicker Free’s algorithm analyzes multiple 4K frames at once, this can quickly become too heavy a load for slower video cards. If you intend to use 4K footage in your renders we suggest trying the demo first to ensure your GPU is compatible.