Could I get rid of that enormous flicker?

Hello,

I was filming on a wedding and at home I was really shocked.
The movies at the hairdresser have a flicker-effekt.

I am sure it is based on the lights in that room.

You could have a look and see two examples:

vimeo.com/127725858

I tried to fix it with fcpx and was searching for help on the web. But by now I have absolutely no idea how to get rid of that flicker.

The footage was filmed with a Canon 5D Mk III in 1280x720, 50fps, shutter-speed: 1/100s.

Thank you so much for your help!

....I am sure it is based on the lights in that room. ...

yepp, light from a fluoresance lamp without an 'electrical ballast' (thats the correct word for it in English?? .. what ever wiki says...) => you get this kind of distortion. The human eye doesn't notice it, but lamps frequence vs.your cams shutter ....

There are several plug-ins avail, claiming to get rid of that in post, google for "plug in flicker"… I'm pessimistic, no hands-on experience. If optional, try a trial first .....

"To avoid effect of light interference when shooting under artificial lights or when shooting television screens and computer monitors, 1/50 s (172.8°) or 1/60 s (144°) shutter is often used.[15]" To quote Dr Wikipedia

The vimeo footage you supplied as an example, is that from the actual shoot? If yes, then reshoot according to Dr Wikipedia..

Weddings are a world of hurt, bridezilla wanting a Disney movie with 8K cameras, 4 cameras, and perfect lighting on beer money budget...

Take one for the team, beg, plead bride for a re-shoot, this time try 1/50 then 1/60, work up to what is best...trial and error...everyone makes mistakes, how else do you learn??

... plead bride for a re-shoot, ...

re-shoot a wedding???
What is the stuff called you're smoking? LOL :silly:

... Weddings are a world of hurt ....

Quack!
Weddings are perfect ground for learning ('cause all weddings are same...don't tell the couples)!

plus, everybody's happy, a flood of positive vibes.....
Weddings are fun - … wedding movies are even better!

.. re-shoot a wedding, .... pfffffff :blink:

Pssssst, Karsten, before you argue too much, take a closer look. The original post was about the shots from the hairdresser that have this flicker. Not the church (luckily and thankfully, imagine fluorescent in a church ) So Justine's idea of asking for a re-shoot is well doable.

Sent priv mail to the editor over this topic...I consider this topic closed.

Overturf wrote: Pssssst, Karsten, before you argue too much,....

Thanks for managing my temper! :lol:
... very 'diplomatic' ...

.... but stubborn defying my position:
re-shooting such a 'private' situation is no option, aside hurting the brides feeling "the best day of your life has to be (in parts…) re-enacted due to technical issues..." OMG, no way!!

I'd look for a Plan B, starts with testing mentioned deflicker plugins, and ends in using stills/grabs from the video as replacement... slide-shows are btw. a simple trick to vary the pace to a video ...

It's what happens when your shutter speed doesn't match the electric system powering the lights of the country you're filming in. There is a plugin called flicker free from digital anarchy that's incredible at fixing this kind of thing. It's also $149 bucks tho. So depends how important it is to fix?

www.digitalanarchy.com/Flicker/main.html

MsJustine, why do you want to close this thread ? Forum member should be free to comment as long as they like.

I agree I always like to hear what the outcome was and what fixed the issue.

I think I might add flicker free to my tool kit. I sometimes get this problem on a corporate shoot when the presenters don't listen and walk in front of the screen

Note to editor...As I discussed in my 2 emails, I cannot comment on this topic, I so want to comment but as can be seen I rack up bad karma, I do not want to upset members here. I would like to comment, but I feel it would not be wise to add any further comments to this thread.

I wouldn't suggest a re-shoot either. BUT get creative with the footage for the video. Use a contrast B&W effect with a little "old Film" look and poof... the flicker is masked with the effects. What is the old saying... Fix it in post?

Lots of ways to cover it with different looks even with the standard FCPX looks and stylize effects.

Hope we get to see the final result or at least hear how it turned out.

Good luck!

There is a trick!

Put your footage on the timeline as usual. Duplicate it and put the duplicated footage over the original. Move the now connected clip 1 frame (and one frame only!). Then set the opacity of the connected (duplicated) clip to 50%.

I've had some luck with this trick. You loose a little bit of sharpness maybe but flicker disappeared for me.

Let me know if it worked.

cheers

Shoot 240fps slo-mo with an iPhone 6 under florescent lights, you'll see this phenomenon exaggerated like crazy.

Yes, or 240fps in almost any light.
It's one of the reasons I've used the super slow motion features of my FS700 so little. I almost never shoot outside in daylight, and I can never afford the kind of lights needed to shoot flicker free slow motion inside
But the trick mentioned above made some otherwise flickering footage usable...

240 on my GoPro in pretty much any light is superb, though, when done as slo-mo in a 24fps Timeline.

Now, 240 on my iPhone 6 in non-florescent light, very smooth, no issues.

CBlakeston wrote: ...There is a plugin called flicker free from digital anarchy that's incredible at fixing this kind of thing. It's also $149 bucks tho. So depends how important it is to fix?

www.digitalanarchy.com/Flicker/main.html

This is a good topic because it's easy to get caught in this situation. Oftentimes brief playback tests on little camera LCDs won't show it, or else you move between rooms and it happens in one place and not another. In the hustle and bustle of event videography you can't always "chimp" every single shot on a big monitor.

Other factors can cause this besides fluorescent lights. E.g, any lights in the vicinity of a ceiling fan can cause flickering due to varying reflectivity of the moving blades. Due to the long persistence of the human eye it doesn't appear visually and may not be obvious during field playback tests on little camera LCDs.

We lump all these into "flicker" but there are various types of flicker which may respond differently to corrective actions. E.g, the above hairdresser video is actually rolling bands of brightness variation. A fan-induced flicker might be frame wide variation, or it might be laterally moving shadows. In some cases it might be possible to export the clip as stills and process with the de-flicker tools in LRTimeLapse: lrtimelapse.com/ but I don't think that would help the hairdresser video.