• Apple Final Cut Pro

  LED Strobing – that was never there before.

  Posted by Don Walker on October 21, 2015 at 2:59 pm

  At the church I work at, we shoot our services with 5 cameras through a BMD switcher. The week after the service, I come back and edit one of our worship songs to post on Vimeo. Because of some display equipment limitations we shoot in 720p 59.94. I take the line-cut, 5 camera iso angles and the post mixed music, and create a multicam clip in FCPX and then create an edit for Vimeo. I use the share dialogue in Final Cut to post directly to Vimeo.

  On this week’s video the LED strip lights built into our backdrop strobe, very annoyingly in the background! I know that Vimeo takes my 59.94p video and drops it down to 29.97p. But in the past we have never had that problem.

  Here is a link to the problem video:
  https://vimeo.com/143134649

  Here is a link to an earlier video, same equipment, same workflow:
  https://vimeo.com/136659851

  The only thing that has changed that I know of, is one was done with Yosemite, and the other, El Capitan. But I don’t see how that would make a difference in this case.

  Just a note. issue does not show up on a 59.94 timeline in FCPX, but if I take the edit in the form of a compound clip and put into either a 720p 29.97 timeline or a 1080i 29.97 timeline, it of course shows up.

  Any thoughts?

  don walker
  texarkana, texas

  John 3:16

  Mark Suszko replied 10 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Noah Kadner

  October 21, 2015 at 4:06 pm

  I’ve never seen editorial processing add strobing to lighting that isn’t already present in the original footage. Most likely I’d guess there was a change on the shutter settings of the camera itself which is directly responsible for whether you see strobing.

  Strobing with lighting is essentially the camera shutter and the refresh rate of a specific light being out of phase with each other.

  If you see something different in a specific timeline it’s also possible you’re not seeing every frame at playback depending on how you monitor. I’d go to the venue and take a careful look at camera settings and the lighting- I’d guess the LED strips are decorative and probably not camera-rated to be flicker free at all frame rates.

  Noah

  FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
  FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops
• 

  Mark Suszko

  October 21, 2015 at 4:46 pm

  Such flicker from LED lights can be dialed-out by adjusting the “clear scan” feature of most cameras (That’s what Sony calls theirs, others give it a different name). But that doesn’t help you in post.

  Your flicker issue sounds weird, indeed. If I had to guess, I’d say you only *believe* your frame rate settings are right, and somewhere, somehow, one of them is wrong. If every camera shows the issue, it’s in your timeline or project settings somewhere. If it’s just one camera shot, I’d check out the camera recording settings.

  Have you tried re-importing sample footage from each camera, pre-mastering each with the settings you want? Then edit as normal, see if the effect still occurs?
• 

  Don Walker

  October 21, 2015 at 5:14 pm

  I imported some raw camera footage into a different computer, running Yosemite, into Premiere, just to eliminate OS and editing program. 59.94, looks great, 29.97 looks horrible. The lights are cheap, and are certainly not rated for very much of anything. The biggest question is, we’ve had this backdrop for 3 months, why are we just now seeing it.

  don walker
  texarkana, texas

  John 3:16
• 

  Mark Suszko

  October 21, 2015 at 5:25 pm

  Could be, they’re just now starting to fail. Or someone messed with a setting on the lights. Or the cameras were over-exposed before, so the flicker was averaged-out.

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