AE6- unwanted flicker on scanned images

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

There are many ways to get rid of flickering.
In AE you can apply the Reduce Interlace Flicker effect (sounds good, doesn’t it?).
It’s in Effects > Blur.
Experiment with values in the 0.7-1.0 range, so you preserve as much resolution as possible.

You can also heal flickering elements in PS, before taking the graphics to AE.
Whatever you do, don’t apply the deinterlace effect in PS. That’s like curing a headache with a shot in the head, if you know I mean.
In the Actions panel in PS, there’s a folder with actions for video. One of those actions performs adaptive flicker removal. Translation: it tries to detect areas that are prone to flickering and heals those specifically.
If you want something simpler, apply the Motion Blur effect in PS, with direction: 90 degrees and intensity: 1. It’ll certainly remove the flicker and you won’t loose that much resolution.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Kevin Camp]

photoshop does have better tools to handle selective bluring… filters like dust & scratches, remove noise and smart blur can be used to selectively blur some details but leave other others alone and can be very useful in removing the fine detail of the halftone pattern that is probably causing a lot of your issues.

google defilckerator, its a free action for photoshop that does a great job of only softening horizontal detail that creates interlace flicker in an image.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Sam Moulton]

dust and scratches is my favorite. I think it was Rick Gerard that gave that tip at NAB last year

[Kenny Mims]

Everything everybody said is plenty correct. You can also try pulling your luma down some, as well as making the image larger.

I use the interlace-flicker plugin, and adjust it according to the SCALE factor… following this formula:

.6 / SCALE FACTOR

example… if your image is 2880 pixels wide, and you fill the screen(720×480), that equals 25% SCALE FACTOR..so:
.6/.25= 2.4 pixel blur. If you are pushing on the image (zooming), use your keyframes to adjust the blur as you go.

example… image starts as 2880 filling the screen (25%) (keyframe start 2.4 pixel blur) and zooms in to 100%
.6/.25=2.4 >>>> .6/1=.6 pixel blur

Then things are nice and clear as you push in.