Flicker on DVD Slide show

[Edward Troxel]

Flicker is normal on interlaced deviced. The best you can do is try to reduce it. The common methods are setting “Reduce Interlace Flicker”, adding a very slight blur, and rendering using “Best” quality.

Edward Troxel

[John Gregoriades]

Thank you, Edward.
Going to BEST quality on the Vegas rendering improved the results substantially. Trying reduce interlace “ON” on the DVDA preparation did not seem to have much of an effect.
But on the Vegas BEST rendering there were three spots where the background soundtrack went blank for a split second – for no reason. No fancy sound adjustments, in fact no adjustments to the sound. The sound was fine on the previous renders that had the extra flicker.
Any thoughts?
John

[Seatlanta]

Hi John:
I do a lot of photo montages, and have come up with some ways to eliminate or reduce the flicker you’re seeing.

Without adjustments, you’ll probably see the flickering in horizontal lines, especially thin lines, and in detailed areas of clothing, foliage, bricks, etc. As I apply a zoom to an old photo, a woman’s patterned dress can become quite animated.

My methods require some work before putting pix on the timeline. I use Photoshop (but other programs will also do the job) to slightly blur the background or other offending areas. If I have a particular trouble spot, I use more blur, smudging, or whatever it takes to stop the flickering. I find the flickering to be more noticeable that a slightly blurred background.

I also use vignetting to emphasize the subject. Depending on the purpose of your movie, this can either enhance it or make it worse. Family photos look great with the background reduced with a soft mask. Historical or documentary photos may need to remain untouched.

I work hard to keep the subject in sharp focus, but as the background goes soft, you’ll be able to soften the subject a bit. Because of the relative blur between background and subject, it will probably still look OK.

If you’re doing pans and zooms, the flickering will probably be much worse, but the same methods will still help.

Good luck.
James (seatlanta)

[Edward Troxel]

Changing the video render quality from good to best should not affect audio in any way.

Edward Troxel

[John Gregoriades]

Thank you, James.
What you are suggesting as I understand it is to “mask” and slightly “blur” the offending spots of each photo. I did notice the flicker occurring on bright horizontal or nearly horizontal lines/areas. I do not use Photoshop much (except I loved learning/using the “healing brush” to restore some 1920’s photos a friend brought in), but I’m much more handy with Corel PhotoPaint which has very similar mask & blur controls. I will also try vignetting – I assume with Vegas? or beforehand? If with Vegas, I assume you can pre-set an equal amount of vignetting to a whole timeline string of photos.
John

[Ted Snow]

John, for video stuff the “Good” setting will usually be just fine. But for photos I have found that using “Best” works much better. I have now been rendering all my montages at “Best” setting for quite some time. The render time doesn’t seem to be affected all that much and the quality is well worth the little extra render time if there is any. Pans and zooms are much smoother when using the Best setting. As a matter of fact I ended up making my own render presets and use Best for both pics and video work.
As for the flickering, I have had some pics that gave me problems similar to what you describe. What I did was add a second copy of the pic on the track above and add a cookie cutter and cut out just the spot that was flickering and add .001 blur to that. That way the rest of the pic stays sharp and crisp and only the offending flicker is blurred. This can be quite a feat though if you have lots of pic causing problems.