Flicker Problem on Still Images

[Arnie Schlissel]

[mproductions] “Anyone know why I’m flickering?”

Without seeing the picture, I can only guess. But the most common cause is that there’s fine detail in the picture that’s less than 2 pixels wide on your video output.

[mproductions] “Any suggestions?”

Sure! Under the right conditions, a tiny amount of Gaussian blur can actually make a picture look sharper. We’re talking about a blur value of 0.5 to 2. If you don’t like that look, open the picture up in Photoshop, & use the Dust & Scratches filter (under Noise, of all places!) to blur out only the fine details.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Chris Poisson]

Arnie’s advice should work, but I find sometimes that if an image is too big, it can add to this problem, especially if you scale it way down or move it rapidly.

As a rule I make all my stills no bigger than they absolutely need to be for scaling or pan and scan.

[Mproductions]

Thanks for the input. Do you have any reccommendations for what dimmensions these files should be. I’m working in PAL format, but all images are either being scaled or cropped to match Letterbox film. The project is 90% stills/10 35mm film transfrred to 4:3 Letterbox.

Ironically- there is no flicker on the larger images wich have been scaled w/ various speeds of zoom. The problem seems to be on images with either hard cuts / or dissolves. It’s like the computer needs an extra second of flicker to think & then once it registers something the image goes sharp & no flickering. Very strange. I’ll try the .2 Gaussian blur but the producer is the still photographer & very concerned about the image appearing non-sharp. Any idea what looks worse on the big screen – a flicker or a .2 Gaussian blur? This will be played at a big screen theatre via Digi Beta / DVD through a projector.

Thanks
Marni

[Chris Poisson]

Marni,

I make my stills usually no larger than 20″ wide at 72 dpi. And tell the photographer that the blur will be fine.

[Ed Dooley]

My suggestion is *don’t* use gaussian blur. It’s only the thin *horizontal* lines that flicker, not the vertical lines so why blur everything in all directions.
Try Motion Blur in Photoshop instead, set for 90 degrees (vertical only). It leaves all the horizontal sharpness, only affecting the vertical sharpness.
Ed