From PSD to AE, Flickering Image Sequence

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Melisa,

The strobing comes from your character being animated on a lower framerate than the background which is being interpolated smoothly.

So your character stays in the same pose for 2 frames, while the Background interpolates on every frame.

You can lower the framerate of the entire composition to match the framerate of the character. But then the camera move won’t look as nice.
It’s a common, classic trade-off in traditonal animation.

[Melisa Bala]

Oh I see. Thank you Filip. Well, there is no option other than changing the scene I guess.

[Melisa Bala]

Filip I checked the project again. The building drawings in the animation are just psd layers with position keyframes on them. So I understand the 12fps walk cycle flicking but why are the still layers doing the same thing?

[Filip Vandueren]

I believe it’s the disconnect between one moving in 12FPS and the other, being keyframed, moving smoothly in 24FPS that causes the strobing
Does it look better when you set you entire composition to 12 fps in the comp. settings ?

[Filip Vandueren]

Does the character also have position keyframes ?
Then try adding this expression to its position:


posterizeTime(12);
value;


In the case that this makes it even worse, try:

posterizeTime(12);
valueAtTime(time+1/24);


hopefully that helps.

BTW, it’s interesting to check what the Warp Stabilizer would make of the shot..

[Melisa Bala]

I tried everything and erase the position keyframes in the walk cycle comp, it looks a bit better now, thanks. But the still images in the scene are still having this little jumping like flickers. I think I will slow down the sliding animation and see how it goes.