my freeze frame looks “vibrating” in my tv monitor

[Kevin Camp]

the vibration is most likely due to interlacing… this effect will only be seen on a broadcast monitor (or tv) that uses interlacing to draw the image (computers refresh progressively and the interference will not be noticed). with interlacing the screen image is split into 2 groups of alternating fields each set is drawn at 1/60 of a second in a alternating fassion to create an interlaced image that refreshes at 1/30 second. this was done to create smoother motion than 30 progressive frames per second.

possibly the easiest way to get a clean freeze frame, is just to render the frame you want to freeze. from the composition menu choose save frame as. then select render settings from the render queue, make sure field render is off. twirl down the output module and set post render action to import. then set the file name and destination and render. your image should show up in the project window and you can bring that in to your comp.

if you still see some jitter, it may be due to fine detail in the image… the easy way to fix that is with a slight blur in the only the vertical direction, many blurs can be restricted to just vertical, i tend to use fast blur and also set it to repeat edge pixels. a better way is to google deflickerator (an action script for photoshop), download it and install it. then take the image into photoshop and run that action on your image. it will only blur the problematic areas of the image.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you may also be able to remove the jitter by checking the interpret footage settings for your clip… select your clip in the project window, go to file>interpret footage>main, make sure the fields are separated correctly (lower first is probably most common for ntsc these days if its set to off), and check the preserve edges box.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW