Is this a Flicker problem?

Maukka · Post by **Maukka** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 3:35 pm

I have used a mask to highlight some lines in a document (a digital photo of doc) which is being zoomed in and panned over. It all looks good on computer screen, but when I render MPG2 and burn to DVD in order to watch it on TV... the "highlight" line seems to be flashing.

Should I use "anti-flickering filter"? If so, where can I turn it on?

Even without the mask, the document seems to flash a bit, partivcularly when the zooming video filter (Moving Picture plug-in) is used - i.e. when there is movement.

Could this be due to wrong image file size? What would be a suitable size?

I use MSP7 and my project settings are:
ABI FV-type 1
Lower Field First
Interlaced
PAL 25 frames/s
Size 7xx X5xx (whatever the exact firgures are, cannot check right now)

MPEG settings used:
PAL DVD
2 pass encoding
variable data rate max 8000

Thanks for any advice!
Maukka

paicolman · Post by **paicolman** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:47 am

Hi,
I'm no expert, but I had similar experience with some photos I used for a video in MSP. I selected the photo in the timeline (right-click) then source clip options (or something similar, my version is in german...) and then change the source from interlaced to progressive, then you get the anti-flickering option as a clickable box.

Hope it helps...

Maukka · Post by **Maukka** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 9:02 am

Thanks,

But i thought that the settings defined under Project settings are the ones used. so that even if you select frame based and deinterlaced for a particular image. it will be converted to field based interlaced when you render a video file if those are your project settings.

Did it help in yor case and did you watch it on TV
Maukka

paicolman · Post by **paicolman** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 10:24 am

It actually worked in my case, but I'm not sure if my project settings were also set accordingly...

Maukka · Post by **Maukka** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:18 pm

Thanks,

I have tried everyhting, but to no avail. Upper or lower field first, deinterlaced or not, interpolate frame size..., AVI or MPEG files, soft edge for overlay file, blurring underlying image etc etc. But to no avail, I always get serious flickering when playing back on TV screen.

But I have just now discovered something. I accidentally used NTSC (29 frames/sec) settings instead of PAL in the video file, and that got rid of the flickering!! It look very smooth.

Any idea why?

My project settings are PAL DVD aspect ration 4:3 settings, and since I live in Europe that would be my preferred standard (even if most DVD players nowadays can read both, at least in Europe).

I hope this discovery will lead me finally to discover a way to solve the problem in PAL format too. But where could the problem lie? WHY does it look good with NTSC settings and not with PAL settings?

Thanks!

BernardD · Post by **BernardD** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:37 am

What did you use to make the digital picture of the doc ?
What was the source of the doc for which you have taken a picture ?
Did you get a snapshot (digital picture) from a movie file ?
What kind of file is the digital picture and what is the format ?

Seems that problem may be with you digital picture, even though you stated that you did not have the problem when setting to 29.9fps.

Cheers,
Bernard

Maukka · Post by **Maukka** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:54 am

In fact in this sequence I used scanned black and white documents. Their size is 1653x1258, so they are obviously bigger than my project default 720x576, but I think MSP7 is supposed to be able to handle this without problem.

NTSC TV standard is known to be much less prone to flicker than PAL, due to different hertz rate, I think. But here the difference is so striking that I wonder...
Anyway, it seems that the key to this problem is to be found from he differences between NTSC and PAL...

But where..

Thanks again,

Maukka