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Hi guys, me again!!

I'm getting to the end of finishing a DVD of my grand daughter's first year and after creating the DVD from an mpeg file I notice some annoying flickering on just a few of the video sequences.
This only occurs on 4 short video clips where my grandaughter is wearing a pink jumper and the edges of the jumper flicker against her skin and other background.
This flickering does not occur in the project itself. When I watch on the (albeit much smaller) screen the images are quite sharp and very steady.

I made a very early DVD of the project without paying much attention to chapters etc. so that my daughter could preview it and in that version there does not appear to be any flickering at all but in the 2 more recent attempts to produce the finished article the flickering is very noticeable.

Is there anything I can do to stop this happening? I am unaware that I am doing anything different now to what I did on the preview version.

The video was taken on a sony cassette camcorder and all the files are AVI. I used a video data rate of of 6800kbps to produce a finished mpeg file of 4.10gb

Thanks again
Mark

The type of flicker you describe is usually a field order issue. Right click on one of the clips in your project. Is it upper or lower field? Whatever it is, those properties should be carried all the way thru the burning process.

Hi Jeff
Thanks for that quick response.
I've right-clicked on a few clips but can see nothing about field order in any of them. I just have details of video and audio compression.

The difference between these handful of clips that flicker and the rest of the clips (a further 130) is that they have a higher data rate of 3937.53kbps versus the rest which have 3515.63 and the type of compression is Microsoft YUV whereas the rest are DV Video encoder type 1.
I have a vague recollection these were filmed on my previous camera, a sony handycam and not on my daughters current sony.

On the very early 'preview' DVD I ran off I didn't get any flicker and all I think I have changed since is to increase the data rate to 6800kbps in the hope this might cure the problem.

Sorry, you must think I am a real pain !!
Cheers
Mark

DV cams, such as mini-dv and digital 8 that are connected to the pc via firewire are most likely Lower Field First. Hard drive and DVD cams, as well as clips from an analog source are most likely Upper Field First. My guess is that the two cameras are of conflicting field order type.

See this thread for more information: Combining Upper & Lower Field

Hi Jeff
Thanks. I've read the attachments you sent and, as advised by Trevor Andrew, I ticked the 'show messages...' box .

When I deleted these and inserted one of the many other clips onto the timeline a message box popped onto the screen asking if I wanted to change the project settings to match those of the video, when I looked in 'details' I found the main difference again was that the project had mpeg and the clip had AVI and again this was lower field first.

When I inserted the 'problem' clips I got no message box up on the screen but when I looked in File/Project Properties I found that it was stating the clips as Mpeg, also lower field first, whereas they are AVI.
Should I have got an on-screen window pop up?

As all of my previous exploits were done with 'Upper field first' I selected the same when customising my mpeg for this project so perhaps this has been my problem. I will change the project settings for both kinds of clips from mpeg to AVI and then select 'Lower field first' when I come to create the video.

Would you say my assumptions are correct. I'll have a try tonight and report back. It will take several hours to go through the entire process.

Thanks again for your kind patience in taking me through this.

Cheers
Mark

You will only get that message when you insert the first clip into a new project.

I would give the changing of field order a try. You have nothing to lose.

Well, I tried and unfortunately it didn't work. If anything those 4 short clips are even a little worse.
It's strange because all the other clips seem to be perfectly sharp and steady whether I use the Upper field first or lower field first whereas the 4 problem clips don't improve at all either way.
So, to clarify I have been able to determine they are all AVI's with lower field first and initially I create mpegs with the Upper field first. Now I've changed to lower field first and the result is almost identical.
I am just wondering whether I did the old original rough cut (which has no flickering at all) on my VS10 programme, whereas all the recent stuff I'm doing on X2.
Maybe I'll give that a try tomorrow.
It's midnight so I'm now off to bed.
G'night all!!

Mark

Well re-doing the whole project on VS10 didn't work. No better, no worse.
I then decided to try Trevor's second tack of taking the 4 troublesome clips and converting them into an AVI Frame based clip.
Having rendered the new AVI I then burned a 2 1/2 minute DVD of it and found it worked perfectly.
Picture was steady, solid with no sign of flickering.

I then took the original 4 clips out of the larger project and replaced them with the single new Frame based clip.
From this I then rendered another full sized mpeg file (lower field first) and burned a dvd.
Unfortunately this scene in the new DVD is back to the flickering quality I had before.
At least I am now aware that this new clip (replacing the 4 previous ones) is capable of producing a steady image on a DVD but seems not to when I combine it with the other AVI files (that are all perfect in the finished DVD).
Do you think I should render the remaining portion of the project (1hr 20mins) as Frame based and then, after merging the two frame based clips, try rendering the the whole lot again as a Frame based mpeg file?

On another point, when I first inserted the new AVI clip to the original project (prior to deleting the original ones) a little window popped up saying that Ripple Editing would not function in this instance. I had never used it before but had thought that this was precisely what RE was intended for, so I was somewhat surprised.
I then had to spend time aligning all the overlays, titles, music etc.

Any ideas why the RE would not work when trying to put a new piece of video into an existing project and would this also be the case when adding still images or transitions?

Many thanks
Mark

Hi Jeff
Thanks for the lead through to Trevor Andrews' comments.

When all else failed I took the final option of converting the entire project to Frame-based and then re-burned the whole DVD.

It worked!! Not only did it cure the flickering but also smoothed out a couple of 360 degree panning shots, which were just slightly jerky, and not really worth bothering too much with.

Thanks very much, much appreciated.

Mark