John EB: Was successful yesterday using FF as Fx on Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus - but, as you sugggested, processing times were extremely long on my PC eg 2.5 min clip took 50 mins to render. For sure, this is funstion of my modest PC (Windows 10/Dell 3668 (2018) i5-7400 quad 12GB DDR Intel UHD Graphic). Question: Is there any way to speed up processing eg RAID, GPU card etc? This is most important to me as I have approx 30 hours of heritage movies to process!! Any suggestions would be most welcome . . .

@jonboy834

If the rest of your clips are rendering at a reasonable speed the I find it doubtful.

You are asking to the plugin to analyse, modify (in quite a complex way) , and re-render each frame.

Doing anything in post other than basics is often processor intensive.

@jonboy834

Hi

. . . . Is there any way to speed up processing eg RAID, GPU card etc? . . . .

Very unlikely, by its very nature the plugin is very processor/GPU intensive on export involving significant quantities of data, especially if you are working with 4K source video, measuring the average brightness of each video frame or group of frames depending on the Time radius setting.

After more testing the time I got are:

4K 25 fps video source and export:

• best - 7x real time ie 3.5 fps
• worst - 20x real time ie 1.25 fps

Full HD 1920 x 1080 25 fps video source and export

• best - 5 x real time ie 5 fps
• worst - 8 x real time ie 3 fps

HTH

John EB

Hi @jonboy834

There is a free Virtual Dub plugin called De Flicker that should work with MEP via the Plug ins manager although I have no experience with it.

@CubeAce

"LED flicker in video is a pain and normal flicker reduction on most cameras seem to have trouble dealing with it."

Changing the cameras shutter speed to manual and trying different shutter speeds to stop the rolling by syncing it to the Frequency (Hz) of the flicker can help. If you can stop it you should be able to move it to a less noticeable part of the frame ie top or bottom by starting and stopping the camera.

Peter

Scenestealer is correct - "rolling shutter' flicker is a problem suffered by almost all "consumer" DSLR cameras since each picture is not instantaneous - but rather a progressive scan of the image. Some high-level (expensive) cameras use a "global shutter" to replicate what we used to get from a film camera - even the cheap ones! Unfortunately, I cannot re-take the videos being edited. Flicker Free works (US$149) but causes lengthy render times. May try Virtual Dub . . .

@Scenestealer

@jonboy834

Hi Peter.

I have one camera I can program to cope with different types of lights and mains frequencies but can only cope with one type of lighting at a time. It will not work well in a mixed lighting environment. Normally LEDs do not generally flicker unless they are dimmed (But not always) at which point they can be any frequency depending on the controller. I try to avoid such scenarios if possible but it's getting harder to avoid such places. We even have LED street lighting locally. I wonder if this plugin is having to do separate areas within a frame where mixed lighting occurs? That I would think would slow down processing considerably.

It used to be a real pain in stills photography when shooting in burst frame mode making each frame have a different white balance but is pretty much controlled now in the top end stills cameras.

Ray.

@jonboy834

Hi

. . . . rolling shutter' flicker is a problem suffered by almost all "consumer . . . .

True, however the 'flicker' is also called strobing which is experienced with some types of lighting eg poorly smoothed LED lights and some fluorescents.

Rolling shutter is a different issue as seen in this example -

note the bent propeller blades and missing segments.

John EB

JEB True! The propeller is the most common manifestation. In my case, the "strobing" shows up as a darker horizontal band which, over several frames, moves slowly up or down on the screen. . . referred to in the pre-sets offered by Flicker Free plug-in as "Rolling horizontal bands" - they have several: eg Time Lapse, Slow Motion, Archival Footage etc plus the pre-sets can be ignored and Threshold, sensitivity, time radius etc set individually - all good - but causing extended rendering-time.

Hi

Yes, rolling shutter is a different issue.

A good explanation of what I was referring to here: https://www.fullexposure.photography/how-to-stop-camera-light-video-flicker/ but as Ray has mentioned the flicker rate is sometimes controlled by an LED dimmer which introduces a variable that could mean you still get flicker when matching the frame rate to the mains frequency so trial and error varying the shutter speed may be the solution when shooting.

Apparently Neat video has a de-flicker setting and there are a few methods to help correct footage without plugins whereby you duplicate the clip 1x or 2x and offset them from the original by 1 or 2 frames and adjust the opacity of the dupes. Works well if there is not too much movement in the frames.

Peter

Scenestealer et al

Advice re how to avoid flicker/strobe bands during filming is dead-on! Thx. However, my problem actually arose because I tried Wolverine and did not like the result. So I "saved" hours of heritage Super 8 celluloid movies using a special technique ie Change the lens and lighting on an old variable-speed projector - then set up a DSLR Canon T6i at short range (approx 11") using Manual Control on focus, speed etc and film HD 1080p. Incandescent lamp proved too risky (if ever film was stopped at close range) so converted to LED lamp with dimmer. Filming at 1/60 on 60Hz BUT having to vary Dimmer setting to avoid over-illumination of film. Result: Some CMOS effect form the Canon shutter BUT ALSO (due to LED dimmer) periodically darker horizontal bands on the video, moving slowly up or down the screen.

@jonboy834

Hi

. . . . converted to LED lamp with dimmer . . . .

If you have more to do - what type of LED lamp did you use and are there lower power versions, alternatively do you have any Neutral density (ND) filters for the camera?

John EB