Still Images without flicker

I am looking for the best settings to run a 3d Max walkthrough (with still images) into Premiere CS4 and then export to F4V WITHOUT such a quality loss. I have succesfully exported to .mov and the clip looks great. Try exporting to wmv or F4V or FLV and the file size is small and the quality sucks. The .mov file is 119 mb, too large for client to download. The wmv or flv or f4v look too terrible to send on. I have tried using de-interlacing and flicker control and have had no positive results.
Please help.
Dave

Welcome to the forums.
Export at full resolution using a lossless codec and then use the free Windows Media Encoder to get the best possible WMV encoding. It has far more options than what is available in PPro.
Cheers
Eddie

Similar Messages

How to export a short film made with still images without loosing quality?

Hi,
I have been trying everything to make a short film, which is made with still images, to look decent once exported however it is a real challenge. Here are the steps I have undertaken:
1- I prepare the photographs and give them the aspect ration of 720p and whatever height as I try not to crop them too much at 300dpi. They look great in photoshop or capture one. I then save them as.tiff. All the images are RGB.
2- I start a new project in premiere pro cs4 and make it DV Pal 25fps.
3-I import the images and place them on the timeline. If they are a bit too big I rescale them. The images seem to look ok on the timeline although I seem to have lost the deepness of the colours.
4-I render the work area
5-I export it as quicktime, dv pal, quality 100.
My dilemna is that although exporting with quicktime, dv pal, quality 100 seems to give me the best quality compared to using quicktime animation, mpeg2, cinemak, avi..., the images are still not as sharp as in Photoshop and the colours look a lot paler and washed out. Also, when looking close to the screens you can see tiny squares on the images although from distance it's not too bad. When I view it from the exported file using Nero it's not too bad although definitely not perfect, as soon as I try to make a DVD and import it in Adobe Encore CS4 or send it by Dynamic Link, the quality looks horrible with images that look soft if not blurred and completely washed out.
I have now tried about t bu15 versions to see what 's the best I still have not reached the optimum quality and since these will be shown on big tvs or projected onto screens I need to nail it.
Would anybody have any advice please please please?
Many Thanks

My overall advice is to do that kind of work in an application that is designed for that. Give Photodex Proshow Producer trial a crack at it. I do a lot of work with stills, and that IMO PSP is the best approach. If you are intermixing the odd still, Pr may get you by. If you plan on doing a lot of that, try proshow, where the workflow and extensive features are designed for making high quality videos from stills that can be output to a wide number of formats and destinations, including color management with many of them( including avi). And, no need to resize. I know this won't solve your present problem.
Obviously, your attempt in Pr has not worked out as you had hoped. Maybe a bit more info would help. How are you rescaling them in Pr? That might well account for some quality loss. What is the original format and size of the images? What color management are you using in PS? Are you using any color correction or effects in Pr? Is your project interlaced or progressive?
From your description, you are not even getting the quality you should be getting from Pr IMO, though as Jim says, it is video and it will never look as pristine as it does in PS, but it still seems to me that something you are doing has degraded the work more than normally would be expected.

How can I get still images without blurring?

Hi,
I've found several threads on this topic. But none of them helped. Most discussions justs ended without resolution. Some had a lot of technical questions and details that I didn't understand.
Can someone please tell me how to do the following...
Add a still picture. In fact, that's all I have now -- no movie, just one still picture.
Play the picture in the timeline or in the event window without blurring.
If I need to prepare the image first, please tell me exactly what to do. I have Photoshop. I fooled around with increasing the resolution by a lot, and that did help some.
The picture in this case is a screen capture of a window with text in it.
My purpose is to make an animated Christmas card to be sent via email and watched on whatever monitor a person might have.
Thanks a lot for any help!

I found the answer in this thread -- "https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3775900?start=0&tstart=0"
The method for finding it was this Google search:
site:discussions.apple.com fcpx blurred
It would be nice if somehow all the relevant threads could be made available when needed. The "More Like This" window is pretty useless -- it doesn't restrict itself to the community.
The answer (copied from the above thread):
Go to:
Preferences -> Playback -> Playback Quality and select "High Quality"

Alphanumeric for still images without rearranging ....

Hello all
I'm sure the answer is rather simple but , I'm stumped ..
I have a few image files I need to rename in alphanumeric , I need these images to stay in the order they are in the folder, every time I rename them automator wants to rearrange the images.
Is there something I may be over looking ?
Thank
Message was edited by: JustCallMe Dude
Message was edited by: JustCallMe Dude
Message was edited by: JustCallMe Dude

Welcome to the forums.
Export at full resolution using a lossless codec and then use the free Windows Media Encoder to get the best possible WMV encoding. It has far more options than what is available in PPro.
Cheers
Eddie

Set duration of imported still images down to 1 frame

Is there a way to import images into FCPX (10.1.1) and set it so the images will be only 1 frame when put on the timeline? Or to change their duration in the Event viewer after they are imported? I found the "duration" setting in the editing preferences, but that's in seconds and doesn't do what I want. For what I'm doing now I want them at 1 frame, but really I'm looking for total control of the length of bulk still images without having to cut each individual one down on the timeline.

Put them in the timeline. Select them all. Press Control-D. Enter 1 and press return.

Most efficient way of changing still image frame rates?

I'm using Premiere CS5.5 and have been having issues with the audio/video going out of sync when I upload my video to Vimeo (it's not out of sync prior to uploading it...it only happens after they transcode it). The Vimeo support staff says the problem is that I'm using a variable frame rate, but since there isn't any option (to my knowledge) to choose a constant or variable framerate in Premiere/Adobe Media Encoder, I think I have identified the problem. The primary footage that I shot with is 23.976 fps and that is what my sequence settings and output settings have been, but I also have a lot of still images that I'm using for b-roll, which I finally noticed are 29.97 fps. I changed the Intermediate Media Timebase setting to 23.976 fps in the preferences, but my question now is if there is an efficient way to change the frame rate of all those still images without having to re-import them and re-apply all the various motion effects/key framing that I've already spent a lot of time on?
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Yeah, I downloaded MediaInfo to explore some of the various versions that I've rendered in my effort to get something that works correctly on Vimeo, and depending on the encoder I saw some of what Ann posted, but I also looked at one on MediaInfo that I had rendered through Adobe Media Encoder and it had a Constant frame rate mode of 23.976, yet I remember watching that one on Vimeo at the time and it was still out of sync--Mediainfo says that version has a variable audio bit rate though, but to my knowledge there isn't an option in AME to choose a constant audio bit rate.
I agree that it's an issue on Vimeo's side, but the chances of them getting their **** together in a timely fashion seem low. The frustrating thing is that I can watch documentary style videos on Vimeo that I know were edited and compressed through Premiere/AME, yet they don't have any audio sync issues. The difference that I noticed between one of those videos and mine is the use of still images in my video. As you can see from an image I uploaded earlier, the default frame rate for still images when I imported them was 29.97 until I changed it yesterday, but it didn't update the images I had already imported. So I'm wondering if there is a way to change the frame rate of those still images without having to re-import the images and make all my edits/key framing all over again.

Still image with motion has flicker pulsating problem

I use FCP 5.0.4
I have read the many threads about this subject and am still not able to succeed in getting rid of the flicker/pulsating in a still image with motion.
I would say about 25% of the stills with motion have the jitters; all the rest look great.
The first thing I tried was
Effects:Video Filters:Video:Field Shift:none
as well as
Effects:Video Filters:Video:Flicker Filter min, med, and max.
Maybe 5% were corrected with this, but the other 20% still had the jitters even after using a combination of the above or by themselves.
I just burned a test DVD using a variety of the persistently jittery stills from my current project and although the jitters change a bit, they were still there so all of these failed:
1. Effects:Video Filters:Video:De-interlace Upper (odd)
2. Effects:Video Filters:Video:De-interlace Flicker Filter minimal
3. Effects:Video Filters:Video:De-interlace Flicker Filter max
4. Effects:Video Filters:Color Correction:Broadcast Safe conservative 115
5. Effects:Video Filters:Video:Flicker Filter max
6. All the tricks together which means
Effects:Video Filters:Video:De-interlace set at Upper (odd)
Effects:Video Filters:Video:Flicker Filter max
Effects:Video Filters:Video:Shift Fields: none
Effects:Video Filters:Color Correction:Broadcast Safe conservative 115
I know this issue has been kicked around a lot and i know some folks are not happy that it has to be kicked around at all. But I am doing something wrong because my DVDs look very un-PRO. Would anyone like to talk me through this nightmare preferably with as many details as possible since I am obviously missing something critical.
Thanks in advance.

There is no 'secret formula'. It just takes thinking through the issues.
1. Set the image size for each image that makes sense within the context of your project. Going significantly larger than the displayed area of that image (including movement) is just asking FCP to do additional work to resize the image. FCP is less sophisticated at resizing images than Photoshop. Use Photoshop and your planning of the movie to get the images to the appropriate size.
2. Wasted effort and totally irrelevant- you could set it to 7200 dpi if it makes you feel better.
3. Good idea - be sure to knock down areas of pure or very bright white. These are the elements that will give you the most trouble.
4. Don't do this unless you want to throw away HALF the picture information. Deinterlace deletes half the picture and then photoshop recreates it through interpolation of the remaining half of the picture. Why do this?
5. Make your determination based on what works. If you have properly exposed and sized the material, the need to blur is greatly reduced. ONLY do it on the images that need it. Why degrade every image if you do not need to do so?
6. See number 5
7. Lay out your time line early, view the work on an external broadcast monitor and only mess about with the images that require it.
In the psycho business they have term for much of the referenced post - it's called superstitious behavior. Basically it comes down to "It worked before so we recommend it to everyone without regard to their situation" ... here's another example:
Many years ago in my architecture practice, we had one of the early 512k macs (upgraded from the 128k!) I needed to show one of the interns how to create a project budget spread sheet in Excel. Inadvertently I clicked on Word, said "oops", closed it and opened Excel and we went to work.
A week later I was walking by the computer and overheard the same intern explaining how to work with Excel to another architect. "First you open Word, close it, THEN you open Excel", she explained. When asked by her 'trainee', why do you have to open Word first, wouldn't it just be easier to simply open Excel? Her answer was just perfect, "Well, it works every time, what's wrong with that?" so it goes ...
good luck with your project.
∏

Still images exported to DVD look deinterlaced and flicker on TV monitor

Hi,
I have tried tried almost everything and I still have issues with the still images exported to DVD as sequencefrom FCP 7.0 by using Compressor are deinterlaced and flicker on TV monitor. Please help remove the annoying flicker.
My FCP Timeline Sequence settings match the image resolution:
Frame Size: 1024 x 682 (double of 720 x 480 standard DVD res)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square
Field Dominance: None
Compressor: Photo JPG (also tried, DVCPRO-NTSC)
I cropped the original images in Photoshop to the 1024 x 682 and saved as tiffs. They still look deinterlaced in FCP timeline and exported to DVD on my iMac computer monitor.
Final output of DVD will be on this monitor:
Specifications:
Ikegami
Model: VCM-2101
Resolution: 450 TV Lines (Horizontal)
Should I crop the images to 450 horizontal pixels or the double of that 900?
How can I match the sequence or the images settings to avoid the flicker and deinterlaced look on that monitor? I am not able to test the image by having the monitor next to computer.
Compressor:
I used custom DVD settings in Compressor for 90 min best quality DVD. Tried the Porgressive and "Same as Source" in Output field.
In "Crop to" and "Padding" I set for preserve source aspect ratio and letterbox area of source.
I followed the advices from below and I still did not resolve the problem. Please is there anythign else I can try?
Thanks a lot..
Re: Poor Quality Stills
Dec 19, 2006 4:08 PM (in response to Steve Braker)
Things to try (In increasing order of image degradation)
- (in FCP) field order>none
- (in FCP or Photoshop) reduce whites by 10% - reduces overly bright areas
- (in FCP) flicker filter - minimum
- (in Photoshop) motion blur>vertical> .2 - .5 pixels - blurs vertically only
- (In FCP or Photoshop) Gaussian blur> .2 - .5 pixels -blurs both horizontally as well as vertically
- (in FCP or Photoshop) deinterlace - throws away half the image and is generally not appropriate on scanned images

Dear Russ,
Thank you very much. Yes, there is something else in the sequence, old documentary, 768 x 570 (no field dominance, 25fps, Apple ProRes 422) but the images are more imporant.
make a progressive sequence with square pixels. (I am partial to 720P, 1080 should work – or 540). Choose Pro Res 422
Do you mean that I should make a sequence in FCP with these settings? If yes, how can I set a "progressive" sequence? I dont see a setting for output field in FCP sequence settings, lnly in customizing Compressor output DVD format.
Also: "720P, 1080 should work – or 540" are you talking about Frame size? If so, to set in Compressor or in FCP?
If you have interlaced material, then de-interlace before you bring it in. If you don't have interlaced clips, don't de-interlace.
The images are not interlaced after I crop them, apply motion blur filter in Photoshop but look interlaced in FCP timeline after I import them and even to the same as photos sequence in FCP timeline.
Please help and thank you for your comments.

Menu still images "flicker" ever so slightly

Hi,
I have a question about still images used on my main menu after building with DVD SP.
For my main menu, I am using three different photographs. After I build the DVD and mount it in DVD player, parts of the image "flicker" or "wiggle" a little bit- I don't really know a better way to describe it.
I have tried to get rid of this using a lot of different methods, all involving Photoshop. I have used TIFs, JPGs; 300 and 72 ppi images; different sizes, etc., but to no avail. The wiggling usually involves a small part of the image, and it is not really terrible, but it is kind of annoying. Regardless of the technique I use to make and save the images in Photoshop, it always seems like it's the same part of the image that behaves this way.
Does anybody know what is happening here, and if so, is there a way that I can get rid of it?
Many thanks,
Andrew

Can you test the disc in another player?
Alberto

Flicker problem with still images

I have a series of still images in my timeline. There is a red garment in each of these images and it is producing a moray effect on the red garment. I also keyframed some of the still images for movement and it makes the problem worse. Is there a filter or some other trick I can use to get ride of the moray problem?
Thanks.

Thanks Al and sorry for the misspelling, however, the original still image does not have a moire problem, it is only when I import it to FCE and I keyframe a panning movement to the image that I get the moire effect which is very distracting. Do you know of any tricks within FCE that may help remove or reduce this effect?
Thanks.

How to save a still image from video without Photoshop

So- I need to save a still from some video but I do not have Photoshop. How can
I do it. Is it possible in FCP? Any other ideas?

In your timeline, park the playhead on the frame you want to make the still from; now double click anywhere in that video clip, and it will appear in the viewer. Then Shift/N will make the still frame for you. Now go to the file menu and choose Export/QuickTime conversion, choose Still Image, and under options, set the image type.
I've also discovered recently that MPEG streamclip can produce very good still frames; if you have a QuickTime movie you've already made from an FCP sequence, you can very quickly drag it to an MPEG Streamclip window, move the playhead to the frame you want, and choose Export Frame from the File menu. You can then choose an image type, and a location for the image file.
Useful if you don't have FCS open at the time.

Sharpening Still images

I've heard that still images should not be sharpened before importing to FC as they tend to pixelate and will 'shake" during TV playback. Question: If I start with RAW file, bring in as a Tiff, should I sharpen just a little (e.g. a minimal amount in detail section in Lightroom (say 20 or even 15) , or 80% with .5 radius in Photoshop -- or not at all? Can someone be specific about this? How bad is this "flicker" thing? Is it visible on the WEb too?

The flickering is an artifact of the two field structure of interlaced video. It is a result of very thin (often horizontal) elements that exist on one scanline as is common in text or titling. This can also be the case in images with great deal of detail with high contrast as well as when when you are engaged in pan/zoom moves. (Sharpening can make this WORSE as what sharpening is doing is creating higher contrast between adjacent pixels to create the impression of edge detail.)
As the alternate fields play, the flashing element is essentially being turned on/off. The basic strategy is to get the element to exist over two scanlines so it is refreshed every time the field plays or to reduce the amount of contrast so the difference between ON and OFF is not noticeable.
Before you start any of these steps listed below, make sure you are viewing your material on an appropriate monitor. If you are working in an NTSC/PAL interlaced format (eg DV) you need an external TV monitor - not a computer screen. Without the appropriate device, you are playing blind.
Things to try (In increasing order of image degradation)
• (in FCP) field order>none
• (in FCP or Photoshop) reduce whites by 10% - reduces overly bright areas
• (in FCP) flicker filter - minimum
• (in Photoshop) motion blur>vertical> .2 - .5 pixels - blurs vertically only
• (In FCP or Photoshop) Gaussian blur> .2 - .5 pixels -blurs both horizontally as well as vertically
• (in FCP or Photoshop) deinterlace - throws away half the image and is generally not appropriate on scanned images
One tip when using blurs - if the problem does not involve the whole image, try using a mask to limit the effect to just the necessary area. This will keep you from softening the whole image.
Remember: Unless you are viewing your work in the appropriate external NTSC/PAL monitor, you are playing blind. The computer monitor only shows you a proxy image.
One final thought, if you have only used FCP to slow (retime) your video significantly, you may be simply duplicating frames to create the additional material to pad the playback. The flashing (strobe like effect) you see is the result of this. In that case, try using Motion or Shake's optical flow retiming to process the image. It will produce better quality product.
good luck.
x

Render flashing over Still images in HDV

I was given this project to rescue, the biggest problem is it is full of still images with moves/keyframes and full of subtitles. The images are all JPEGS, of varying sizes and resolutions, some of them are still in grayscale mode. These problems mainly show up on the interlaced HDTV monitor, on the RGB monitor the images suddenly dip 50% in brightness, and flicker slightly.
The flicker filter on MAX and a gaussian blur will not fix this. the only thing that seems to work is converting all these images to TIFFs and re-doing all the moves which in Final Cut is a nightmare. Here is a link, the full visual dissonance problems are washed out by this camera.
http://www.vimeo.com/5590809
What would be a life saver is finding a way not having to convert all these JPEGs to TIFFs.
Moving keyframes, changing opacity, etc does nothing to improve the render flickering.

The flickering is an artifact of the interlaced nature of video. It is a result of very thin (often horizontal) elements that exist on one scanline as is common in text or titling. This can also be the case in images with great deal of detail with high contrast as well as when when you are engaged in pan/zoom moves on stills.
As the alternate fields play, the flashing element is essentially being turned on/off. The basic strategy is to get the element to exist over two scanlines so it is refreshed every time the field plays or to reduce the amount of contrast so the difference between ON and OFF is not noticeable.
Before you start any of these steps listed below, make sure you are viewing your material on an appropriate monitor. If you are working in an NTSC/PAL interlaced format (eg DV) you need an external TV monitor - not a computer screen. Without the appropriate device, you are playing blind.
Things to try (In increasing order of image degradation)
• (in FCP) field order>none
• (in FCP or Photoshop) reduce whites by 10% - reduces overly bright areas
• (in FCP) flicker filter - minimum
• (in Photoshop) motion blur>vertical> .2 - .5 pixels - blurs vertically only
• (In FCP or Photoshop) Gaussian blur> .2 - .5 pixels -blurs both horizontally as well as vertically
• (in FCP or Photoshop) deinterlace - throws away half the image and is generally not appropriate on scanned images
Remember: Unless you are viewing your work in the appropriate external NTSC/PAL monitor, you are playing blind. The computer monitor only shows you a proxy image.
One final thought, if you have slowed your material significantly, and have not used some sort of frame blending/optical flow processing, you may be simply duplicating frames to create the additional material to pad the playback. The flashing you see is the result of this.
good luck.
x

How to load an image without a gui? big problems...

Hey guys, I usually try my best to not ask for help and figure stuff out myself. But this last week i've been having big problems with this work project.
My goal is to load images from disk, and append them to each other to create one big image.
The images are 0-9.jpg each file containing a number in it. then i create one big file with 4 numbers in it. called final.jpg.
so far i can do all this, but whenever the program is finished, the application just keeps running. the program has literally gone through all the steps... i have a system.out.println printed on the last line after the main, after the class instantiation... and still it stays running.
how do you guys load images without a gui? This program will probably be running under unix, so i can't create a (for component example)
Panel() and media track the file load... so i'm pretty much stumped
any help you guys can provide would be really incredibly helpfull at this point. I have searched these threads for a few hours without luck. I found only 1 real post related to my problem, but eventually they said use MediaTracker = new Mediatracker( new Panel() ); which i can't use. :(
Thanks a lot guys.
:D

yeah tried doing that, didn't work either.
UPDATE
I FINALLY found a way...
and here it is for others to find!
public BufferedImage getImage(String filename) throws Exception {
FileInputStream input = new FileInputStream( filename );
JPEGImageDecoder decoder = JPEGCodec.createJPEGDecoder( input );
BufferedImage image = decoder.decodeAsBufferedImage();
return image;
it returns an image buffer, but it's better than nothing! :)
atleast this functions under unix.

Using still images with Final Cut (and the apple suite in general)

I have had a re-occuring and long term problem that has caused me many lost hours of head scratching and work arounds, and as of yet I have not been able to come up with a good solution.
Its to do with integrating still images with the Final Cut suite.
If I receive a high quality image from a client to use in their video and I then try importing it into Final Cut and animating it, it always ends up looking like a pile of ahem. Often I will get "swimming" lines appear across fine detail on the image, and parts of it will flicker as it moves across the screen. For instance, if I have a picture of some blinds or other fine detail (especially horizontal and vertical lines), when I add a grow and throw movement to it the detail will become very noisy - buzzing and flickering like mad.
I have found I can counter this by resizing the image in photoshop to a resolution closer to SD video (700w or 500h) - but I always end up losing detail, and the flickering and noise is only reduced, not eliminated. Other things that have helped are blur effects applied at a very low level, like 0.5 blur, so its not noticeable visually, but Final Cut seems to treat it differently and quieten the noise and flicker down.
However, all of these workarounds are ultimately still giving a reduced quality product.
Also, this problem is not necessarily constrained to Final Cut, I am currently fighting DVD Studio Pro because it is murdering the text quality in a stills slideshow I am creating - and in this situation there is no animation being applied. No matter what file type (psd, jpeg, tiff, png...) or size I output the text and images from Photoshop in, the moment DVD studio pro gets hold of it, it turns to cripe.
For a while I was putting it down to the fact that I usually edit in SD (PAL) formats, and there just wasn't the resolution available to reproduce fine detail. However, I do often see other people achieving pin-sharp fine detail on still images and text in SD formats (the Apple templates are a good example)
So, my question to you, oh great and high boffins, if you are dealing with still images and text, how do you do it? How do you work around any noise problems you have, and how do you produce those pin-sharp images (both moving and still) I see in other professional productions?
Quad G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

still images with too high a resolution will always cause problems. this is due to the detail of the image being finer than the scanline of the tv can display ... obviously this will caise the image to flicker as these details alternately appear and disappear as and when the scanline can display them. as you have discovered, the answer is to apply a very small blur, the effect being that the detail is spread by the blur such that the scanline can dislay it correctly.
text issues are often rooted in the same problem ... unless the text is placed very carefully (whole even number on the y axis) then the quality may be impaired due to the resulting interlacing/scanline issues

Still Images without flicker

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for