Flashing/flickering Light Bulbs in Still image

Hi!
Have a quick question about my methodology of doing the above!
Basically, I have a still image with light bulbs in it. I want the image to start dark and slowly get lighter. During this time, i want the light bulbs to flicker or flash on or off as if broken.
My thinking is to get 2 layers of the picture. in V1 have the filter for darker to lighter, then in v2, to mask everything but the lights and then use keyframes to simulate the flashing...and im pretty sure i have to do something with compositing aswell...
is this right? haha!
Many thanks in advance!!

Don't give up yet
Gimp is a free photo editor.
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/
It uses X11 on your Mac but, it still works just fine. You my already have X11 on your machine.
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/tools/X11.html
Be sure to set up Gimp to work off of copies or, just be very sure to always work by duplicating your still image. I have used Gimp for years. It has been compared to PhotoShop and, the best part is it's free..
I would more than likely use a mask as well.
Video filters > matte > mask shape > circle , set your center point on the light bulb
Also I would apply the mask feather
Video filters>matte>mask feather
Set the feather to 100% , this will give you a nice fading effect for the lighting .
So , just food for thought and, thoughts just off of the top of my head. This may work....
Install Gimp.
Open the still with Gimp
Duplicate the still
Create a a second layer of the still
Select layer 1
Using the lasso ( or free select tool ), or your could use the scissors tool, in fact that is what I would use. ( http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-iscissors.html ) , select the lightbulb
Revers selection and cut out the background.
At this point you could, if you wanted in Gimp go to filters > lighting effect and, add a lighting effect
as well. You could even use a lighting effect as another layer.
Do not flatten the layers and, save out as PSD.
Import into FCE
Put the PSD in your time line and open.
Right click over the bulb layer and open in viewer.
add your flicker filter and render ( you may even add a light rays filter in FCE at this point, )
Right click the background layer and open in viewer.
Apply your matte/mask and feather filters-render, center your matte/mask over the bulb and, turn the feather way up.- render
As I said this is all off the top of my head but, I'm thinking it will put you on the right track.

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• (in Photoshop) motion blur>vertical> .2 - .5 pixels - blurs vertically only
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x

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Hello all, I've stopped by the discussion forums in the past for quick fixes to problems when they come up, this is my first post though that doesn't seem to address anything I've found on here...
I am working on a project that takes scanned pictures from regular print photos into iMovie 6 and then burned into iDVD 6. I have done this similar style of work several times and never run into this problem. The project looks fine in both iMovie and iDVD preview, and burns fine to disc. As soon as it is popped into a DVD player, some of the still images flash and shake around, it appears to happen on the same images every time.
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Hi
A. I don't use the *Share/Export to iDVD* function in iMovie. iMovie rendering can harm
the photos in a movie.
I do: close iMovie, Open iDVD and import the movie project here (icon with a Star on it)
or just drop the icon into iDVD.
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Just slightly. Resulting in non-flickering photos.
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I have imported still images, jpeg files and they are shaky. I am having problems with them being shaky when I make some keyframe movements, mostly zooming in. I saw on the discussion it was suggested to reduce the size of the jpeg file which I did to 2048 x 1536. That seemed to work until I went further into my project adding more clips and still images to it. Suddenly, those still images added much earlier and working fine are now shaky. I tried the flicker filter setting it to max, and the image stablizer filter. Did not work. I saw someone said to check that the field dominance is set to none which they are. Also someone suggested adding gaussian blur filter. That made it not shaky but the quality of the photo is horrible, blurred as the effect suggests. Anyone have any suggestions?
Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Gaussian blur is the way to go, but you are in control of what it does. You can get great results with a little time spent. Remove interlace and flicker filter to do this.
Before you go to blur, check your levels. If your whites are peaking out of "legal" range you have a different problem and the blur won't completely take care of the jitters. Now for the blur:
- Use it vertically only. There's no need to add blur to the horizontal because that's not where the problem is. What you're doing is trying to mix just enough of adjacent video lines together so their contrast doesn't cause flickering.
- Use it extremely lightly. If your pictures were at sequence resolution you would probably want it set between .1 and .3 - in your case it's more but you don't say what your sequence rez is.
- Set it so the blur is gone, then back off untill you see a little bit of jitter. A small amount is often unnoticeable, and if you're right at the edge you're maintaining maximum resolution in the image.

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

Still image quality poor, Help

I posted a similar question last night. This one is more of the same.
Issue: Poor image quality (flickering, Jumping) when viewing stills on my TV only...
I have made 2 test videos. One was made in FCE and one in iMovie8. Both are identical and consist of only 5 still pictures. I added motion to a couple of pics in each test. The video from iMovie looks great on my TV. The video fro FCE looks very poor. The image is jumpy and flickering.
Why does the same movie movie look different depending on the source? What is different? Do I have something set up incorrectly in FCE?
I tried applying the De-interlacing filter and the Flicker filter. I tried all variants of the De-interlace filter, ie odd/even. I have made several exports from FCE trying to get rid of the flicker/jumpy-ness to no avail.....Even the still pics that have no movement flicker a bit from FCE, for example, one of the pictures are of my son holding a dark green fishing rod while standing in a tent. The picture has no movement but the fishing rod and tent poles are flickering, almost like there are lights in them blinking on and off. A similar picture that has movement shows the fishing rod as alternating dark and light lines instead of just a dark green rod. The same pics from the iMovie clip look great. The color is correct and no flickering at all.
To export from FCE I am using Quick Time Movie. From iMovie 8, I am using 'Export Movie' high quality. On each video I then just dropped them into iDVD and viewed on my TV.
I am a new user to FCE and so far I like it much better than iMovie 6 or 8. I have a hard time believing that the still picture quality output form FCE is worse than iMovie. So I must be doing something wrong.
Thank you in advanced for help,
Toshiro

Well I can only assume that there is a difference in the way the data is handled between the 2 apps. I have resolved my issue by not compressing the data while exporting. Unfortunately, my 3 minute video is 7G !!...oh well
...now if I could just get rid of the thin green line at the bottom of the screen during my opening segment it would be great....
Thanks for taking the time to assist
Toshiro

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Flashing/flickering Light Bulbs in Still image

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