RE:Vision Effects has introduced an upgrade to DEFlicker to remove flicker associated with high frame rate and timelapse footage. The newly upgraded version DEFlicker v2 is the ruler of taking control of all things that flicker; whther you shoot with very high-speed shutter or at very low video frame rates (timelapses).
Version 2 provides additional and enhanced tools for correcting high-speed shutter artifacts, timelapse flicker and now comes with 4 plug-ins:
HighSpeed: High-speed shutter and high frame rate elements tend to exhibit strobing caused by lighting systems. New in DEFlicker v2 are tools for managing the Alpha Channel for green screen VFX shots. Also added is improved noise reduction and a simplified method for removing the flicker quickly. Now users can enter the frames-per-second of the shot, and the system frequency for their region (50 or 60 Hz) and DEFlicker takes care of the rest.
Timelapse: Your solution to handle flicker of image sequences with a lot of motion discontinuities. New features include improvement of render speed for sequences over 4K and better handling of large color and lighting shifts. It now also properly deals with over-range values.
Auto-Levels: Extended timelapse scenes often suffer from fluctuation in color and levels when shot using automatic exposure. DEFlicker already allows you to display graphically the variation over time and replace missing frames in the sequence. In v2, new methods of fixing or replacing bad or damaged frames are implemented.
Rolling Bands: New in v2, the Rolling Bands plug-in can be used in conjunction with the High-Speed plug-in or by itself. It allows you to model and attenuate those annoying dark bands primarily caused by lighting and rolling shutter speed time synchronization issues. Rolling Bands provide interactive ways to model the rolling bands height, the distance between bands, and the speed of roll. It also provides fine band feathering options to match the source video transition from lighter to darker. Temporal processing takes into account the rolling bands speed.
All plug-ins will see better handling of linear versus gamma encoded sources (now automatic in AE, matches project settings) and v2 should load v1 based projects without issues.
V2 Updates
- HighSpeed: Noise Reduction: spatial denoise – the method implemented was based on early testing. We switched to another method more appropriate for high-speed video typical noise.
- HighSpeed: Method 5: Noise Clean methods – Method 4 and 5 were very redundant, we switched Method 5 to a mix between old method 5 and method 1 which works better for larger motion.
- HighSpeed: Alpha Handling: It was requested that we handle clips with a non-full alpha (for example to deflicker greenscreen originated material), done – you do need to press Alpha Handling button
- HighSpeed: Timing: We now provide a different option for defining the time window. In V1, you could only set a radius (so an odd number of frames). We realize playing with 480/960 FPS material that sometimes you get slightly better results with an even number of frames – when it’s a multiple of the electrical power rate. (e.g. 960 FPS – 60 Hz). A new Rate option was added.
- HighSpeed: Gamma: AE you can now change project settings Linearize Workspace and Color Working Space and get approximatively the same result. In Premiere gamma is always 2.4.
- HighSpeed: Gamma Adjust – gamma slider REMOVED (this was there for testing initially, no real value within tool). Old projects will still have that value applied, but this parameter is now invisible
- HighSpeed: A project saved with V2 might load in a project using V1 but the effect might need to be edited. V1 projects using Noise value not at 0.0 and Method 5. will get different results. In the latter case maybe better, yet still different.
- Timelapse Contrast slider REMOVED, had no real purpose here, should be done after for best control (for example, use RE:Grade or your app built-in tools).
- Old projects will still have that value applied so you can render them, but this parameter is now invisible.
- Timelapse: Support for video over-range values (no more clipping)
- Timelapse: Issue with LAB mode processing becoming too blue fixed
- Timelapse: Additional controls to filter out undesirable over-saturated blotches (Max Deviation) – there is now Max Color Changes (0-100, where 0 is luminance only) and Max Deviation that limits the effect a single frame can have.
- Timelapse: Added a fifth method that matches to key-frames, good for landscape timelapses with alternating sun level and rolling clouds
- Timelapse: Internal handling of gamma, you can now change project settings Linearize Workspace and Color Working Space and get approximatively the same result.
- Auto-Levels: Filter Out Frames: Now has a menu, we added a Merge versus Flow-Warp option which sometimes works better – menu also adds Blend only mode and Copy Nearest
- Rolling Bands: New in V2, a tool dedicated to attenuate the annoying effect of slow rolling bands produced by (rolling) shutter speed mismatch with artificial lighting.
- GPU acceleration: Up to 10% faster in Windows version