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Deflicker - visual previews vs lightroom export

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#1 aversis
Hi,

I have a sequence with some flickering, and was able to remove it with lrt4. The visual previews look good, and when played back in lrt it doesn't flicker at all.

Now I go to lightroom, read metadata, and render out the sequence to full size jpg. Bring the image sequence in premiere, only to notice that it's flickering a lot.

I have redone the deflickering, made sure I hit save to save the metadata, went back in lightroom and made sure I read the new metadata. But how can I check if lightroom is usingthe deflicker values before exporting the whole scene and bringing it into premiere? Do I understand correctly that since LRT4, the deflickering doesn't really alter the exposure values seen in lightroom, but instead does something else in the background?

Attached is a screenshot of the sequence in LRT4, the visual preview curve is perfect.

Here's a video after lightroom export:
http://youtu.be/MDcRFh6aYZo


   
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#2 aversis
As a test, I restarted the whole project. Deleted all the xmp files, the lrt previews, removed the folder from lightroom.

Started over again in lrt, then adjusted things in lr, went back and deflickered in 3 passes. Visual previews look almost perfect. Saved xmp data, reloaded in lightroom.

Rendered the sequence in lightroom and it flickers a lot.

I copied the visual preview files from lrt, renamed them to jpg extension and you can compare the results in this video:
http://youtu.be/CG3ypUgIjkE

Right side is the visual previews from lrt, left side is the lightroom exports...

Then opened lightroom again to see what things look like there. Now I got some really strange behavior. Thumbnails look like they are edited (bright images, I adjusted exposure pretty high up). But in library mode, when I click an image, the preview image looks dark. When I switch to develop mode, the image again looks correct. See attached images (first two are in library mode, last one is just switched to develop mode). I also isolated frames with heavy flickering, and can indeed see in the develop module when I switch back and forth between images that they indeed flicker. The main adjustments have been applied, but not the flicker correction. I can confirm this by looking at the exposure values, which have not been slightly altered to compensate for the flickering.

I really have no idea what is going on here Smile

I'm on windows 7, latest version of lrt.
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#3 Gunther
I wouldn't load the renamed visual previews into lightroom, they might still have metadata inside, so LR might apply the setting twice. Just don't mess with the previews :-)

I would suspect, that you probably didn't do the "Read Metadata from Files" while in Library/Grid Mode and having selected all images, is that possible? Which version of Lightroom are you using?
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#4 aversis
Hi Gunther,

I think I wasn't clear, I didn't load the visual previews into lightroom. I just made the video from the visual previews with premiere to be able to show the difference between lrt and lr exports. Same for the developped images, I exported them from lightroom and loaded the jpg sequence into premiere.

I made sure I followed the procedure correctly:
In LRT:
-select the folder with the nef files
-keyframe wizard
-save
- drag to LR
In LR:
- edit keyframes
- save to files
In LRT:
- Reload
-transitions
-save
-visual previews
-deflicker and refine a few times
In LR:
-read from files

I always did make sure to be in library mode and grid view when reading/saving metadata.

Other sequences worked fine, but they were less extreme in the edits and resulting flickering. I just want to make sure that after reading metadata in lightroom, everything was read correctly before exporting the whole sequence. Also on scenes that have more subtle flickering.

Is there a way to check in lightroom, after reading metadata, if deflickering values from lrt have been correctly applied?
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#5 Gunther
The Deflicker and HG adjustments get applied to invisible gradients, so there is no easy way to check. I can only imagine, that you probably removed or added gradients when editing the keyframes and that messed everything up or you did use the lightroom copy/paste/sync instead of the sync script that I provided. The easiest would probably be to do the sequence again.
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#6 aversis
Well, the previous test was already done from scratch.

As a new test, I started again from scratch, this time ruling out every possibility of mixing old and new metadata.

I made a new folder on a different hard drive. Copied my nef files into that folder. Batch renamed all the files. Deleted camera raw cache in lightroom, deleted all previews for my lightroom catalog. Also deleted some nefs to have a shorter sequence to edit.

Then I followed the same procedure as outlined in my previous post. This time I only made edits to exposure, profile correction, and adjusted the curve a bit. Also only used 2 keyframes (start and end). Indeed I use the script as you say.

Again needed a few deflicker passes to get a nice smooth curve. Made 100% sure I read metadata from files, in grid view, select all etc...

The only thing I don't do, is export from lightroom with your presets, as I have my own presets for exporting jpg sequences from lightroom.

Here is the result: http://youtu.be/739hq3Qin5s

First part is the lightroom export, second part is again how it looks when played in lrt with visual previews.
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#7 aversis
Hi Gunther,

I'm gonna leave this test scene as it is, as maybe it has something to do with the fact that I increased exposure a lot to make it look half decent. I don't seem to have this problem with other sequences Smile

Thanks for all the hard work!!

...also check out: