This post was last modified: 2020-05-06, 01:28 by gavinsheehan.

Hi Gunther,

I absolutely love LRTimelapse and how easy it makes timelapses now. I've recently been toying with the Holy Grail method but have encountered some issues on every one I've tried so far.

I think I'm following the correct method. Set my initial keyframes, select the holy grail wizard, save, make my edits in Lightroom, return and reload my XMP data and then auto transition and visual preview. My issues are as follows:

1. In the timelapse I'm currently working on I have set 4 manual keyframes. I then set the holy grail keyframes as seen in the attached image. I edit my 4 keyframed images in Lightroom to my liking and then reload them to LR Timelapse. Even though the exposure of all the images was OK in Lightroom, when the holy grail curve is added, the luminance/exposure of the entire sequence goes much too bright. I have tried rotating and stretching the curve but cannot find a working set up. As you can see the 4 keyframes I set don't correspond to any exposure jumps so not really sure what I'm doing wrong.

2. Sometimes when I add the holy grail edits and then reload the other edited keyframe images from Lightroom back to LRT, I will get random spikes all along the purple luminance curve. These spikes don't correspond to keyframes or changes in settings. I have tried both regular edits and light edits but this still sometimes happens. Trying to use visual deflicker will fix it 90% but these spikes affect the overall pattern of luminance and give me a very wavy sequence which I can't use.

Some other notes:

- I have not altered the gradient/radial filters in any way.
- I have avoided using clarity or dehaze. Both set to 0.
- I mainly edit using the basic panel, tone curve, HSL, split toning, detail, lens corrections and calibration panels.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Let me know if you need any more information from me. Thanks.

Attached is the same timelapse but now the spikes are present in the luminance curve. What I did that caused this:

- Wasn't happy with some of the edits in LRT so went back to Lightroom and adjusted some sliders, introducing nothing new, just the values.
- Saved the metadata on the 4 keyframes, reloaded in LRT and then the spikes showed up. The spikes seem to be the exact edited images from Lightroom in terms of luminance. There is no holy grail correction applied.
- I tried going into the holy grail wizard tab, making no changes and then saving, reloading and doing auto transitions then visual preview but the issue still exists.

1. In the timelapse I'm currently working on I have set 4 manual keyframes. I then set the holy grail keyframes as seen in the attached image. I edit my 4 keyframed images in Lightroom to my liking and then reload them to LR Timelapse. Even though the exposure of all the images was OK in Lightroom, when the holy grail curve is added, the luminance/exposure of the entire sequence goes much too bright. I have tried rotating and stretching the curve but cannot find a working set up. As you can see the 4 keyframes I set don't correspond to any exposure jumps so not really sure what I'm doing wrong.

It's normal, that the brightness of the keyframes changes a bit after applying the holy grail compensations - that's why it's advised to rotate the curve as close to the middle line as possible, this will make the changes small, but of course still there are some change. But that's no problem, you will compensate for them when editing the keyframes. Just use the Exposure slider to define your desired brightness.
Generaly the smaller the Holy Grail Adjustments that you did on your camera, the smaller the holy grail compensations have to be and the less they will affect your brightness. That's one reason to shoot with very small adjustments of 1/3 f-stops - in your case they seem to have been much bigger (1 f-stop I assume).

2. Sometimes when I add the holy grail edits and then reload the other edited keyframe images from Lightroom back to LRT, I will get random spikes all along the purple luminance curve. These spikes don't correspond to keyframes or changes in settings. I have tried both regular edits and light edits but this still sometimes happens. Trying to use visual deflicker will fix it 90% but these spikes affect the overall pattern of luminance and give me a very wavy sequence which I can't use.

After saving the keyframes in Lightroom, the only images that get altered are the keyframes. And when reloading in LRT, it's normal, that the keyframes change. Normally you will apply the "Auto Transition" before (!) activating the Visual Previews - the auto transition will connect the inbetween images and then you won't get spikes.

Saved the metadata on the 4 keyframes, reloaded in LRT and then the spikes showed up. The spikes seem to be the exact edited images from Lightroom in terms of luminance. There is no holy grail correction applied.
- I tried going into the holy grail wizard tab, making no changes and then saving, reloading and doing auto transitions then visual preview but the issue still exists.

To reedit any keyframes:
- Turn off the visual previews before going back to Lightroom for reediting.
- Change the edits of the keyframes, of course you can use gradients also, just make sure to use only the predefined gradients, not add new ones or remove existing ones as always.
- Save metadata for the changed keyframes (make sure to do this from Grid View as always, not from develop module)
- return to LRT, reload, autotransition, turn on visual previews again. (leave the keyframes witzard and holy grail wizard alone, normally you don't need the first workflow row anymore now if you did it like I explained).

I'd suggest that you just do some more testing. If you somehow have the impression that you messed up, please go back to start by removing the sequence from Lightroom and doing Metadata/Initialize in LRTimelapse to get a clean start.
You will quickly figure out how it works.

Hi Gunther,

Thank you for the detailed response. I have done some more testing this evening.

Regarding the first issue I had, I reinitialised everything in both LRT and Lightroom, selected a few keyframes to edit in Lightroom, applied the holy grail corrections and then reloaded my edited keyframes. After adjusting the exposure a bit to compensate I still have some very noticeable jumps in exposure just as the sun rises. As you mentioned I think I dropped exposure by 2/3 of a stop or maybe 1 stop at this point. Is there any way to now add a manual keyframe to the holy grail keyframe transition to alter this exact frame more (manually bump up highlights & whites) and use it as a reference for auto transition? I have tried manually setting it as a blue keyframe, having it as 4 stars in Lightroom, compensating the settings and reloading in LRT but my changes seem to be overridden by the holy grail adjustment and none of my manual changes take effect.

Are there any plans to implement a process step after the holy grail leveling and before import to Lightroom so that you can see the baseline luminance of all frames with the holy grail compensation already in place but before any other Lightroom edits? I think this could be useful to get more accurate edits first time round in Lightroom instead of going back and forth with compensations.

I think I have resolved issue 2 by following the steps you suggested below. Thank you!

It's normal, that after the HG-Wizard itself, there might still be some bumps. Usually they will get removed when deflickering.

Normally there is no going back and forth for the Holy Grail Process and there is no need to manually adjust the matching, because that would be done by deflicker.

In your case however, I would assume, that due to your large adjustments, some highlights are blown on the images right after some of the adjustments. This can easily happen, especially with a situation with so much contrast. There is no easy way to recover blown highlights and they will lead to contrast changes that you can't just correct or even deflicker.
I can tell you that a properly exposed sequence will be perfectly smooth after Holy Grail wizard AND a couple of deflicker/refine steps.

Bottom line: if the shooting is technically bad because of blown highlights, you can spend days trying to fix that and most likely it won't work because information that is missing cannot be easily restored. You'd be better off practicing your shooting skills.

BTW: I've explained all this step by step in my new EBook: https://lrtimelapse.com/buy/ebook/

Thanks Gunther. Looks like some of what I have captured will be unusable due to using the bigger EV steps.

I've tried another few timelapses and am encountering further issues on the below. Any idea what would cause the below flicker pattern? There seems to be something strange going on. My workflow:

- I selected some automatic and manual keyframes to begin.
- Slightly adjusted rotation of the holy grail wizard.
- Saved and edited my keyframes in Lightroom.
- Reloaded back to LRT. Auto-transition and then visual previews.
- At this point, it looks like the holy grail leveling perfectly fixed the flicker curve up to a point (red line) and then corresponding to one of the keyframes the flicker started to go crazy. There was no changing of weather at this point so the overall reference luminescence shouldn't have had a drastic change.
- I turned off visual previews, went back to Lightroom to adjust 2 keyframes and then came back to LRT. reloaded and did auto-transiitons and was met with the attached plot. including loads of random flicker.

Would you have an idea why the random flicker has been introduced?

It seems as if not all metadata were saved from Lightroom or maybe you have set Lightroom to automatically save XMP data, which you really need to turn off!! (see https://lrtimelapse.com/install/ ).
After that, I'd recommend starting over from scratch. Remove the sequence from Lightroom and proceed with "Metadata / Initialize" in LRTimelapse. Then redo the workflow.

Thanks Gunther. I didn't have the automatically save XMP selected in Lightroom so not sure why it was doing it but it seems to be fixed now.

I've gone out and reshot some of the timelapses I messed up previously but have encountered another issue. I have a sequence now that is a high contrast scene but I have exposed forthe highlights leaving the shadows quite dark. When I edit in Lightroom I'm able to get the image to the settings and look I want. It is a holy grail sequence and I have edited 6 of the keyframes in Lightroom.

When reloading into LRT and generating visual previews, the sequence looks great except from keyframe 4 onwards I am getting some weird white balance flicker across all frames. It looks like the tint is changing but in settings it is not. Even frame to frame there are noticeable changes. Attached are 2 frames one after another which you can see the difference in the white balance in the image. I have tried the following:

- Equalise white balance on all 6 keyframes so there is no shift throughout the sequence.
- Reset clarity, dehaze, vibrance and saturation to 0.
- Reset the HSL/Colour module for all colours on all keyframes to 0.
- Reset split toning on all keyframes to 0.
- Noise reduction at 0.
- Calibration module reset to 0 on all keyframes.
- Reset all graduated filters to the default of having just 4 filters on screen. I have reset all of these filters to have all settings on 0 also across all keyframes.

The only panels I am using are the basic tone panel, tone curve, lens corrections and sharpening. I haven't encountered this before.

I can't see it from the screenshot. But that's most likely a lightroom issue.
Take LRT out of the equation to be sure: just copy all settings from the one frame to the other in Lightroom - if the problem persists, it's Lightroom doing conrast sensitive editing. This happens with nearly all tools in the basic panel. Some camera sensors produce some jitter in tone reproduction and Lightroom might amplify this.
Try using the tone curve instead of whites/blacks/shadows/highlights. avoid Dehaze and Clarity.
Then try again.
Some small changes in color rendition will also be well covered when rendering with motion blur plus.

This post was last modified: 2020-05-12, 01:37 by gavinsheehan.

Thank you once again Gunther.

I have tried restarting this sequence from scratch, removing it from Lightroom and re-initialising it in LRT. I have edited this time without using the basic highlight etc panel in Lightroom but still get some extreme colour flickering. I haven't tried rendering yet but I don't think the sequence will be usable in it's current state.

I previously pasted settings from one of my keyframes to the neighbouring frame in Lightroom and there was a visible difference in colour so it looks tobe coming from Lightroom. Do you know of any other fixes for this? I can't understand how it can be so extreme for frames that were literally captured one after another. Thanks.