Posts: 41
Threads: 15
Joined: May 2015
I've got about 100 timelapse sequences to be edited, most are shot in manual and don't flicker, but sunsets are shot in Av and some of them are flickering a lot, probably because I didn't use bramping - I believed flickering could be removed in post.
Ihave been evaluating LRTimelapse 3 for a couple of weeks, and installed version 4 yesterday. In LRTimelapse 3 I had to do several passes of deflicker on certain sequences shot in Av mode, to get rid of flicker. After 3 passes flicker still would be visible, although it was substantially reduced. This would mean I had to either lose quality because of recompressing with JPEG several times, OR I had to spend a lot of time and disk space using TIFF as intermediate format.
I'm very happy to see the new feature with visual deflicker in LRTimelapse 4. It makes the whole process a lot easier. But, it seems like the visual deflicker is not working 100%. After testing several sunset sequences with heavy flickering (shot in Av mode), I would say deflicker reduces the flickering by about 50-70%. That means I still have to do several passes of deflickering.
Attached images from one of the most extreme sequences. The images are raw images straight from the camera (Canon 700D), not edited in any way. (I read that heavy editing in LR could cause the deflicker to misbehave, at least in LRTimelapse 3 where the embedded preview was used as reference for exposure compensation)
Flickering is still visible after four passes in the clip below. I used maximum smoothing. It seems like the deflicker algorithm just doesn't compensate enough. Measuring the amplitude of the flicker curve gives me the following figures:
Original raw: 100% flicker ("reference")
Deflicered: 33% flicker left
Refined: 14% flicker left
Refined again: 6% flicker left
Refined 3rd time: 4% flicker left (fourth pass)
and so on...
I will probably get it right after 5-6 passes, but it is very time consuming - especially if I need to do more editing in Lightroom - in that case I might need to redo all passes of deflickering. In the long run I would probably end up not doing that last edit in Lightroom and end up with a sequence I'm not 100% satisfied with.
The sequences I've tested don't have clouds or other disturbing objects that would cause big changes in average brightness. I've tried different reference areas - whole image, sky only, ground only, or sky/ground combined.
Attached images from a time lapse in Monument Valley, capturing a phenomenon that happens only twice a year, and only when the weather conditions are right...
Original sequence, and yeah it is flickering!
After deflickering, max smoothing:
After refining, max smoothing:
Refined again, max smoothing:
Fourth pass. Flicker is still visible.