Shoot or Remove Television Flicker

[David Saraceno]

Anybody help with this:

1. Old footage shot on film and converted to VHS footage.

2. I'm trying to capture to HD.

3. SVHS out to plasma in.

4. Shooting the screen with 720/24pn.

5. Every other frame is slightly brigher than previous frame.

Any suggestions on making the footage flicker free?

Frame rates, etc.

Anything in post?

Mind you that the original footage isn't very good, but I want a consistent look to it rather than good/bright, good/bright, etc.

[David Saraceno]

No suggestions at all?

[ThePhage]

Is there a reason you're not capturing it via some analog to Digital capture device (even a cheap mini-dv cam)? If HD is your target format, you could blowup to HD in post. I think pretty much everyone here will agree this will produce higher quality results than sticking your HVX in front of any monitor playing back VHS. VHS has less than 400 lines of resolution, so capturing at DV's 480 lines will be more than enough, and blowing up to 720 won't look all that great no matter what method you use.

Depending on how the film was converted to tape, you may be able to inverse telecine (?) to get native frame rate in progressive.

But if you want the footage to have a "TV" look, I guess just do what you're doing. Perhaps matching the cameras shutter speed to match the monitor's refresh rate will get rid of the flicker.

[David Saraceno]

Thank you

[David Saraceno]

I'm not capturing to SD because I want to say HD.

This old footage, so I'm not certain on how it looks when shot of a plasma in HD.

Just the bright/not bright successive frames.

[ThePhage]

Well, your source footage is SD (well, less than SD since it's VHS). Since your target is HD, you have to enlarge to HD either in aquisition (pointing your camera at a monitor) or in post (capture at SD size, enlarge using NLE). It's two ways of doing the same exact thing.

And I think anyone else here will tell you that you'll get better quality by enlarging in post. Pointing a camera at a screen is just weak.

And doing it this way you'll definitely have no flicker issues (unless the flicker issues are also in the original VHS recording.

[David Saraceno]

I actually shot it off a LCD display, and it looks much better.

Thanks for the suggestions.