problem with panning

[peterkneter]

hello there,

i've got a problem now for some time and i cannot figure out any solution and i also searched through the forum but i wondered if nobody else has this problem:

simple shot: I have a pan from left to right above several layers (landscape).
i made this with the motion>keyframe effect.

on the front layer a tree trunk (blurry) goes from right to left.

when i export it the trunk flickers and also do some layers in the back but not that much.
everything is in progressive mode 1920x1080, 25f/s. I tried motion blur 100% (on the camera) but it was not better.
is this some interlacing problem? do I have to use another framerate? is it possible to give the front layer more inbetweens or something that it goes smooth?

i also tried to make the camera stable and pull every layer over the stage but when exporting the same flickering is there again.

would be nice if anybody has an answer for me - I already have an headache becaus of this

[Paul Fierlinger]

I have a somewhat unorthodox suggestion but it's fool-proof:
Use the simple camera in the Main Panel. Treat each layer as a separate project and merge, keeping the backgrounds as an alpha channel to make them see-through. Look under "Project" of the Main Menu to find Render Camera to a new Project and Render Camera to a new merged Project.

[ZigOtto]

hard to figure out what kind of "flickering" you have without a sample to show us, ...

what spacing do you get between 2 frames of the trunk, once keyframed ?
what kind of "blurry" effect have you applied on them, ... a directional (horizontal) blur ? and what value (the level for the Blur) have you set ?
have you try a playback with "Play All Frames" checked on in the preview setting panel ?
(try also to export a half-size video of your scene (here = 960x540), to see if the "flickering" persist.)

[peterkneter]

I don't know the spacing exactly. i have a keyframe in the beginning and at the end. but the camera movement is in an accelerated motion - so the spacing
becomes bigger to the end.

i tried a directional blur (from left to right - so horizontal) over the trunk. i tried with different values...

the flickering looks a little as if i had an animation on two frames but a camera pan on ones. you understand? - it's this kind of flickering.

thank you for your suggestions.

[Paul Fierlinger]

What's your fps? Sometimes there just happen to be confluences of several unfortunate values that will cause this; as you say, one layer does it more than the other. Try setting your project to a higher rate of frames per second and see what happens. What can make a difference is the size (diameter) of the project -- the larger the smoother -- what are yours? As ZO said, it would be easier for someone to help you out if you uploaded some images -- or better yet, the entire clip.

[slowtiger]

If you could show us the rendered video, we could much better guess the reason for "flickering".

I have a reasonable suspicion that what you experience is just another case of "shattering". It's a common effect in filmmaking and happens in life action too. Basically it happens when strong vertical contrasts (think of a wooden fence, or a street view in bright sunlight) move horizontally very fast in a pan. In that case any element's relative position to itself in consecutive frames is so big that the eye can't see it as identical object any more.

I think there's some rules of thumb about it in "The perfect Pan" by John Halas, of which I must have a xeroxed copy somewhere. Must search ...

[Paul Fierlinger]

This is exactly what I had in mind with my reply. In my film days much of my bread and butter work was shooting titles for other filmmakers. I hated crawls the most, because this shattering happened all the time and the only way to fix it was by trial and error and changing the speed -- all depending on the ratio of spaces between lines and sizes of lettering. If you have run into such an unhappy confluence of circumstances it could make your life easier by just going the route of using the other camera... does your version of TVP have it?

[ZigOtto]

...
the flickering looks a little as if i had an animation on two frames but a camera pan on ones. you understand? - it's this kind of flickering.

just another idea :
about your "Trunk" animlayer, before you Keyframed it, was it a single image (hold X frames),
or was it animated (like a "faux-fixe" lines vibration f.i.) ?
if animated in 2's, and the keyframer_fx applied on it in "Heads" mode, your panning Trunk animation will stay in 2's.
btw, what tvpa version do you have ?

[Paul Fierlinger]

And if it wasn't animated, animating would help. Also adding another dimension, slightly, to the camera move can help; a mild dip in closer or even with a slight tilt added, or a wave form line instead of a direct line from A to B. Such variable camera moves in almost all cases improve the looks of the animation anyway and are worth the trouble.

[peterkneter]

- the framerate is 25f/s i changed it to 30 but it did not effect anything.
-the project size is huge! it's like 2000x6000 or so.
-the camera movement is with a little bow so not just straight.
-the trunk is not animated just an animation layer key framed.
- i use TVP 9.5.21

i try to upload the file - first i have to compress it...

[ZigOtto]

have you tried a half-size (compressed) video export first ?
maybe it's only a "realtime" playback issue ...

[peterkneter]

yes i tried lesser big files but they were also flickering....

[peterkneter]

here is the file (4MB)

what do you think?

[Paul Fierlinger]

OK, I see the breaking up of the tree(s) only during playback but not when scrubbing -- is this what you are talking about? And the flickering I see more as jaggy, broken apart outlines -- not the fence effect slowtiger had mentioned at all.

[peterkneter]

no, the pixeling while playing is not my problem. this is - i think- because of the compression.
but the flickering of the trunk and also the tree that comes right after the trunk is the problem.
you can see it even more when you hold the arrow buttons to play it (in quicktime player)....