Shadow/Highlight flickering

My flickering footage issue came from C100 when I applied RGB curves to an MTS file. The issue was fixed by using brightness/contrast effect instead. Hope this helps someone else

I'm running into the same issues. I've tried the workarounds here but they were all a no-go. I know that I might be able to find a way to mimic the effect using other controls, but it's a real shame that this problem exists, as it would be an extremely handy tool if it worked properly. As it is though, it really should be dropped as defective - an effect that only works for some people on specific clips, edited by specific graphics cards, does not sound like a good product to me. Either fix it or drop it, and I'd really prefer the former.

I've been struggling with this same issue and there were a few posts in this thread that hit a chord with me because I was doing this symmetry video with two side by side clips. In many cases BOTH clips had s/h applied and the flickering was insane. But as noted, the flicker went away when I isolated each clip in its own timeline. It only appears (for me) when there are two or more simultaneous clips with s/h applied. So I'd be interested to hear a more streamlined approach, but one convoluted thing that worked for me, was to nest each clip, or multiples as long as there was only one visible at a time, open that nest and export the sequence as a new file, and then replace the nest with the new file. It was super tedious, but it got rid of the flickering. :\

I'm also having this issue.

I really like the ease of use of the Shadow/Highlights effect. It gives me results much easier and quicker than Levels can, but it's buggy. I'm seeing this on my late 2012 Macbook Pro (10.8.5)  and my late 2013 Mac Pro (10.9.4). Both are running Premiere Pro CC 2014 - Build 8.0.1 (21)

The striping and strobing seems to appear at different points in the edit timeline within Premiere. Sometimes it doesn't appear at all in the preview window, but only comes out in the export video. When I re-export the video, the glitch weirdly appears at different points in the exported video. This is after making NO adjustments to the effects on the timeline, but changing the export format.

Here's what it looks like in Premiere when I'm playing it back:

Premiere Pro CC 2014 Shadow and Highlights bug - YouTube

And here's a frame from the exported video:

I also have an issue when I try to use the shaped mask tool in the Shadow/Highlight effect, where during playback the preview window will only show me a quarter of the video, with the content inside the mask being sourced from another corner of the video:

I've tried slicing up the clips that have the effect applied to them, as per this suggestion: LINK - No luck

I've tried CraigGordonDMD suggestion of reducing the Black Clip / White Clip from 0.01% to 0% - No luck

I've also tried switching the Mercury Playback Engine from Software, CUDA and OpenCL - No luck

I've tried taking the whole thing into After Effects with Dynamic Link and the LUT I've applied didn't make the journey

As hpmoon points out here: Re: Shadow/Highlight flickering - Temporal Smoothing is not available in manual mode, so I can't use that as Auto mode gets the balance wrong.

I'm trying to match the Shadow/Highlights effect using the levels effect, but I can't manage to get the same level of detail come through.

Going by the number of discussions online about this, I would say this is a bug in Premiere and it's been there for a while. It would be awesome if Adobe could have a look at this effect and maybe consider overhauling the effect it in this manner:

Camera Raw like interface for Premiere Pro CC

Thanks in advance

Dan

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Dan Murphy
Video Production & Photography
+61 0449 53 9797
www.mandurphy.net

I add the manual shadow and highlights in after effects and its works about about 65% of the time.

Something about after effects smooths out the flicker much better.

I'd come accross the same problem, and after reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that Shadow/Highlight isn't an effect, it is a deffect.

I'm getting the same problem with flickering on multiple DSLR projects (H.264), using PP CS6. Some clips work fine, but the majority don't. Auto is OFF, and the amounts make no difference. Tried rendering both with and without GPU acceleration (Nvidia GeForce GTX 570) -- no difference.

No overlapping clips.

It's really frustrating that an effect only sometimes works. Sad to see it still seems to be a problem in PP CC.

Reading through this thread is curious, how long does it take Adobe to address bugs?

A recent convert from F.C.P. I stummbled across this problem shooting an on-the-road project with extremely tight deadlines. I guess I should have tested Premier further before using it in the wild but how was I to know about the H-S problem?. As it was, I wasted precious time and energy, late at night in a hotel room and never found the solution. It effected the delivered product and I'm a little grumpy about it. Reading that this problem has been known for a long time has raised my level of distain to "peeved".

Are there any other Premier "gotchas" that I should know about? Should I convert to Avid? I even hear FCPx is starting to come right?

Happy editing,

Cheers,

Josh.

You may want to check the codec of the footage you are using. I was getting some horrible flicker so I tried an experiment. I have the same clip in my timeline with the exact same settings - one is direct-from-DSLR H.264 format, the other is the same file converted to Apple ProRes 422. The H.264 file flickers, the ProRes does not.

I don't know if this will apply in all circumstances, but the flicker issue may have something to do with the highly compressed 4:2:0 subsampling used in DSLR footage. When you convert to ProRes or a similar codec, you're "unpacking" the bits into a larger container, and since the shadows/highlights filter is effectively expanding your dynamic range, giving it more room to play (in the case of 10-bit 4:2:2) may help reduce flicker and banding.

For those of you that simply notice the "sky" in your clips flickering when using Shadow/Highlight Adjustment, make sure to set at least the Black Clip and/or White Clip from .01 to 0. This will stop that annoying flicker throughout the entire clip.

If you do a crossfade, with two shadow/hightlight adjusted clips, you get another type of flicker. Rendering without GPU acceleration will solve the problem. Go into Project/Project Settings/General and click software only. Save the file, close out, reopen. It works.

The problem occurs when two clips that both have Shadow/Highlight adjusment with different values are crossfaded. You get this light dark bands of flickering in the crossfade. It looks horrible.

Setting the clipping amounts to 0, as opposed to the default of .01 will help with the clip flickering, but NOT the crossfade flikering. It will not help

Using Opacity keyframes as opposed to the Crossfade Video Transition Effect will not help.

Rendering without GPU acceleration will solve the problem. Another way to solve the problem is to make INTER clips. Render the two clips seperately with all shadow/highlight effects, then replace the clips on your timeline with the rendered clips and THEN crossfade them.

IT IS POSSIBLE THAT ALL SHADOW/HIGHLIGHT ADJUSTMENT FLICKERING IS CAUSED BY YOUR GPU CARD AND THIS MAY BE WHY ADOBE DOESNT SEE THE PROBLEM. Im not sure!