Flickering light effect on Vegas

[rocco123]

I don't understand why it's so hard to get some sort of random flickering light effect going. I have s_flicker from the borix fx sapphire pack, it's what I want except it darkens the image. I want to ADD brightness, never darken the image, does it make sense? i want baseline normal brightness, and random flickering on top because I dont like how it goes a bit dark between flicks. I have tried playing with s_flicker settings with no success. Please help I must finish a video for tomorrow and im stuck with this.

[poisondeathray]

I don't understand why it's so hard to get some sort of random flickering light effect going. I have s_flicker from the borix fx sapphire pack, it's what I want except it darkens the image. I want to ADD brightness, never darken the image, does it make sense? i want baseline normal brightness, and random flickering on top because I dont like how it goes a bit dark between flicks. I have tried playing with s_flicker settings with no success. Please help I must finish a video for tomorrow and im stuck with this.

Does it darken every frame, or did you mean some brighter, some darker ?

Flicker effects usually mean some frames are darker than normal, some brighter. If it doesn't have enough control over the flicker you want, one way to control it would be to use a layer compositing blend mode such as "lighten" or similar. But "lighten" will make it so it's never darker than the baseline reference original video. You can modulate the strength by the opacity level of the layer in conjunction with the filter settings

e.g.
Layer 1 is video with effect applied ; set compositing mode to "lighten"
Layer 2 is the original video

[rocco123]

I don't understand why it's so hard to get some sort of random flickering light effect going. I have s_flicker from the borix fx sapphire pack, it's what I want except it darkens the image. I want to ADD brightness, never darken the image, does it make sense? i want baseline normal brightness, and random flickering on top because I dont like how it goes a bit dark between flicks. I have tried playing with s_flicker settings with no success. Please help I must finish a video for tomorrow and im stuck with this.

Does it darken every frame, or did you mean some brighter, some darker ?

Flicker effects usually mean some frames are darker than normal, some brighter. If it doesn't have enough control over the flicker you want, one way to control it would be to use a layer compositing blend mode such as "lighten" or similar. But "lighten" will make it so it's never darker than the baseline reference original video. You can modulate the strength by the opacity level of the layer in conjunction with the filter settings

e.g.
Layer 1 is video with effect applied ; set compositing mode to "lighten"
Layer 2 is the original video

Some are darker and some are brigther. I don't understand how to do what you proposed.

Do you know if there is a plugging on the shapphire pack that does this? its strange there wouldn't be a pluging that does this without darkening frames.

[johnmeyer]

Vegas lets you combine fX. The order you add them can make a difference. I would use either the levels plugin or the color corrector plugin. Using one or more of the built-in Vegas fX can let you shift the results of the flicker plugin to get what you want. I'd apply these fX after the flicker.

The Color Corrector plugin also features its own level controls (leave the color settings alone). It features both a levels shift (luma of all levels increased) and a levels gain, as well as gamma. The Levels plugin lets you stretch the top and bottom of the curve, as well as apply a gamma control.

The ultimate levels control is to use the Color Curves plugin to create your own, custom histogram.

As always, when fooling with levels, use the Levels portion of the Vegas videoscope to monitor what you are doing. You can also click on the bypass icon to "A/B" between the original video and the video with your flicker and levels controls applied to make sure you are getting the result you want without forcing too many pixels out of bounds. A calibrated monitor is also a requirement.

Finally, if you want even more help, you should ask your question in the Magix Vegas forum where there are hundreds of Vegas users, rather than here where there are only a few. You could also go to the Vegas section of Creative Cow forum where there are many Vegas users.

[poisondeathray]

Some are darker and some are brigther.

When someone says "flicker" it suggests brighter and darker. Think of a lightbulb flickering. It goes on/off

I don't understand how to do what you proposed.

1) Place a copy of the video on track 1 and track 2
2) Apply the flicker effect to the video on the top track (track 1)
3) Change the compositing mode of the track 1 to "lighten"

left click the button indicated by the arrow

[Attachment 47567 - Click to enlarge]

select lighten

[Attachment 47568 - Click to enlarge]

It might be slightly different in newer vegas versions

Do you know if there is a plugging on the shapphire pack that does this? its strange there wouldn't be a pluging that does this without darkening frames.

I don't know, you can look at their website.

I don't have those plugins for vegas. I think I tried them a while back, and my trial period ran out