Struggling to Deflicker/Stabilize

[stephenjosey]

Hello everyone!

I'm fairly new to the process of video restoration and have mostly been searching around the forums to learn!

However, I've hit a bit of a wall regarding an issue I'm having with a video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p5kwiy5khSlbwW9LtBK7Mk6abdecilks/view?usp=sharing (I have also attached the video to this post in case you are uncomfortable downloading from Google Drive.)

My main concern is the flickering/pulsing of the colors in the background. My goal is to get the background to be stable without the flickering and pulsing.

I've tried numerous AviSynth plugins and scripts, including the following:

----

deflicker(noise=200)
neo_f3kdb()
ReduceFlicker(strength=2, aggressive=false, grey=false)
FluxSmoothST(temporal_threshold=15, spatial_threshold=15, luma=true, chroma=false)

----

Unfortunately, I still can't seem to get rid of the issue. I'm open to any solutions, whether it be a part of AviSynth of another software entirely.

Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated, and I thank you for your time!

[poisondeathray]

Is this the original version ? (or the "most original" that you have?)

There are no "colors"... therefore no "pulsing of colors." Is it black and white only ? or only this scene ? The flickering in the sample is luminance only

What is the rest of the content like ?

=> Because according to this sample you could just replace it will a still frame and reintroduce the fade in and it will be perfectly stable and no flickering. Better than any filter

Maybe choose a better, more representative sample with several scenes or at least provide a better description

[stephenjosey]

Is this the original version ? (or the "most original" that you have?)

There are no "colors"... therefore no "pulsing of colors." Is it black and white only ? or only this scene ? The flickering in the sample is luminance only

What is the rest of the content like ?

=> Because according to this sample you could just replace it will a still frame and reintroduce the fade in and it will be perfectly stable and no flickering. Better than any filter

Maybe choose a better, more representative sample with several scenes or at least provide a better description

Thank you for your reply! I have attached some additional examples. In hindsight, I should have given more samples and a better explanation. For whatever reason, it appears that the issue is only on certain areas of certain scenes. Most of the time, it's in the background on things like walls.

I also apologize if I'm not using the proper terminology. I'm fairly new the world of video restoration work, so I'm still gaining all of the terminology.

In terms of the source of the film, the film is only in black and white, and I'm using the "best" version of the video that I can locate.

Thank you again for your suggestion; I did not consider using a single frame that one incident. That's certainly the most straightforward solution to that particular scene that just didn't cross my mind.

Here is a folder with four clips with the issue present: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XdtSyppy61L3k1T38bbl72RDIERaN7SV?usp=share_link
(video samples are also attached on here)

Thanks again for everyone's insights and suggestions!

[johnmeyer]

You might take a look at the countless posts about flicker over at doom9.org. I have pretty good luck with a combination of deflicker, followed by MDegrain, with dct=1 rather than the default dct=0. This makes the script slow, but can sometimes do wonders with flicker. Here is a link to the entire thread:

Very difficult deflicker