Adobe Premiere - Slow Motion Flicker

  Strangely enough, I only just recently started noticing flicker when I slowed clips down in Adobe Premiere.  This is with interlaced video clips.  Generally you don’t notice them until after exporting to DVD and playing back.

  Did a bit of research online, and from what I gather, it’s due to the fact the interlacing is affected by the change in speed.  To solve this issue, you’ll want to make sure you de-interlace the clip you are slowing down.

  1) Right-click the clip in the timeline.

  2) Select Field Options

  3) Choose Always Deinterlace.

  This should solve the flickering problem; sadly however, deinterlacing also leads to a slight degrade in quality.  Some other sources say that the flickering is minimal if you slow the speed down by even numbers, like 50% or 25%.  It makes sense because interlacing is done between two frames, so if you go by multiples of 1/2, it should be able to distribute the frames better.  You can try that first and see if the flickering is still there; if it is, then go for deinterlacing.

  Of course, it’s also important to make sure you have the correct field order.  If you don’t, you’ll always end up with flickering.  Simple way to check in Premiere is to right-click the clip and choose Field Options > Reverse Field Dominance.  If reversing the fields leads to better video quality (less blur which you should be able to see easily), then you obviously have the wrong field order.  To fix this, you’d create a new sequence and make sure you choose the opposite field order (upper/lower).  You should be able to just copy-paste the timeline clips between sequences so no work is lost.