VirtualDub MSU Deflicker filter
- Project, ideas: Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin
- Implementation: Kostya Strelnikov
Filter is intended for processing video with flicker effect (fast and abrupt brightness changes). The effect of flicker is a common degradation in old movies. Typical example:

Sequence of frames from movie with flicker
Filter is very useful for old movie cleaning task.
Settings
Filter’s interface allows to choose from three work types, and to change influence degree using delicacy parameter. You can process frame by parts in case of irregular flicker (use break mode). If you use use blend mode then current frame will blend with previous frame using threshold parameter. Change ground parameter sets initial value for change ground threshold (later threshold will be defined automatically)

Filter settings
Examples
We will compare work of MSU Deflicker filter and Donald Graft’s filter.
Let’s take as example old movie with World War II chronicles.

A frame from movie
Let’s consider graphs of brightness change by frames.

Graph for MSU Deflicker filter has same smoothness as graph of D.Graft’s filter, but MSU Deflicker filter better represents global brightness change along a movie.
Now let’s consider work of the filter in case of frame brightness jump. We will take other old movie for testing.
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A frame from the sequence | The next frame from the sequence |
You can compare results of filters below:
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The frame 19 after MSU Deflicker filter | The frame 19 after Donald Graft's filter |
Download
Contacts
- For common questions about filter’s work please contact us: video@graphics.cs.msu.ru
- For commercial license of this filter (commercial usage is not free) please contact us: video-licensing@graphics.cs.msu.ru
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