Deflicker Troubles

Settings
This timelapse was taken with a f8 aperture / 200 iso / 1/6 exposure / 4" interval / Processed in Lightroom and LRTimelapse3 / RAW format / Nikkor 18-55mm lens set to 33mm

Technique
So, my focus this week was to learn how to deflicker a timelapse shot using aperture priority mode.  There are two I know of exposing an entire sunset or sunrise, one to shoot in manual and make adjustments to your settings as the light changes or to shoot in aperture priority mode.  Both processes require significant work in post production due to the changes that are either made manually or automatically.

In the case above I opted for the aperture priority option which I consider to have an easier post production work flow.  When I say easier, it isn't easy to master but should not be as hard if I manually adjusted for the lighting during the shoot.  In the sunset here you can see that my deflicker test was a massive failure.  It was not a failure during the actual shooting, but it was a complete failure as I was trying to remove the flicker.  If you watch the sky during the video you will see how the sky has a flicker to it.  The work flow of how to process these pictures after you take them is as follows: upload pictures into Lightroom, save color correcting changes, upload/run exposure diagnostics to color corrected pictures in LRTimelapse, upload changes from LRTimelapse back into Lightroom, the export and run the timelapse.

The step in which I'm failing is LRTimelapse.  As I upload my color corrected images and run the exposure diagnostics I can see how the exposure should be changed to the pictures.  When you save the settings the program should load them into the metadata which is what Lightroom reads.  Once in Lightroom you can upload that metadata for the series of pictures and it should apply the small changes to the pictures.  I see the changes however it clearly isn't staying when I export which is where I'm confused, I will need to just continue with trial and error...

It can be easy to confuse the two programs so below I'll try to give a quick explanation.

Lightroom: This program physically makes changes to the pictures.  If I change the shadows to be lighter or darker you will literally see the picture change.  Lightroom also formats the pictures to a final output that other programs understand.

LRTimelapse: This program is designed to work as an accessory to Lightroom.  Changes made in this program will not change the picture, however all changes are documented in a file called metadata.  If I have a series of 10 pictures that do not have the same exposure, LRTimelapse analyzes would analyze the sky for example.  It decides that picture 1 is correct, picture 2 is too dark, picture 3 is too bright, ect.  Then based on all of the changes it will document that picture 2 is too dark and if the exposure is increased by "given" value it will match picture 1.  LRTimelapse does this for every picture.  Those specific values are what LRTimelapse saves into the metadata file.  Once opened in Lightroom you can decide to read the file and Lightroom will make the physical corrections to the pictures.

Thoughts and What's Next?
I absolutely understand how the two programs work and what they should do, I tried to deflicker this video multiple times and it kept leading to the same result.  The final result clearly does not contain the corrections from LRTimelapse but I do see the exposures changing in each pictures in Lightroom. For some reason during the export it seems to lose the changes.  Not sure why but I'll figure it out.

I'm excited for next #TimelapseTuesday as I'll be celebrating my birthday, I have no idea right now what I'll do but I'll do my best to make it an exciting one!


Still balding but not bald,
-Kyle