Flicker is the thing that ruins otherwise perfect footage. Cheap LED uplighting at a reception, a string of bulbs behind the couple, anything shot at a high frame rate under lights that are pulsing faster than your shutter. Here are three ways to get rid of it in DaVinci Resolve, going from the free method that works most of the time all the way up to the one I can basically guarantee.

Flicker Removal Technique 1: Clip Duplication

Start here. This is the most common method, and the good news is that it works in the free version of DaVinci Resolve.

Put your flickering clip on the timeline. Mine is from a wedding with flicker all over the couple’s outfits and the background. Then:

1. Hold Alt on Windows or Command on Mac and drag the clip up to duplicate it onto the track above.
2. Press Control and Plus to zoom into the timeline, then nudge that duplicate over by one frame.
3. Go to the Inspector, down to Composite, and set the opacity to 60%.

Hit play. Look how much cleaner that is. No flicker. Isn’t that great?

Bonus Technique: Double Clip Duplication

This one I actually learned from a comment Mad Music Line left on my flicker removal tutorial for Premiere Pro, so credit where it’s due.

If you’re still seeing a bit of flicker on lights in the background, go back down to that second clip, hold Alt or Command, drag up to duplicate it again, move it over one more frame, and set this third clip to 30% opacity.

So now you’ve got one clip fully opaque, one at 60%, and one at 30%. Hit play. Even less flicker.

By all means try this method first. But what if you’re dealing with some really stubborn flicker?

Flicker Removal Technique 2: The DaVinci Deflicker Effect

Fair warning, you need the paid Studio version of Resolve for this one.

Bring your clip onto the timeline. My example is people dancing at a wedding, filmed at 240 frames per second, with tons of flicker from the overhead lights, and everybody looks like they’re blinking. Go up to the Effects panel, search for De-Flicker, and make sure you’re on the Open FX tab or it won’t show up. Drag it down onto the clip, then click the clip and go to the Effects icon in the Inspector.

Here’s the part everyone misses. By default the effect is set to Timelapse, which is great if you’re fixing a timelapse and useless for what we’re doing. Click the dropdown and choose Fluoro Light, which stands for fluorescent lighting. Don’t let the name throw you, it’s a catch all here and it covers cheap LED flicker too, which is what you’re far more likely to be dealing with.

For most lights, that one change fixes it immediately. Hit play. Clean. Fantastic. We had to do one thing and it’s done.

Advanced Controls For The Deflicker Effect

Still seeing flicker? There’s an Advanced Controls mode with a lot more to work with.

The first thing you need to know is that there are so many factors affecting flicker, from the kind of lights being used to your frame rate and shutter speed, that it is essentially impossible for me to tell you the one set of settings that fixes everything. What I can do is tell you what the important ones actually do so you can try them.

• Frames Either Side, default 3. This is how many frames ahead and behind Resolve looks to find the flicker. If you have a slower flicker that isn’t being caught, bump it to 5.
• Motion Estimation Type, default Better. On a highly detailed scene with a lot of intricate things flickering, Better may not actually be better. Try Faster, which doesn’t analyze the detail as heavily. And if there’s no motion in your shot at all, a completely locked off tripod shot, set it to None, which may fix everything on its own.
• Motion Range tells Resolve whether the flicker has a small or large amount of motion. Click through the options and play the clip back.
• Luma Threshold and Chroma Threshold control how aggressive the reduction is. They default to maximum sensitivity, which is where I’d leave them. Only pull them down if your video is looking weird because too much is being removed.
• Speed optimization settings: in my experience, leave these alone.
• Restore Original Detail After Deflicker is worth using. Removing flicker can soften the image, and this slider adds sharpening back. Drag up if it looks soft, down if it looks crunchy.

And then my favorite setting in the whole effect. Go to the Output dropdown, which defaults to Deflickered Result, and switch it to Detected Flicker. Resolve builds a mask overlay showing you exactly which parts of the frame are having flicker removed.

If that’s still not clear enough, switch it to Magnified Flicker and it gets far more obvious. You can watch every bit of blinking that the effect is catching.

Flicker Removal Technique 3: The Flicker Free Plugin

Now, you’re telling me you have ultra stubborn flicker and none of that touched it. Okay. Bad news first. You’re going to need a plugin called Flicker Free, from a company called Digital Anarchy, and at the time of making this video it cost $149.

I wish it were free. But I promise you it works. When I made a video featuring this plugin in Premiere Pro, go read the comments, everybody who has used it says it works and says it’s worth it. And to be clear, this video is not paid or sponsored by Digital Anarchy. I made it on my own because I genuinely want to help you get rid of flicker. I am an affiliate though, so if you buy it through my link I get a kickback. Just wanted to be upfront about that.

Here’s the great news: they offer a free trial. There are demo downloads for Premiere Pro, Resolve and Avid, on both Windows and Mac, and the demo will let you apply the effect to your own footage so you can confirm the flicker actually goes away before you spend anything. I think that’s fantastic, because you’re not wasting money if it doesn’t work. That said, I have yet to find flicker footage this plugin could not fix.

How To Actually Use Flicker Free

Install it, then go to the Effects panel and search for Flicker. Flicker Free shows up under Digital Anarchy. Drag it onto your clip.

Quick peek behind the curtain: I bought the Premiere Pro version of this years ago, before I’d really considered using Resolve, so I don’t own the Resolve version. What you’re seeing in the video is the trial, with its watermark lines across the frame, exactly like the one I’m recommending you download.

Hit play and the flicker is probably still there. That’s normal. Flicker Free is very customizable and you have to dial it in.

In the Inspector, on the Flicker Free effect, you get a pile of presets. It defaults to Rolling Bands, which usually works pretty well. But in my now rather extensive experience with this plugin, the Slow Motion preset works really well for flicker. Apply that and play it back and the flicker is improved, but you’ll get some weird motion blurring, especially on people who are moving. Tick the Motion Compensation checkbox and the ghosting goes away and everything looks dramatically sharper.

The Trick For Really Stubborn Flicker

Here’s the secret: you don’t have to apply Flicker Free only once. You can apply it multiple times to make it stronger.

But do not just drag a second copy of the effect onto the same clip. That will dramatically slow your software down or freeze it and crash it. Ask me how I know. It’s happened to me a lot.

Instead, apply one pass, render the clip out of Resolve, then re-import it and apply the effect again. On my example, that second pass with the Slow Motion preset and the threshold cranked all the way up to 100 finally killed the flicker from the background lights. But then there was a ton of motion blur. And turning motion compensation back on removed the blur and brought the flicker back.

So here’s the final trick.

Use Magic Mask To Protect Your Subject

The problem is that the plugin is ghosting the couple while it fixes the background. So let’s just not apply it to the couple.

First, disable the Flicker Free effect on your clip while you set this up, because leaving it on will crawl your machine. We’ll turn it back on in a second. Then go to the Color page.

You could draw a custom mask around your subject and feather it, and honestly I don’t like working that way. If you have Resolve Studio there is a much easier option: Magic Mask. Select it, then click and drag a rough line across your subject. That’s it. Just a scribble.

Not sure it worked? Click the toggle mask overlay button. The couple lights up red and everything around them doesn’t, which means Resolve has built a mask over just them. Super cool. (Magic Mask keeps turning out to be the answer to things, like the AI wrinkle removal tool hiding in Resolve.)

But wait, we don’t want the effect on the couple. We want it on the background. So click Invert Mask.

Now the couple is excluded and the entire background is selected, flicker and all. Go to the effects panel for that specific node on the Color page, search for Flicker Free, and apply it there. Choose the Slow Motion preset, crank the threshold all the way up, and leave Motion Compensation turned off, since that was what was causing the trouble.

Hit play. The effect only touches the background. The couple stays sharp and the background has no flicker at all.

And that’s how you quickly and easily remove flicker in DaVinci Resolve.

If you want more of the stuff that took me years to figure out as an editor, my Edit Videos Like A Pro guide is completely free, and it applies whether you’re in Resolve or anywhere else.