How to Smooth Out Flickering in AI Video: The 2026 Guide

"It looks cool, but why is the sky flashing like a strobe light?" If you've ever shown an AI video to a client, you've heard this question.

Temporal Consistency is the holy grail of generative media. While models like Sora 2 are solving this at the foundation level, most of us are still dealing with the "jitter" of open-source tools.

This guide covers the three levels of Flicker Removal: from the "Quick Fix" to the "Pro Workflow."

Level 1: The Quick Fix (Post-Production)

If you already have a jittery video, you can't re-generate it. You need to smooth it.

Tool: DaVinci Resolve Deflicker

The industry standard non-AI fix.

1. Go to the Color Page.
2. Drag the "Deflicker" OFX plugin onto your node.
3. Set Mode to "Fluoro Light" (surprisingly effective for AI).
4. Crank "Smooth" to 100.

Tool: Topaz Video AI 6

In 2026, Topaz has a dedicated "Generative Smooth" model. Unlike traditional interpolation, it doesn't just blend frames; it looks at Frame A and Frame C, and re-paints Frame B to match them.

• Pros: Removes "boiling" textures completely.
• Cons: Can soften sharp details (like text).

Level 2: The Workflow Fix (Deforum 2026)

If you are generating video using Deforum (the open-source animation king), you can prevent flicker before it happens.

The "Coherence" Settings

In the Keyframes tab, look for these critical 2026 settings:

1. Cadence: Set to 2 or 3.
   • Why: This tells the AI to generate only every 2nd or 3rd frame, and use Optical Flow to morph between them. Less generation = less randomness = less flicker.
2. Strength Schedule: oscillate between 0.65 and 0.55.
   • Why: A static strength value often causes "looping" artifacts. Oscillating it breaks the pattern while keeping the style.
3. ControlNet Tile:
   • Enable ControlNet Tile with a weight of 0.4. This forces the AI to respect the "structure" of the previous frame, preventing walls from morphing into curtains.

Level 3: The Pro Fix (Blind Temporal Consistency)

This is what we use at AstraML for broadcast-ready video. It involves a tool called EBSynth (yes, it's still relevant) combined with Optical Flow.

The "Keyframe" Workflow

1. Extract Keyframes: Take your jittery AI video and extract every 10th frame.
2. Upscale & Fix: Manually clean up these keyframes in Photoshop or using FLUX.1 Inpainting. Make them perfect.
3. Propagate: Use a flow-based tool (like EBSynth 2026 or Nuke SmartVector) to "push" the pixels of the clean keyframes onto the messy in-between frames.
   • The motion comes from the video.
   • The texture comes from your perfect keyframes.

Conclusion

Flicker isn't a bug; it's a feature of how diffusion models work (random noise = random output). But with the right stack—Optical Flow in generation + Generative Smoothing in post—you can dampen the chaos enough to fool the human eye.

Ready for the next step? Learn how to control the motion itself with our guide on Kinetic Control Maps.