Pixel shimmering

I am trying to make a slideshow with just putting the photos on the timeline with a black background. If I use even the minimum of dynamic zoom I get pixels shimmering, especially where there are patterns and high lites. I put the same photos into iMovie and got the same thing. Anyone know what's up?

Resampling high frequency detail like patterns and stuff will shimmer, it is a sampling problem. Imagine a bright single-pixel sized spot. If you move it half a pixel it will now turn into two pixels with half intensity. Do this movement over a frame range and you get fluctuating pixel values depending on where those details are during movement.

You can try changing the scaling filter in project settings, might give different results, but not definitely better.

Resampling high frequency detail like patterns and stuff will shimmer, it is a sampling problem

+1.

Traditional approaches to help this problem with still images:

1) apply a very light gaussian blur to offending images
2) Resize very large images to something closer to timeline size before importing into your NLE
3) Use higher frame rate timelines.

Others?

(Note: the shimmering will likely vary a lot by playback device; TV's are typically worse than computer montitors, and also depends on TV's judder/resample settings.)