Final Cut Pro and Canon 5D Mark II

I guess I'm blind, but I don't see it. Sure it's not your computer or wifi?

The Popper wrote:
I guess I'm blind, but I don't see it. Sure it's not your computer or wifi?

I've got to agree. When compared to the rolling shutter issues I've seen before, this footage just doesn't behave the same. Here's some real jellow-cam footage for ya. Maybe rolling shutter issues is not what you're seeing on your end anyway. So, I don't know, maybe the compression-for-web is masking the offending bits?

What exactly are your camera settings?

If you are shooting 1080 24p or 25p your shutter speed setting should be 1/50sec, for 1080 30p you can increase the shutter speed to 1/60th. This simulates the way a film camera shoots with a 180 degree mirror shutter. Effectively this exposes each frame at half the time of frame rate. Film cameras need this to enable the next frame of film to be moved into the gate between exposures. Making the actual shutter speed faster than this ie 1/100th or faster reduces the amount of blur on each exposed frame. When panning quickly this results in a strobe effect in the projected image, the faster the shutter speed the worse it gets.

You also need to have some understanding of film camera operating techniques which apply to progressive scan HD DSLRs as well. There is a limit to how fast you can pan a film or progressive scan camera across a scene before this strobe effect starts to become annoying or distracting.

When panning with a moving object you may still see the effect in the background, this is because the object you are panning with isn't changing its position much within the frame but the background is changing quite dramatically. You can reduce the effect by using a wider aperture for a low depth of field, the out of focus background will not have any hard edges that make the strobing more apparent. You could also reduce your shutter speed down to 1/30th sec which will blur the movement more in each frame. Obviously the camera can not shoot at a slower shutter speed than your frame rate though.

There is nothing technically wrong with the images you have uploaded, this is a feature of progressive scan that occurs in film cameras. You need to adjust your operating technique accordingly. Other Canon HD DSLR cameras have a 720 50p or 60p feature which is useful for action sports work or better slow motion but ideally you need to decide before starting the project that you will shoot in this mode. The Canon 5D does not have this 720p feature.

Hi PremPost. There's no jittering in the footage on Vimeo. You may be having hardware troubles.

You've tried Log & Transfer with the Canon EOS plugin and you still see jitter? Is it always in the same place? Have you tried taking the exact same files to another computer?

frogface9 wrote:
Hi PremPost. There's no jittering in the footage on Vimeo. You may be having hardware troubles.

Yar, that was part of the original issue; defining "jittering" and distinguishing it from an embedded movie artifact or a result of processing or display.

bogiesan

Well, if I don't see any stuttering in the video posted on Vimeo (and someone else here said they didn't see it, either), but PremPost does, then it seems it's a problem with hardware, not the video itself.

I could be WAY off on this, but I think he's mistaking motion blur for jitter - I don't really see anything in the file either. It looks like the same thing people sometimes complain about when animating stills in Motion or After Effects - certain moves can appear to "jitter" or I more commonly see it referred to as "judder" -- there's really nothing you can do. Next time you look at a Hollywood film, watch horizontal pans and you'll see the same thing. It's a combination of motion blur and our persistence of vision causing the horizontal motion to appear somewhat jittery. I didn't see anything technically wrong with the video in the link you posted.

When moving to a DSLR and shooting with 'filmlike 180 degree shutter' especially after being used to less filmlike (smaller sensor, 29.97, higher shutter speeds) cameras it can be weird at first - the 24p film look can seem blurry and jittery and wrong. It did for me for a while. After a while though I learned to love it and won't go back. There are limitations to the DSLR, and it isn't perfect for every situation, but it can do some amazing things for the money - and takes great stills too 🙂 It is certainly closer to film than any DV camera (including the Panasonics).

Then again, I could be way off base... sometimes it's hard to tell.

Message was edited by: ScottieB