Hi all............
 

Haven't taken a lot of interest in the 5DII, on the basis that if Canon had wanted to replace the XL H1, it wouldn't have started with that.

That said, my worst fears appear to have been realised.

Lets face it, there was no way on God's Earth Canon was going to be putting the encoding power of the H1 into a DSLR, thus shooting themselves pretty comprehensively in the nether regions in the process.

The jerky video is visible in the viewfinder as you shoot?

Possible explanations (this from someone who knows squat about it):

1. Faulty electronics or firmware - doesn't ring my chimes.

2. Processor/ codec unable to keep up with the data rate - ah, now this sounds promising.

Unlike HDV where, if overloaded (bit of a pan/ tilt perhaps, every pixel on every frame changeing) it just dumps detail to give the typical HDV smear/ load of mush - sound familiar?

Nope, on the 5D it simply starts to drop frames instead (or appear to).

Watching the video about 10 times, it became apparent that if the camera is kept stationary, detail can move and no detail or frames are lost.

Move the camera relative to the detail, and hey presto, it starts dropping frames, or giving the appearance of. It's this last bit that is so interesting.

As it can't, really, drop frames, what is it doing?

Well, as it happens, I don't know, as I didn't have a hand in designing it, but somehow, frames appear to be getting slowed up in a buffer and being leap frogged by later frames.

How, is anyones guess.

Funny, this is exactly what my venerable Sony 505 still/ video camera used to do ( a classic in it's day).

Keep it still and let the action do it's thing, so far so good for such a low pixel video.

Start waving it about and wallop, utter gibberish.

So, my conclusion?

Well, given that Canon was never, ever, going to shoot the XL series out of the sky for a SLR, I'd say what you have there is a pretty good SLR that just happens to take exceedingly average HD video when you start waving it about.

But then, I have an A1 and it takes exceedingly good HDV on a good day with a following wind, but it's still HDV, which in the greater scheme of things, will be looked back on in 20 years time as quite quaint, a little bit like sepia monochrome photos.


CS

Chris, this seems to me, to be the most plausible explanation I've encountered yet. Yes, the stutter IS visible on the viewfinder, and Yes, it does seem like the processor just runs out of grunt and freaks out for a few frames, only to 'catch up' with a new image - thus missing some frames and causing jerky movement.

My question is therefore, is this effect replicable (I chose a forest so there was lots of detail for the sensor to cope with) by others. There have been a few people who have chipped in on this thread, but I'd be keen to find out if a few gurus who know what they're doing (I'm not completely sure I do yet by the way..) get a similar result.

thanks all,

did you try a shutter speed of 1/60 or 1/30? did it look any better? Keeping my shutter speed at a whole multiple of the frame rate helps smooth things out for me.

a shutter of 50 at 30fps works out to 1.667 cycles per frame so your shutter will only be fully open every 3 frames.

Hi guys!

Im suffering the same issue.

I have noticed that when panning there are lots of very little jumps on the image and at the same time the image losses sharpness and turns blurry, when the panning stops, the sharpness of the image is recovered.

Are we talking about the same?

Is there any way to achieve sharp and clean pans? I know there where some video examples, but now they are removed from vimeo. I would like to download some more examples.


Thanks.

Tomeu

My judder tests are here TrackPan_02 1/60 IS off on Vimeo and TrackPan_01 1/30 sec IS on on Vimeo

Yes, I have the same issue "image losses sharpness and turns blurry, when the panning stops, the sharpness of the image is recovered." plus judder on the back of camera

I too have had problems with My 5d2, It was the first thing that I noticed when I started filming with it, I returned it and explained the problem, I received it back from Canon UK and the problem hasn't been fixed. I've tried a wide range of lenses L series include, all seem to struggle when panning from slow to fast. I've gone through all the above settings to no avail, the very fact it shows on the LCD screen during filming is whats really annoying

Are we just unlucky and are that 5-10% of customers who have faulty cams?

I'm thinking of sending my camera back and demanding a new model seeing as I have gone through canon repair route, or is this a common fault on all 5D2's that has gone largely unnoticed? I don't believe this for a minute. Will canon replace my body- now that's the question

Hi Mathew.

Yesterday I solved part of the problems when panning. I exported from Premiere CS4 to f4v 30p incrementing the bitrates of the video and used VLC (with the appropiate settings posted in this forum). Almost all the shakings when panning are solved. In these videos the shaking is random, if you reproduce them 2 or 3 times, the shaking appears at different times

I have another videos where the problem is even worse, shaking is very fast as if you where watching each frame of the video. I will keep on trying.

Mathew, your videos look sharp for me, not as an static image, but they are very good in terms of sharpness. Another problem is the shaking.

Tomeu

The best way to see if the camera has caused a problem is to look at the footage frame by frame.

Is a frame doubled? Does a frame move by one foot, two feet... four feet?

A computer can drop frames at any time. Real-time computer playback isn't a the best way to judge the camera's smoothness during motion.

Jon.

I've benn very busy these days. I 'll take a look and I'll answer you.

Thanks for your help.

Tomeu

I think it is tripod. I used the rubber bank trick to pan in this video using the a Manfrotto 503 head.

Patterns In Green on Vimeo

Vimeo did a bad job of encoding, as the video shows same jerkiness. However the original that I just reviewed is much much smoother, but has occasional jerkiness in the pans when I got a little slow on keepting the pressure applied with the stretched rubber band.

Hi Jon.

I have looked at the footage frame per frame, everything seems to be OK. I have trascoded the footage to a PAL MPEG2 DVD and everything is fluid and smooth! Its not the footage itself, its the player!

The settings for transcoding:

1. Premiere pro CS4:
Timeline 25 fps, 5D original footage interpreted as 25 fps, exported as 'avi' without compression 25p.

2. Canopus procoder 3 for encoding the DVD.

Chris, the video wasn't recorded with the rubber bank trick (Manfrotto 501 HDV), but I have tried it and its fine!

You can see the video al this link, its my first one, sorry for the aliasing:

http://www.serraicostes.com/video/VillagesVideo.html

You can download the f4v source form here:

http://www.serraicostes.com/video/MartiBibiloni.f4v

Tome Santandreu
Serra i Costes - Fotografia Mallorca

I don't have a 5D and I have never shot with one, but I have just spent a week and a half editing footage shot in Fiji on one. I didn't notice any juddering at all in any of the footage, and the footage was shot in all types of situations - helicopter aerials, fast pans, hand-held, slow pans, low light etc. My workflow for this job was to conform from 30p to 25p using Cinema Tools, then convert the conformed files from H.264 to XDCAM 1080p (35Mb/s VBR). I had no issues whatsoever with the footage after that, and everything looked great

This is interesting, I have seen this in quite a few 5dMII clips now and I wonder if this is an additional reason for Canon to move to dual processors in the 7d. It really seems to me to be an issue of the processor/RAM buffer system. The frame could be changing too much for it to keep up while encoding. If the camera was designed with very little margin of error then some cameras could have a harder time than others.

Where were those clips you saw? Were they native H.264 directly out of the camera on a beefy computer, or were you watching them played back on Vimeo or some such Internet video service site? It's an important question because as a 5D Mk II owner/operator, I have never seen this behavior once in any of my footage - handheld, dolly, tripod, car mount, or otherwise.

This problem is either the product of a defective camera or a defective re-encode/playback on the web.

There are other issues with the camera, but judder/skipped frames is not something you should blame on the camera. Perhaps bad/slow media?

Hi,

I would like to confirm Shaun's workflow. I did some tests to specifically recreate the problems described in this thread. I had pans and tilts with apparent frames being left out.

Conforming from 30p to 25p using Cinema Tools has smoothed all the footage. A motion effect of +120% in FCP will get the audio back to its normal pitch as well. Unfortunately after doing that, it will need to be rendered. (transcoding to XDCAM 1080p - takes time too). Getting the footage into a usable state will take cooking time, but I think that it is well worth it.

Cheers,

DK

** Daniel, did you get another / replacement camera from Canon? And if so, is the "stutter" problem gone?

** Defective camera....yes, a definite possiblity.

** If it is seen on the LCD screen and the CF card, it's the camera.