Stutter / jitters whilst panning

[Daniel Corcoran]

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

[Tomeu Santandreu]

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

[Jon Fairhurst]

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.

[Tomeu Santandreu]

Jon.

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

Thanks for your help.

Tomeu

[Chris Barcellos]

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.

[Tomeu Santandreu]

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

[Shaun R Walker]

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

[Adrinn Chellton]

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.

[Eric Darling]

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?

[Daniel Kohl]

Originally Posted by Shaun R Walker

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

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

[Andrew Clark]

Originally Posted by Daniel Corcoran

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

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

[Andrew Clark]

Originally Posted by Eric Darling

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

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

Originally Posted by Eric Darling

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

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