There are many reasons why this costs less. CMOS vs CCD. 1/2" vs 2/3." Fixed piece of glass easier to engineer than interchangeable lenses (good glass is expensive as you know). Frame rate does not vary while recording like Varicam. Tape mechanisms are more expensive than card mechanism (note the new Varicam models will use P2) especially when it comes to variable frame rate.

The market is changing radically and there certainly are some compromises in lower priced cameras and CMOS isn't CCD and there are technical reasons why Sony couldn't do 1/2" CCD chips in a camera this small but none of these things result in jumpiness. Rolling shutter skew maybe but not jumpiness.

Can you post an example so we can actually see what you're talking about?

We've all used many different cameras. Based on frame rate, I'm seeing nothing but the expected using a given frame rate and 180 shutter.

Regardless of any camera, I have noticed that some software players can cause weird playback such as VLC.
But rendered to the output media or played back on a monitor, it looks great.

It's still very cheap though, compare the EX3 (srp £6000 with lens) to HPX2000 (rrp £19000 with no lens which'll add another £15000ish) - both use cards, no variable frame rate, actually higher res in EX3. So why's it so cheap? Lower bit rate, sure, but not when you put a Flash XDR on it, then they're the sam 100mb/sec, and for £2700.
Very much the same situation with RED too, a seemingly world-beating camera at a ridiculously low price. BUT...
Steve

Steve, you got me curious about this and I've just completed a number of fastish pans (without the assistance of birds) at 24P, 180 deg shutter and don't see any "uneven pan" effect. Of course there is the 25 fps flicker, as expected. Done on tripod with fluid head, being careful about steady pan velocity. Progressive display. Cineform DI, incidentally, rather than long GOP.

Serena can you post examples? Ideally something I can download so there won't be any lag by viewing it online.
Thanks,
Steve

If you don't like judder, shoot 60i or 60p. Judder is unavoidable at low framerates. You get to choose where it happens: FG or BG. Better BG.

The judder I'm seeing IS at 60P.
Steve

60P will have judder at higher pan speeds, of course more than twice as less at the same pan speed when sampled at 24P.
If the EX1 had a problem not actually accomadating actual frame rate, believe me, you would of heard about it a LONG time ago.

We have torn apart the EX1 issues from its launch and have been VERY vocal about it here, that's for sure. ;)
I guess it's possible you have a problem with your camera, but without see any footage of your issue, it's impossible to tell.

I'll see what I can do.

OK, just tried for the first time 50i, and it's smooth with no jitter. Switch back to 25P and it's jittery. Now I know that with progressive you'll get blur (I've shots for years on Varicam and Sony 750), but never seen it like this before. Any further ideas?
Steve

OK again, I've just put the card into my Macbook Pro, and even on 50i there is some jitter.
What would be nice is to have access to a Z7 too, so I could shoot same pan in 25P on both cams and see if they are different in terms of motion. Anyone got access to these two at the moment, might be able to get hold of one here, but not at the moment.
Steve

Further update: I've played back the 50i clip on TV screen and it looks fine, seems that even my Macbook Pro may not have enough power to run 1080 EX files smoothly?
I definitely still see an issue here though. I will at some point try to get hold of a Canon XL/JVC200/Z7 so I can shoot side by side comparisons and get them into a suite so I convert and maybe post - not sure when though. Certainly before I buy an EX3 though!
Steve

I know that exceptions are made if the story justifies it, but the BBC normally only accepts Long GOP HD with a minimum of 50Mb/s data stream if the footage is to be used for HD broadcast.

The GOP or bitrate will make no difference to the rolling shutter problem. It's a function of how the CMOS imager works. Pretty much the same for all CMOS cameras including ones that cost a lot more than the EX1

I fully agree that the 'stutter' is an ugly artifact. Using my Z1 in the progressive mode does seem to produce a similar effect on the viewfinder. BUT to a lesser effect on a tv monitor. I wonder just how much the design of the monitor, possibly its scaling technique, effects what we are seeing and why some see this artifact less of a problem than others. Most computer monitors have a frame refresh rate of not less than 60Hz and in PAL land we are dealing with 50Hz. I must try the EX1 to see how it compares.

Geoff

I think different people just have different requirements, and what is acceptable to one person or one situation is no good for another. It does seem a bit odd though that 2 people can look at the same footage and one sees unnacceptable motion effects and the other says that it looks fine.
Steve

I am just getting used to my EX1 and making it work for a living. I thought we had got over the fact that this is a £4K camera not a £34K one + lenses. I am very picky coming from a broadcast background and to me the EX1 excels in so many areas but it can't do everything. I am happily intercutting shots with HDCAM material and it is in many cases impossible to see the difference, when graded viewers would most decidedly never spot the various picture sources. I am sure even the BBC will use the EX1 (or EX3) when it suits them.

I think the panning issue is interesting I was taught when training as a cameraman to pan at half the speed you think is right. With LCD viewing it should be half of that! Thats progress.

Problem when you're following moving animals is that they set the panning speed!
BBC are using EX1 alredy for certain things.
Steve

Panning speed is a VERY old subject with both film and video.
Based on frame rate and shutter speed, you can't expect the impossible tracking high speed motion such as a bird flight without motion judder and/or blur depending on shutter speed and exposure. Of course it clear depends on how fast an object moves across the imager during each frame.

The EX1 with batteries, reader and memory cards total close to $10,000 USD. The majority of us all have several video cameras and have been doing this a long time.

If your problem is with the CMOS design and rolling shutter artifacts such as skew, partial exposures (camera flash), and wobble, these CMOS rolling shutter artifacts have been discussed ad nauseam.

I realize the comparison has been brought up many times, but the RED ONE ($30K > $50K USD including needed accesories) which is used by top pros such as Director Steven Soderbergh, also suffers the same CMOS Rolling shutter issues. These are not judder artifacts..

If anything, if you're tracking fast objects, you should worry more about rolling shutter skew. But depending on shutter speed, motion blur might hide most of it.

Simple solution- If you're not happy with the EX1, don't buy it. ;)

. It obviously is skew that I've been seeing, just didn't know the right terminology for it. The RED camera has it too, though seemingly it's not so bad as the EX1. I've used the Phantom HD a fair bit which also has a rolling shutter, but it doesn't seem to me to exhibit skew at all (though this is a £100,000 camera!)
I'm used to following birds in flight at 720/60P on Varicam/HPX2100 and know what it should look like, didn't see that on the EX1, it has this skew which makes the background jittery/wobbly/whatever you want to call it, but whatever it is it's not acceptable for me and wouldn't be for my clients I'm sure.
I wouldn't mind buying a relatively cheap camera like the EX3 mostly just for personal use, as I don't want to invest £50,000 or so on HPX2100 + HJ40 or similar set-ups, primarily for the reason that a lot of the productions I work on already have their own kit and wouldn't hire mine in so it wouldn't pay for itself. I was hoping the EX3 might fit the bill, but it doesn't. The image quality apart from the motion though I think is first rate.
Steve

Steve, with all due respect, you need to look up the meaning of CMOS rolling shutter issues such as skew, wobble, and partial exposures. You can not rope them all together as whatever "you want to call it."

Each artifact is VISUALLY different and seen under different conditions.

Save your money and buy a CCD camera such as the HVX200. The HVX200 is a decent camera for the money.

I think my description has been understood now, and I think the correct term is skew. HVX200 no good to me, I need interchangeable lenses on any cam I use, hence why I was looking towards an EX3. Also HVX not accepted as full HD by BBC (my main client), EX3 with Flash XDR would have just crept in.
HD cams are still evolving so still not the time to spend £50k, so at the moment I'm hiring/using kit owned by productions, but it is nice to have a personal camera (still have a Digibeta and film camera but neither are really that much in demand these days), just nothing sub £10k or so that really ticks all my boxes at present.
Steve

I saw an EX1 video with birds flying and a jumpy background too
 

It was not skew, it was as if there was a cadence issue perhaps. I have been searching high and low for an answer and I was very hopeful finding this thread.
Other pros who saw the footage on a broadcast monitor thought it was a codec limitation issue, at first I thought it was the image stabilizer grabbing hold of the moving parts of the horizon. Whatever it is, it's uneven and it's very annoying during a pan that was suppose to be smooth.

[QUOTE=Steve Phillipps;879485]I think my description has been understood now, and I think the correct term is skew.

Are you sure what you saw was skew? Commonly, skew is the vertical axis of the image slanting during a fast pan due to it being captured milliseconds apart in blocks of rows from the sensor, top to bottom. However any way you move an EX1 too fast, there could be distortion and this is very bad if you are later trying to stabilize your footage as you will get a made out of jello look.

No idea if it was "skew", that was just what other folks seemed to be suggesting. I then started thinking it might be the 35 mb/sec codec struggling too.
Whatever it was, it wasn't very nice - totally unuseable for my needs for sure. But after lots of folks suggesting that there wasn't a problem (along with many others saying there was), I got another EX1 to look at again thinking maybe I was mistaken. All I had to do was a couple of slow pans along my mantlepiece with some birthday cards on it and the effect was the same, a real jerkiness, both in progressive and interlaced. This was on TV screen and on Macbook Pro.
Still can't figure it out, and still can't imagine how anyone else could not see it. Or maybe I'm just mad!
Steve

I think that a lot of what people are seeing as a jerkiness is playback without the proper 3:2 pulldown. With 60i, that shouldn't be a problem at all, and I have no problem with pans recorded at 60i or 60p. However, 24p recorded in HQ mode is only 24 frames per second(23.98 actually), and the only way I've found to get a smooth playback for it is to burn it to a DVD or HD DVD at 24p and let the DVD player or HD DVD player add the pulldown. I can't seem to get Final Cut to add proper 3:2 on output no matter what settings I use. I get better smoother results recording 24p in SP mode where it's converted to 60i in the camera with the proper pulldown--it still has the 24 look, but since it's actually 60i it can cut into a 60i timeline with no problems. If you try to put 24p HQ into a 60i timeline, good luck on trying to get anything close to the proper cadence. even though you would think Final Cut would automatically do the proper pulldown. For my highest quality results now I am using 24p HQ and burning it to HD DVD as 24p. The playback looks as smooth as any movie I have on HD DVD. I'm hoping for the same results with Blu-ray later.

I shot stuff at 50i, 25P and 50P and it all looked crappy. Maybe I had 2 dud cameras!
Steve

Don't know why this thread keeps going round and round.

Skew will NOT cause judder.

The EX3's imagers are exposed for the same duration as any other progressive or interlace video camera working at the same shutter speed. It has a true progressive imager so it will give the same motion as any other similar progressive camera at the same shutter speed. I have yet to see one single example anywhere of a SIDE BY SIDE test that shows this not to be true. All I have seen is people saying, oh I saw one shot I did one day that looked different to a different shot I did with a different camera on a different day. Of course they will look different.

There are many many other factors that will affect the apparent motion or judder of an image. In particular resolution, depth of field, contrast, focal length, focal plane etc, as well how it is played back, the monitors refresh rate, monitor size and monitor type.

I have been using EX1's since early pre-production units were around over a year ago. I have shot air shows, racing cars, extreme weather, traffic and many other high motion objects and have yet to see anything that suggests there is something wrong with the way the EX camera's capture motion.

Skew caused by the rolling shutter is a separate issue. It does not cause judder, why should it? Very fast pans can cause verticals to lean, but at the kind of speeds where it becomes obvious the object is normally so blurred or moving so fast that it's only when you step through the shot frame by frame that you can really see it. Yes if I wave my camera around like a lunatic I can make the image bend like crazy, but that's not how I and most people shoot so it's not really a problem.

Until someone shows me a side by side shot with an EX and another camera, both at the same frame rate, focal length, pan speed etc that shows different motion handling it is my opinion that the claims the the EX doesn't do motion correctly is nothing but unsubstantiated Hearsay.

I second Alister. People tend to pass judgements based on the preview they're getting off the EX stuff - sometimes using inadequate equipment (like too slow CPU, poor graphics, etc.) - please remember we're talking full 1920x1080 raster here, and the compression of 35Mbps. Some computers may not be up to this task, while being just enough to smoothly display DV, or even HDV. Image tearing is most often the display equipment fault, not the EX issue.

Once you render your EX properly (e.g. for Blu Ray), and play it back from a right equipment - it can be as smooth as silk... Believe me on that!

Background judder isnt supposd to matter, but to avoid judder at 60p, use a 360 degree shutter. I.e. 1/60.

Yes, I guess there is something to it... Too many people that are after the "film look" think that this can only be achieved by mimicking the film exposure parameters (like 24 fps with 1/48th shutter speed, or 25 fps with 1/50th; generally, a low fps accompanied by the 180 deg shutter - academically correct). They seem to forget about the deeper DOF, inherent in video; my experience tells me that to achieve the filmic cadence and bokeh, I need to either:

- use naked EX1 with shutter off (360 deg) to blur the background thanks to long exposure, or
- use it with the Letus 35mm adaptor, to blur the background thanks to the shallow DOF.

Sticking to fast shutter speeds while maintaining sharp background will inevitably result in very jerky pans!

When I first got my EX1 I was shooting it straight out of the box in 1080/60i. It looked like every other video camera I shot with in regards to motion (much sharper though!). I had never shot progressive before. When I switched to 1080/24p just fiddling around, I noticed the judder effect and thought something was wrong. Even 1080/30p had a little judder compared to what I thought "video" should look like. Then I learned more about it and that's just the nature of progressive. And now at 1080/30p it doesn't look juddery to me anymore. It still does somewhat at 24p but now I understand it's a certain 'look' and it has to be shot accordingly, such as no quick pans without following a subject. But I'm still not a fan (at least at this point) of 24p, for what I'm shooting... I understand if you're going to film-out it's a better format. I just want good, sharp, smooth high-def video. 30p and/or 60i do it for me. I haven't edited my shoots yet and I'm still learning all this video stuff, so I haven't decided what my final shooting preference will be, 60i or 30p. Once I start editing, one will probably be easier than the other I'm guessing.

Eureka!
 

Thanks Patrick. The video I saw was edited in Final Cut Pro so I am wondering if the people who are saying they are getting smooth results were using something else or a different setting?
I do recall that Final Cut lets you pick between a 3:2:2:3 and a 3:2:3:2 pull down. Have you experimented with these settings?
If this isn't the culprit what else could it possibly be? Don't the DVD players simply add the 3:2:3:2 pulldown to a 24P DVD?