Moderate to fast pans will make any vertical lines oblique, like a door frame.

All I can say is that the end result is what matters to me, so what I shot with my PD170 at 60i with fast pans, hanld held shots converted to 24p look much more like film motion than my EX1 at 24p where I am much more limited as far as pans and moves. Even at 1080 60i 1/60 the camera smears more than what I have been used to.

Also, 24fps film involves a mechanical process where 24p video involves an electronic process where compression is applied, I believe that they are very different processes resulting in a different feel.

The best results I got was when I shot at 720 60p and converting to 24p, but I only did one shoot this way, because my camera has audio glitches when shooting at that mode. Sony Japan is on the case. But that was real life action, shooting in a moving bus, travellings..., just like I have been doing for 20 years....only had to worry about not panning too fast in order to avoid vertical lines being oblique.

Yes, that's the characteristic to be expected.

24 progressive frames per second is 24 frames per second. Throw the footage onto your time line and count them. They're there.

I find it amusing that this thread continues especially based on someones first post here and mentioning returning the EX1 for this imaginary issue.

Just an update, last october (I had completely forgotten about it) I was given a JVC HD250 with 18x4.2 BRM-M48 Fujinon to test. I just pulled out the shots, the difference is clear. Yes, it judders but not like the EX1 but like film motion. It is much more subtle. It didn't even bother me then, why would on day one, at 24p, my EX1 had judders that where very distracting. And what bothered me most at that time was that the JVC HD250 was not a great low light camera but good for 24p.

Could there be a batch of EX1 that a more subject to judders?

I did a test:
I put my 24p-recording-ex1 with a 11.25°-shutter on a rotating chair. Because of the inertia of the chair-camera-combination it should be a smooth motion. Also I used a light for having a traceable spot in the picture. Then I blended the recorded frames together for transforming the problem of checking the smoothness of motion to the problem of checking the regularity of a pattern. My conclusion is that it's absolutely smooth! Perfect 24p-recording without any judder!
Here is the blended picture:
http://www.dominik.ws/24p-test.png
And here is a single frame of it:
http://www.dominik.ws/24p-test-frame6.png

This is like saying a Hummer has 4 tires, count them, they're there. But for some strange reason mine just doesn't accelerate well. Could it be the driver or is it under the hood?

Here's a thought: The EX1 is one of the sharpest cameras out there. The extra image sharpness gives the eye more to lock on too so the jump from one frame to the next is visually more pronounced. My test shots of the EX1 at 25P with fast pans following aircraft look completely normal to me. Also the EX1's LCD seems to add judder that is not actually present on the cameras output.

Yes, it does add more than there is on the actual shots

I am using a Letus Extreme, and shallow depth of field, the problem is still there. In comparison, the JVC HD250 with 18x4.2 BRM-M48 Fujinon was very sharp, well it looked like it was electronically boosted sharpness, and with no shallow depth of field, it was nice 24p motion.

Anyhow, I know all these are subtleties, I can most likely live with it, but my number one problem at this point is the color rendition of the EX1, blacks clothing looking brownish, this is far from being subtle, especially when you are doing corporate work!

Here's a slow one with 79 frames:
http://www.dominik.ws/24p-test2.png
Again absolute regular (as regular as my chair rotates ;) ).
The ex1 really does its job right.

That is exactly what DVINFO WILL NOT stand for. If you feel that way, the forum is failing because one of the greatest strengths of this forum is that new/amateurs can seek advice of professionals and expect to receive courteous, helpful responses.

If you or anyone ever feels ridiculed, please avail yourself of the "report bad post" button to the left. All DVINFO mods will be alerted.

I myself, have answered the same questions over and over to different folks and feel that the slight inconvenience it may feel like is greatly overshadowed by the goodwill it promotes.

Don't be shy, Todd. Seriously, I mean that.

regards,

-gb-

Of course it does. 24 fps and they're all there.

But the frame sequence you are showing would probably be stroby in motion by virtue of its narrow shutter.

Try turning off the shutter and do the same thing and you should see continuous (or almost, depending on the composite method you are using) streaks.

Try 180° and you'll see a dotted line with half on/half off cadence. This is what any film or progressive camera should be shooting for the generally accepted "film look"

Well said Greg. This forum is well moderated, and abusive or aggressive posts in particular I know are not tolerated and I have seen them dealt with.
Keep up the good work guys.
Steve

First I would like to say I totally disagree with Eric Pascarelli. I have worked with 35mm film for 8 years, both still and motion. The EX1 has flicker ever on slow moving shots and people with a good eye can tell. If you have an EX1 do the following (24p 180 shuttle) shoot while zooming, not too fast and make sure you are at a steady rate of zoom speed on a person or sharp defining object such as a book cover (do this while holding camera). when you play back, freeze frame, then play one frame at a time you will notice that on a wide to tight shot some will be in focus and some wont. the fact of the matter is there are many different shots that show flicker people just look at your subjects if you do not notice flicker and out of focus get your eyes checked out. Some people are uneasy with coming to terms that their new EX1 as well as all 24p HD cameras on the market suffer from rolling shutter as well as 23.98 not true 24 frames . I am one who has a love hate relationship with my EX1.

I think we need a Sticky on basic trouble shooting or system setup.

Like:
Check HD playback on HD monitor or HDTV.
Make sure input to HDTV actually spec'd to handle and display the signal you're inputing (for example: component input on some HDTV is only 1080i, not 1080p)
EX LCD, while excellent for focus and framing, may not be most accurate for color or motion display.
Be aware that a monitor that is not calibrated may not be color accurate.
Be aware that Computer may have issues decoding the XDCAM EX codec in real time at full frame size.
Be aware NLE may be doing scaling on the fly, which will impact various playback aspects negatively.
Be aware that compressing the file to another codec may introduce or exaggerate certain aspects negatively.

The best way to check a recording may be from "native" or "rewraped" (but not re-encoded) file (MP4, MXF, MOV from Sony Clip Transfer) played to HDMI input to HDTV or HD-SDI to HD Monitor from a Computer known to handle the source file decode and playback without issue. HDTV should be able to handle both 1080P input and display.

Could it be issues with the batches of cameras Sony has put out? I have not had any issues with pans. I've done TONS of tests when getting my LEX setup correctly and comparisons. I also get clean blacks, reds, etc. No vinetting, etc.

BTW, another thought - and this is the bigger point/question I have:

HAS anyone checked to see if its the codec written to the cards that the issue? I'm wondering if anyone is capturing out of the HDSDI and seeing much better results capturing into an intraframe codec instead of the GOP we get on the cards.

I did:
http://www.dominik.ws/zoom.mov
This is a 100% frame-crop. On the upper right you can see the whole picture.
24p, 180°-shutter, f2.4, full MF, linear 10s-shot-transition from full wide to full tele.
Each frame is perfectly in focus.
But this was shot on a tripod. Why should I hold the camera while doing this??

Ummm... I noticed the same thing then just took off the "auto-gain", "stabilization", "auto-white" settings, as well as everything else where it looked like Sony was trying to Vista"ize" my production experience.

After I did that the camera began to sing.

I've owned the JVC HD100 for a couple years and have a lot of footage. The motion looks the same, except the JVC codec can fall apart with real high detail motion such as water or rustling of leaves.

Dominik,
I'm not sure why this test was presented. It mentions focus while zooming not the imaginary extra judder.

This test is implying focus is changing during zoom which would only happen if back focus was out and not in-and-out from frame to frame.

Just been looking back at airshow footage filmed by Alister at 25p and 50p with NO problems with the motion as others have been describing.

Surely if this was a real issue then more than a few people would be complaining about it considering the thousands of cameras that have been sold!

Has anyone compared 24p in SP mode to 24p in HQ mode? The SP mode should have the 3:2 pulldown encoded to make it HDV compatible, and I'm wondering if SP looks smoother on a HD monitor than the HQ mode which I understand is adding 3:2 right before the output to the monitor. I'm getting an EX1 next week, and I will probably want to use HQ for almost all of my shooting and editing. Dominik's chair test eases my mind, now that I know the camera records 24 equally spaced frames per second. Perhaps the HQ component out isn't getting the true 3:2 pulldown it needs to for smoother motion on 60i monitors.

Possibly,
This is why I never trust previewing. The JVC HD100 component out looked a bit strange when hooked up to my Pioneer plasma.

The HD100 and EX1 rendered and played back look great.

Nick,

I don't think that amount of experience has anything to do with it. It's just understanding how video/film acquisition works. There is not much room for subtlety in acquiring moving images. There's the time interval (the fps), the exposure time (shutter angle) and the response curves (gamma etc.). Yes, there's rolling shutter, but even film cameras have that to a certain extent (at least more so than CCD cameras).

As long as the camera accumulates photons and records them reasonably linearly, and each exposure is the same duration, and the spacing of exposures is consistent, there is not much you could really do to make one camera stutter more than another, all of the above being equal between cameras. Even if you wanted to, you really couldn't.

The voodoo is in the compression and even more so in the viewing.

The EX1 does a great job of compressing and introduces almost no visible artifacting. Examining stills frames proves that out.

So if there is a perceived difference in stutter, it's probably in the viewing. The interface between the digital image and the brain is where there is the most room for voodoo. There might be something in your viewing setup that's creating the appearance of stutter.

As you probably know, theatrical film shows each frame twice (48 Hz) to make the brain think the motion is smoother. Broadcast shows each frame an average of 2.5 times (3-2 pulldown). Even Sony CRT HD broadcast monitors flicker at 48Hz with a 24p signal. But your computer LCD does not. All you see is a succession of frames, one after another at 24Hz. For some this is too slow to be perceived as smooth motion.

If you have ever done traditional process photography with rear projection you've seen the immense amount of judder in the projected image when viewed live. This is because the projectors used are synchronized to the shooting cameras and have single shutters rather that two bladed shutters and show their film at a true 24fps. It looks very similar to true 24p on an LCD monitor.

BTW, the difference between 23.976 and 24 is imperceptible and does not cause judder. Unless you've watched the above mentioned rear projection, you've probably never actually seen anything at a true 24fps. This is because all video in the NTSC world is 23.976/29.97/59.94 and most every "24p" pro and consumer camera actually shoots at 23.976. And projected film is 48Hz.

This test was the answer to Nick Bakers assertion that the ex1 has out-of-focus frames while doing a zoom. (I hope I understood him right)
I guess I already showed that the ex1 (at least mine) does sampling in the time-domain at 24p accurately, so this question is answered for me.
The question about judder-perception of some individuals is too ambiguous for me.

That's not right. LCDs also do have a refresh rate (although there isn't a synchronized electron-ray, the electronics behind need it). 60Hz are typical, so if you watch 24p on a LCD there is hopefully something resulting in a 3:2-pulldown.
(but the rest of your post I absolutely support :) )

Yes, there's a refresh rate but no flicker. So essentially you are seeing one frame after another at 24Hz, but technically there would be a cadence introduced by the beating of the refresh rate with the frame rate, a form of 3-2 pulldown (assuming 60 Hz). And the cadence may contribute to the appearance of judder (though not more so than in standard 3-2 pulledown).

But there is no flicker on an LCD. It's the flicker introduced by CRT's, plasmas and projection that fool the eye into seeing smoother motion where there is not. Not so on the LCD.

Anyway this is all part of the "voodoo" of getting the image from computer to brain. It's somewhere in this part of the workflow that the appearance judder is being introduced. It's not specific to the acquisition or camera.

Thanks for (otherwise) agreeing with my post.

Yes, there is flicker! Of course there's some smoothing, because of not insignificant response-times, but a perfect LCD-display with a zero response-time running at 60Hz shows exactly 60 frames per second each with a duration of a 1/60 second. And 1/24 isn't an integral multiple of 1/60, so you can't do anything but 3:2-pulldown => flicker. (Flicker = variable duration of consecutive frames. Common sense?)
Again: The electronics behind do work with whole frames and the count of frames/second running through your DVI-data-cable is fixed, so you have to deal with that.

There is not.

3-2 pulldown does not equal flicker. It's a cadence that can occur with or without flicker.

It means that the duration of every other frame is different (3 refreshes vs 2).

LCD's do not go to black between frames as a projector does. This "blanking" is what is commonly known as flicker.

Sorry, my last answer was too hurried. About that kind of judder (3:2-judder) I tried to talk. :)
But I don't think that the 60Hz-flicker of CRTs does contribute more to a 24p-perception-issue than to a 60p-perception-issue. Do you know what I mean?

You may be correct.

But the point of my post, which i think you agree with, is that there is no magic to camera acquisition, and that cameras won't differ much in their "rendering" of motion as long as certain basic criteria are met.

And the EX1 most definitely meets those criteria.

There's much more magic involved in the way our brains stitch images together to form motion. It's affected by things like cadence, flicker, etc. and is the likely part of the chain where differences in judder are being introduced.

The examples I cited (48hz projection, etc.) are ways that technology has been developed to help us better see smooth motion from a series of still images.

To be more clear, if you are seeing judder in a scene where you wouldn't expect it, it's probably happening in playback, your screen, your chosen frame rate, shutter angle, etc.

It's not because you chose one brand of camera over another.

I absolutely agree! Let's convince the others! ;)

All this talk about LCDs and computer screens and how and why they flicker is not really that relevant I don't think, as I put the same sort of shots through my Macbook from an HPX2100 and an EX1 at the same frame rates etc. and it was only on the EX1 that I saw motion problems. Never seen the like of it from any other camera I've used either. Just my observations.
Steve

I am interested in seeing some footage from Jeremy Hughes as he seems to have a perfect camera.

Test Clip
 

OK, Take a look at this clip:

http://www.ingenioustv.com/clips/ex1-motion-test.mov

I shot this with a Sony F350 XDCAM HD camera and an EX1, mounted side by side, following the same car down the road on the long end of the lens, both cameras set up and framed to give matching shots.

Both cameras were set to 25P with 1/50th shutter. I chose 25P over 24P to eliminate any pull up issues as what we are looking at is the way the EX1 capture motion, not how monitors or edit suites add or subtract frames. The F350 has been around for a couple of years and has been used for many programmes shooting at 24P and 25P and no one has complained that it doesn't handle motion correctly.

The clip is not trying to show a perfect shot. The pan is too fast for 25P which should exaggerate any differences. What I believe it shows is that both cameras handle the motion exactly the same. If there was a problem with the EX1's progressive motion handling I don't believe it would have passed Discovery's extensive tests which do involve a lot of motion tests as the one thing they look for is how the codec handles rapidly. changing images.

Well done Alister, that's what's needed.
No argument here, they look identical to me.
Hmmmm!
Steve

I thought I would see more skew on the lamp posts but even that seems so slight as to be practically invisible.

Good job, Alister.

I have been waiting for someone to do that. I hope this issue has been put to rest.

Much appreciated, Alister, that you have proven the issue is not existing, and the whole buzz about the EX1's low frame rate, progressive modes being more stuttery than on other cameras is simply unjustified.

Which of course only makes the right shooting technique even more important - without it, the motion may indeed appear unpleasant, to say the least.

Also worth mentioning is the importance of the viewing device; watching 25p stuff on a 60 Hz PC monitor is not the best way to judge motion. I can see a huge difference between what I can see on my 24" LCD when compared to my 100Hz plasma, which displays each frame 4 times!