Hi David,

It's tough to say what is going on with your footage because 1/50th is certainly the recommended setting for 25P. Are you sure the shutter switch under the lens is actually turned on? Are you shooting with an f-stop of f/5.6 or larger?

I'll admit that I never have any reason to shoot 25P, but on the rare occassions when I shoot 24P I use 1/48th and I've been completely happy with the results. And I always use 1/60th for 30P.

How are you viewing your footage (clips), if using the XDCAM EX browser then that can look juddery. Depending on your NLE, the clips can also lose their smoothness until rendered.

I learnt the hard way that shutter Off means a full 1/25 sec for 25fps. I did discover through shooting several clips that doubling the shutter speed over the frame rate produces a better result. Shoot several clips at different settings and say out aloud which settings are being used. When you play back the clips you will hear yourself confirming the settings used.

I know that recent posts are way off topic and I am very sorry to add to that (sorry Marius) but my 25p is rubbish. Each and every time. Setting the shutter to 1/50th only cuts down on light levels and does not help my cause at all......Sorry.

Post some footage. Let's see it.

There's always 50i ;-)

You havn't given us any information on what aspect of your clips are rubish. Maybe some sample footage would help, or tell us exactly what the problem is .

Shooting 25P frame speed on at 50. Never had a problem with my xl-2 with these settings. My screening so far has been on my mac book pro set to view fit to screen. Workflow: shotputting the card on to an external drive and xdcam transferring the clips on to a separate drive for viewing and fcp work. I am now hoping the judder is screening related. Question - how to screen to tell, afterall at some point this footage is for screening on a regular telly via broadcast or off a dvd? I shall post some online footage as soon as I have a moment, but that is always an iffy situation (finding that elusive moment, that is)

My workflow involves writing individual chapters on a project to DVD and viewing it on an LCD TV (Sony Bravia and Samsung), I may write several discs at differet settings until the quality looks right. I never judge the motion in my NLE (Premiere) or via Sony clipbrowser as this may not always produce the smoothest results. I suspect that your Mac Book may be the problem, besides running the OS and other tasks, expecting it to give a smooth video performance with HD is a very tall order. This is not intended to be a knock for Apple Mac, my Windows system has just as many, if not more, problems.

There really needs to be a sticky on this subject as it comes around again and again.

Never, never, never judge the motion of footage using a computer screen. Most computer screens are running at 60Hz or higher. They are progressive displays so do not handle interlace well and if you have shot at 24P, 25P or 30P there has to be some kind of interpolating of the frame rate going on in order to display the footage. This can manifest itself in many ways depending on how the computer is converting your footage. It may be picture tearing, stuttering, jumping, skipping or judder. Very few computer displays are optimised for video playback. You can ever be sure that what you are seeing is what you shot using a basic computer display setup.

A better way to judge the motion is simply to use the SD composite output into a conventional monitor. While it may only be SD and might not be the best quality image, at least the motion should be correct. Most HD LCD TV's have a component input, this is going to be better for judging motion than a computer screen.

The majority of computer screens are simply not designed for moving images.