Comments

paul_w wrote on 4/12/2014, 4:16 AM
"Does the shutter speed have to be a multiple of the frame rate then, or does it have to be just twice the frame rate?"
Its twice.

So if you're in PAL land like me, and for a docu, its 25fps at a 50th, pretty much always. Lock that down.

Paul.
set wrote on 4/12/2014, 5:06 AM
"The Awesome Filmer" (may I call you "Daniel Hurley"? (based on Youtube's account name)),

May I know, before using Canon DSLRs, have you ever using other cameras or standard camcorders or Handycams ?

*Well, just thinking if you may have shooting with other camcorders, which is 50-interlaced field recording standard (not 25-Progressive recording), and got more sharp motion images when doing similar panning, but now you got blurry images.

If my opinion is correct, that's the challenge of dslrs' shooting. Above recommendations are correct to set shutter in 1/50. The next is shooting technique. Next time, focus to one subject or at least subject we can always follow without getting dizzy. The more complex the scene is, give more time so viewer can understand the scene. -- Tips for future..

I can't give a solution on how to repair the motion blur problem on original shots, but if you feel stabilizing them via Mercalli can help, you got that way to go. Other than that, depends on what story you would like to tell, I make slow motion on the faces, if you wish to show the people to your viewer. As you say, not a perfect solution, but still usable.

Good Luck

Set

Setiawan Kartawidjaja
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Laurence wrote on 4/12/2014, 9:34 AM
I'm downloading the two files right now. It will be a few days before I can get to it. I also do live sound reinforcement and am doing a concert today for an artist named "Dino". I've never heard of him before, but apparently he is a sort of straight, Christian version of Liberace. Anyway, I will get to the video clips sometime early next week, and will post whatever results I can get here.
The awesome filmer wrote on 4/13/2014, 12:53 PM
SET

Call me Dan!

No, I haven't really had experience with filming on consumer camcorders.

When I decided to do high quality filming, I got the best piece of recording equipment I could buy - at the time it was a Sony a77. I got experienced with this camera, but I didn't want to take it with me to Uganda because it was so expensive - I thought I could rent a camera while I was there.

There were no cameras to rent, so I had to buy one - I got the cheapest one, the Canon rebel t2i.

Although I had had the best results with the Sony at 50p and a shutter speed at 50, I didn't connect the two settings, that the shutter speed should be a multiple of the frame rate - I just found that over 50fps I got hum bars filming indoors with fluorescent lighting and at 40 fps there was ghosting - I didn't know why.

Now while filiming in Uganda, I just put the shutter speed to either 60 or 50 while filming at 25p, which was the top frame rate of the camera - I just thought that a high shutter speed would eliminate ghosting. It was only back in England, when playing back my footage that I saw that on the footage where the shutter speed was 60, there was some kind of problem between frames.

Completely surprised and bemused, I turned to this forum for help - with so far excellent results!!!!

As you say Set, my technique can use some work - that's a lifetime's practice is it not?

And now Laurence says he'll have a go at getting it better - If your reading this laurence, thank you!
farss wrote on 4/13/2014, 4:38 PM
[I]"my technique can use some work - that's a lifetime's practice is it not?"[/I]

Yes and NO!

Like any craft of course one is always learning however there are a basic set of rules that'll ensure you capture something useful, that will tell the story that's in front of the camera to an audience.

The subject must be in focus.
The subject must be correctly exposed.
The camera must be stable, not waved around like a garden hose.

Of course rules are made to be broken and knowing when breaking them is acceptable is what does take a lifetime. If you stick to the rules above always you'll always have something to work with. Make certain you have the story covered according to the rules and then think about shooting whilst breaking the rules.

If I was shooting a music video for a death metal band for sure waving the camera around might work really well. Before doing that and many other things I would make certain I had the entire song covered by well exposed in focus static shots. If my creative endeavours turn out to be a disaster there's always something to cover the song.

Bob.
winrockpost wrote on 4/13/2014, 5:17 PM
you forgot one Bob,,,,be sure to hit record and you really are recording not stopping the recording of the ground as you get to your next shot !! of course that has never happened to me............:)
ushere wrote on 4/13/2014, 6:59 PM
as a rule - one made to be broken of course;

keep the camera still / locked off and let the action happen within the frame. use as many different angles / views as possible and cut between them. (watch any tv news / doco to get a good idea of what works in any given situation)

viewers want to absorb ALL the information they can in the shortest space of time (whether consciously or not) and a moving camera is more of a distraction than an aid to doing this. of course, to show a vast panorama nothing beats a SLOW pan, but equally, picking up details within it simply adds to the viewers information / pleasure.

shooting IS a lifelong learning curve, part of which we invent, forget, relearn, and as pointed out, shoot an awful lot of ground between shots ;-)
set wrote on 4/13/2014, 7:56 PM
Ah, Sony Alpha series..., yes, that's a good one.
What I love of Sony series is electronic viewfinder so when filming, I can stick the camera to my head and that will help holding the camera.
(only own Sony A37*, some Sony NEX-VG series and latest RX10)
*as a 1st prize of small photo competition

Then shooting in Canon 25p must less panning than what you may usually to in Sony's 50p (I usually keep in 50i).

Hum bars with fluorescent lighting could happen due to unmatched frequency of lighting. perhaps shutter 1/60 can help reduce.

For documentaries, keep the camera as stable as you can if you must shot handheld, without tripod. I usually record 3 to 6 seconds pointing to subject without panning, then cut, move, rec again to other subjects. If I have to 'shake' it a bit when I move the camera, shot wide (Long Shot) and look for subject for our viewers to keep 'lock on'.

Some examples by Shane Hurlbut when shooting Act of Valor: http://vimeo.com/42367628, plus latest Need for Speed movie, during racing scenes from 1st person POVs.

One of our work, involve a lot of camera movement when coverage the event: http://vimeo.com/76422956.

Setiawan Kartawidjaja
Bandung, West Java, Indonesia (UTC+7 Time Area)

Personal FB | Personal IG | Personal YT Channel
Chungs Video FB | Chungs Video IG | Chungs Video YT Channel
Personal Portfolios YouTube Playlist
Pond5 page: My Stock Footage of Bandung city

 

System 5-2021:
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Video Card1: Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Driver 31.0.101.2127 (Feb 1 2024 Release date))
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RAM: 32.0 GB
OS: Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2 OS Build 19045.3693
Drive OS: SSD 240GB
Drive Working: NVMe 1TB
Drive Storage: 4TB+2TB

 

System 2-2018:
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Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 8750H CPU @2.20GHz 2.21 GHz
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RAM: 16GB
OS: Win11 Home 64-bit Version 22H2 OS Build 22621.2428
Storage: M.2 NVMe PCIe 256GB SSD & 2.5" 5400rpm 1TB SSHD

 

* I don't work for VEGAS Creative Software Team. I'm just Voluntary Moderator in this forum.

farss wrote on 4/14/2014, 2:32 AM
[I]" It was only back in England, when playing back my footage that I saw that on the footage where the shutter speed was 60, there was some kind of problem between frames."[/I]

One thought about this has occurred to me. Are you certain the camera was actually using 1/50th or 1/60th?

I ask for two reasons:

1) The difference between 1/50 and 1/60 is too small to produce a noticeable difference.

2) On many cameras it's fiendishly difficult to get the camera not to use a faster shutter speed when there's a lot of light especially when the camera doesn't have built in ND filters. I suspect this is the problem.

Basically a camera in anything other than full manual (many cameras have no way to get them into that mode) will use the shutter speed you've set and use the iris to control the amount of light reaching the sensor. In full sun though the iris may not be able to reduce the amount of light enough or doing so will go past the diffraction limit and the image will end up soft. So then the camera's automatic exposure control system will increase shutter speed to control exposure.

Bob.
Serena Steuart wrote on 4/14/2014, 2:55 AM
>>>Most of my footage was filmed with the same settings anyway - 25p at 60 frames per second<<<

I'm hoping this was a typo and that you intended 25p at 1/60sec. It's the sort of thing that questions the level of technical ignorance.

Farss has raised a very good point. Shooting in African sun without suitable ND filters would not be possible at 1/60th second.
Laurence wrote on 4/14/2014, 9:23 AM
I have such a lo tech way of handling this. On my GH3, for outdoor b-roll I use a somewhat slow 14-140mm lens, and on that lens I keep a polarizing filter. That takes me part of the way there but I still let the shutter speed get pretty fast. I compensate by using a lot of small f-stops and really watching my movement. On fast tripod zooms I will keyframe in a little horizontal blur in editing. I like the polarizing filter because it darkens the sky and gets rid of glare and to my eyes, that is usually more important than the shutter speed.

There are several times where I use really tiny f-stops. One is when I am not sure where I want the focus to be so I want infinite focus. Another is when there is any fast motion and I want the shutter to be as slow as possible. Another is when there is some risk of moire or aliasing (bricks, shingles, wood grain in docks, leaves). For moire and aliasing, the small aperture lowers the optical resolution enough that the artifacts clear up and yet the resolution is still plenty for HD video. I don't do this on stills, only video. Usually outdoors I'll lock the ISO at it's lowest setting. I use a lot of aperture priority on b-roll, but if there is fast motion I will use shutter priority to lengthen the shutter time as much as possible. After a while you get a sort of feeling about what kind of shutter speed you can get away with on a given shot.

Shoot lots of material. If it's b-roll, sometimes I will say my settings aloud at the beginning of the shots so that the mic picks them up and I will know later how the camera was set. This helps me evaluate what worked and what didn't.

As you might have picked up, I really don't do things in a standard way. I tell my wife that if I wasn't working for myself, I would probably have a tough time passing a camera person job interview. I am confident about the end results though, even if some of my settings are compromises from what is generally accepted.

A while back I made a conscious decision not to do is carry around a rigged camera. I really, really like the inconspicuousness of an unrigged camera that looks like what a photographer would carry. With the EV on the GH3, I can hold the camera plenty steady with just my hands and the viewfinder pressed to my face (as long as I don't try walking). I can't get it steady enough without pressing the viewfinder to my face and just looking at the screen unless I am really wide.

My advice is to start from the general knowledge, consciously try different things, then really analyze your results. Things like fast shutters work in some instances but look terrible in others. After a while, you will be able to instinctively know which is which.

It's not just me doing this sort of approach. If you look at some of the sites for "hybrid photographers" (people using mirrorless cameras to shoot both stills and video) you will see a bunch of people honing in this same skill that I have been working on.

If you are using the Canon 5D, the best thing you can do is at least stick a loupe on the back screen so you can place it against your face. This will steady the camera considerably, and slow down your movements. It will also let you really see what you are shooting. Then you can watch for things like judder, bad exposure and soft focus while you are shooting. There are some really expensive ones, but there are some inexpensive ones for less than $100 that work quite well. That alone will improve your video results immensely, even without rigging the camera beyond that.

On the Canons, you can also add that Magic Lantern software which will give you things like zebras and focus peaking. You would have a tough time seeing any of this without the loupe though.
Laurence wrote on 4/14/2014, 10:29 AM
OK Awesome Filmer, I can actually get your footage to look surprisingly good at 50i or 50p. Much better than I thought possible in fact. I generated in between frames for the interlace or doubled frames and the judder almost completely goes away. The problem is that it still looks juddery when I render out a version for Youtube or Vimeo that can't go beyond 25p or 30p.

The good news is that you can get rid of the judder on a DVD or Bluray almost completely. The bad news is that your camera motion is just too fast for online playback.

Here is the link:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9490815/AwesomeFilmerJudderRemoval_01.mxf

Edit: This current 50p version looks OK with VLC, but for best results, use the Sony PDZVX10 mxf player found here:

https://www.servicesplus.sel.sony.com/sony-software-model-PDZVX10.aspx

Make sure to check the "use alternate renderer" tab on the tools/options menu. Otherwise you won't see the magic.
Laurence wrote on 4/14/2014, 11:16 AM
Here is a half speed version on Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/91940947

Not as nice as the 60p or 60i versions, but at least it gives you an idea of the judder removal.
Laurence wrote on 4/16/2014, 2:06 PM
Awesome Filmer, please make sure to check out the link I posted. I'm not one for bragging, but it looks one heck of a lot better than it did, and if you are going to use the footage for anything, you are going to need to do this.
farss wrote on 4/16/2014, 4:07 PM
A variable ND filter gives you both a polarizer and the ability to lose between 2 and 9 stops of light. Very handy even with my EX1 which has built in ND filters for when I'm shooting timelapse.

One problem with the affordable Variable ND filters is seeing the markings and you want to pay attention to them else nasty outcomes are easy. To fix this and the potential for flare I added a $2 collapsible rubber lens hood from eBay to mine. Out wide the hood can get in shot but then I just collapse it back, I've also run white gaffe tape around the outside and added some markings with a sharpie so I easily see if the filter is in a "safe" rotation, two problems solved for under $5. The Lightworks variable NDs which sell for around $100 aren't the exactly top shelf, I'm not even certain if the really expensive ones are much better TBH but they don't seem to soften the image and the small colour shift is within correctable bounds.

One thing variable NDs don't wrangle is IR pollution but even expensive NDs can have the same issue. Unless you're willing to use a matte box and pay for "hot glass" filters just live with the problem.

Bob.
The awesome filmer wrote on 4/16/2014, 5:11 PM
LAURENCE AND FARSS

I'm sorry if I've appeared rude, I'm away from my computer at the moment and am unable to make a proper response. I should be able to reply after Wednesday. Thanks for your advice and support, it's appreciated!
Laurence wrote on 4/16/2014, 5:26 PM
Fair enough. Just to let you know what I did. I ran it through ProDAD ReSpeedr and slowed it down to a quarter of the original speed. I also checked ReSpeedr's stabilization and rolling compensation boxes when I did this. I then took the ReSpeedr render and put it on a Vegas Timeline and sped it up four times to the original speed. I disabled resampling and did renders out to both 60i and 60p formats. The result of that is that every second frame is one that is generated, and having twice the frames gets rid of the judder. That was the most successful of my experiments. As you'll see, at a temporal speed of 60fps, the perceptible judder disappears entirely.

Logically it would make sense to only slow it down 50% in ReSpeedr to generate the in between frames. I tried this first and it still had lots of judder. I don't know why generating twice as many frames and then dropping half of them would look so much better, but it did.

I also tried enabling resampling and rendering at 25p, but it looked too soft. There is just too much camera movement for slow frame rate playback.
Laurence wrote on 5/6/2014, 7:48 AM
Awesomefilmerdude, did you ever check out the Dropbox link? I'm not one to brag usually, but the difference is pretty amazing, and I now have a new trick up my sleeve for getting rid of judder: slowing down to quarter speed using ReSpeedr motion estimation and speeding it back up in Vegas to regular speed, then rendering to 60i or 60p.

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9490815/AwesomeFilmerJudderRemoval_01.mxf

Play it with VLC or the Sony mxf player for best results.
TeetimeNC wrote on 5/6/2014, 10:37 AM
>One problem with the affordable Variable ND filters is seeing the markings and you want to pay attention to them else nasty outcomes are easy. To fix this and the potential for flare I added a $2 collapsible rubber lens hood from eBay to mine.

@Bob, I am interested in a variable ND filter for my DSLR. Can you elaborate on the problem you are referring to re "seeing the markings"?

/jerry
john_dennis wrote on 5/6/2014, 11:45 AM
@ Laurence

"[I] I'm not one to brag usually...[/I]"

You should.
Laurence wrote on 5/6/2014, 12:26 PM
On my GH3, outdoors I use a not too fast 14-140mm lens with a polarization filter that is always on it. It drops the light a few stops, gets rid of the glare and darkens the sky a little. I still end up with fast shutter speeds, but it really helps.
Serena Steuart wrote on 5/6/2014, 11:45 PM
Teetime,
Variable ND filters are variable in quality (as well). Two makes that are recommended are Heliopan and Genus Eclipse (the former being more expensive). Also be aware that at high density (> ND1.8) IR can "contaminate" blacks in the image, so need an IT attenuating filter as well.
farss wrote on 5/7/2014, 1:00 AM
[I]"@Bob, I am interested in a variable ND filter for my DSLR. Can you elaborate on the problem you are referring to re "seeing the markings"?"[/I]

There's a set of markings on the outside of the ring that show the Min and Max limits of how far one of the filter elements should rotated. There's no mechanical stop so unless you keep an eye on where you've rotated the filter too, you can get into the "not recommended" area.

The few times I've used mine I've also had one of those rubber lens hoods screwed into it. I put some white gaffe tape around the edge of the hood and added some marks onto the tape.

Bob.
Laurence wrote on 5/7/2014, 9:14 AM
Has anyone actually looked at my fixed version of this clip and compared it to the original? I believe the difference is striking. I didn't expect it come out nearly this well:


dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9490815/AwesomeFilmerJudderRemoval_01.mxf