Everything below 60fps looks choppy, laggy.....

[SpiderFly]

Hi everybody!

So I got my first drone about a week ago, and I have been out flying and testing some different settings, and I don’t understand why it is so popular to film in 24fps......to me it looks terrible. I have tried 24 at 1/50, 30f at 1/60 and 60fps at 1/120, and 60fps edited in a 60fps timeline looks amazing! It’s so crisp and smooth!

Trying the lower fps settings it always comes out choppy, lagging, stuttering or whatever you might call it......and it doesn’t look good at all. It looks like there is something wrong. But for some reason people seem to prefer it? They talk about it looking unnatural when filming in 60fps. But for me it’s the only way to get a smooth nice video......and why wouldn’t you want that? Why do you want to have a choppy and laggy video? blurry?

Take this clip on Youtube for an example. The footage and scenery is amazing, but It is lagging like F! Doesn’t people see this? Is it only me? If it was shot and edited in 60fps it would have been amazing......but I cant find anything online about anyone using it, except for filming in 60fps and slowing it down in a 24fps timeline.

This is very strange to me. Why wouldn’t you want your video to be smooth, and without lag, blur etc?

4K Mavic Air 2

 

[iReviewFrozenDinners]

I'm pretty sensitive to framerate and game and work on a 165hz monitor, but I don't see any issues with the video you posted. It looks perfectly smooth even if it was filmed at 24/25/30 fps.

How long have you been experiencing this? Do you see choppy videos across multiple devices or just on your main computer?

 

[slup]

Nope ... can't see any lag.

But this with choppiness or lag can be created by many other things ... like panning or pitching too fast with the camera ... or flying too close to objects too fast. Introducing too little motion blur is also a reason for lag. Then also which equipment you use to play it on give a large impact on how smooth the playback will be. Then stream trough YT isn't the best way if you want to avoid lag.

 

[Macinfo]

YT of course re-encodes the video, so looking at the original file on your computer vs YT, there are going to be differences.

 

[Thomas B]

Hi everybody!

So I got my first drone about a week ago, and I have been out flying and testing some different settings, and I don’t understand why it is so popular to film in 24fps......to me it looks terrible. I have tried 24 at 1/50, 30f at 1/60 and 60fps at 1/120, and 60fps edited in a 60fps timeline looks amazing! It’s so crisp and smooth!

Trying the lower fps settings it always comes out choppy, lagging, stuttering or whatever you might call it......and it doesn’t look good at all. It looks like there is something wrong. But for some reason people seem to prefer it? They talk about it looking unnatural when filming in 60fps. But for me it’s the only way to get a smooth nice video......and why wouldn’t you want that? Why do you want to have a choppy and laggy video? blurry?

Take this clip on Youtube for an example. The footage and scenery is amazing, but It is lagging like F! Doesn’t people see this? Is it only me? If it was shot and edited in 60fps it would have been amazing......but I cant find anything online about anyone using it, except for filming in 60fps and slowing it down in a 24fps timeline.

This is very strange to me. Why wouldn’t you want your video to be smooth, and without lag, blur etc?

4K Mavic Air 2

Don’t see any video lag on my phone or TV.
BTW...
Welcome to the forum from the deserts of Arizona! Enjoy.

 

[Harold Morgan]

Maybe what you are seeing is a lack of motion blur. What shutter speed were you using?

 

[Zeprider]

The YT video looked fine to me. Also consider your PC. AVID work as well as merely observing 4k video requires a lot out of a computer in speed, RAM, and Graphics.

 

[Bransty]

Hi everybody!

So I got my first drone about a week ago, and I have been out flying and testing some different settings, and I don’t understand why it is so popular to film in 24fps......to me it looks terrible. I have tried 24 at 1/50, 30f at 1/60 and 60fps at 1/120, and 60fps edited in a 60fps timeline looks amazing! It’s so crisp and smooth!

Trying the lower fps settings it always comes out choppy, lagging, stuttering or whatever you might call it......and it doesn’t look good at all. It looks like there is something wrong. But for some reason people seem to prefer it? They talk about it looking unnatural when filming in 60fps. But for me it’s the only way to get a smooth nice video......and why wouldn’t you want that? Why do you want to have a choppy and laggy video? blurry?

Take this clip on Youtube for an example. The footage and scenery is amazing, but It is lagging like F! Doesn’t people see this? Is it only me? If it was shot and edited in 60fps it would have been amazing......but I cant find anything online about anyone using it, except for filming in 60fps and slowing it down in a 24fps timeline.

This is very strange to me. Why wouldn’t you want your video to be smooth, and without lag, blur etc?

4K Mavic Air 2

Maybe it's the way our eyes work? Some people see it. Some don't. I completely agree with you. I can tell the lower frame rate straight away. Doesn't matter which device I watch it on. Stoppy starty choppy jumpy. Up the game to 60fps, and it's super smooth. That's the reason I didn't purchase the Air 2 S. The higher resolution only going to 30fps was a deal breaker for me.

 

[Macinfo]

Maybe it's the way our eyes work? Some people see it. Some don't. I completely agree with you. I can tell the lower frame rate straight away. Doesn't matter which device I watch it on. Stoppy starty choppy jumpy. Up the game to 60fps, and it's super smooth. That's the reason I didn't purchase the Air 2 S. The higher resolution only going to 30fps was a deal breaker for me.

While it would be nice if 5.4K was 60fps, there is probably a good technical reason why it’s not- probably lack of processing power.

4K still has 60fps and with the larger sensor will rake some great video-

 

[Bransty]

While it would be nice if 5.4K was 60fps, there is probably a good technical reason why it’s not- probably lack of processing power.

4K still has 60fps and with the larger sensor will rake some great video-

It does on the Air2 S, but it's cropped. Still a deal breaker.

 

[alextodd]

The video looks amazing. Why do you feel it laggy? Its smooth on 60fps might be because of the processing power.

 

[bravezoo63]

Can't see any jitter or lag, but your video eye and flying skills are quite excellent. Nice job!

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

..
Your intro thread (June 7th 2021) you said . . .
"I got my very first drone a few weeks back"
"never flown anything like this before"
"zero knowledge on how to go about editing these videos" . . .

Yet this was posted to YouTube August 2020 ?
Nearly half a million views, 16k likes, 95 dislikes (people that hate drones, lol).

Brilliant filming and editing, so come on, are you not fishing for subs / likes in this post ?
There is no choppiness or lag, and you know it.

EDIT - I don't think that is your video, you used it as an example ??????
If so, please make it clear when posting, everyone thinks this is the video concerned, your video . . .
Better to post a video of one of YOUR videos, which will be more relevant.

 

[canadian drone videos]

Hi everybody!

So I got my first drone about a week ago, and I have been out flying and testing some different settings, and I don’t understand why it is so popular to film in 24fps......to me it looks terrible. I have tried 24 at 1/50, 30f at 1/60 and 60fps at 1/120, and 60fps edited in a 60fps timeline looks amazing! It’s so crisp and smooth!

Trying the lower fps settings it always comes out choppy, lagging, stuttering or whatever you might call it......and it doesn’t look good at all. It looks like there is something wrong. But for some reason people seem to prefer it? They talk about it looking unnatural when filming in 60fps. But for me it’s the only way to get a smooth nice video......and why wouldn’t you want that? Why do you want to have a choppy and laggy video? blurry?

Take this clip on Youtube for an example. The footage and scenery is amazing, but It is lagging like F! Doesn’t people see this? Is it only me? If it was shot and edited in 60fps it would have been amazing......but I cant find anything online about anyone using it, except for filming in 60fps and slowing it down in a 24fps timeline.

This is very strange to me. Why wouldn’t you want your video to be smooth, and without lag, blur etc?

4K Mavic Air 2

I never use 24 fps in a drone, unless I’m flying high. Kick up the frame rate.

 

[Mini 2 2021]

I have the DJI Mini 2. The question about 2.7k @ 60fps versus 4k @ 30fps is one that I've been testing more and more, and with regards to choppiness, I definitely see it also at anything lower than 60 fps. That's a bummer to me, but apparently others at Quora.com agree that 60fps is noticeably smoother / better than a higher resolution (4k) at only 30 fps (Do you prefer 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps? Why?)

A little background and further details regarding my experimentation with the DJI Mini2: I view the drone footage on a Predator Helios 300 laptop with 1080p screen (144Hz / 3ms), which presumably should be almost as good as it gets for viewing experience (though lacking 4k capability, obviously) and I also connect it via HDMI to a 37" Vizio 1080p TV monitor. (I'm not sure this Vizio's refresh rate, but it seems lower / worse than my 144Hz gaming laptop screen).

Here is what I've learned: anytime the drone footage has even the *slightest* movement in it--whether I'm panning / tilting the drone camera itself, or objects are moving in the footage--then 2.7k @ 60fps looks much better than 4k @ 30fps. And this I mean without any video editing (such as wanting to do slow motion, etc.) even coming into play. The 2.7k @ 60fps gives a "glass smooth" feel to the motion in the video, while the 4k @ 30fps always has blur or "vibration" (I might even say "frazzling") in the motion, especially when I'm looking for it. The extra 30fps must make a real difference in the smoothness of the footage, as the OP originally implied regarding 60fps.

Now, I sent the Mini 2 on a straight line flight towards a distant mountain miles away (and flying at ~400 ft. AGL), and because everything was so distant from the drone, the drone seemed to be moving very slow. I shot that in 4k @ 30fps, and that was probably the best choice because I doubt I'd see much difference between 30fps and 60fps in that case. What I really wanted was the sharpest resolution (in case I later connect my laptop to a 4k monitor).

But again, for any footage with great motion than this, and partially because I don't even have a 4k screen / monitor to get the full benefit of it at this point, it seems that 2.7k @ 60fps will look better (smoother) than 4k @ 30fps. (Wish the Mini 2 could shoot 4k @ 60fps, but I know higher-end drones can do this, and even better). Needless to say after all this, if you wanted to do slow motion in Davinci Resolve (or anything else, I presume), the higher the frame rate, the better. I've used 2.7k @ 60fps for some slow motion (as slow as 30% to 40%), and it looks fantastic to me.

 

[canadian drone videos]

Hi, your choice of 60 FPS will serve you better then 30, especially with the Mini.

 

[TnDronePilot]

I'm a professional video editor for Discovery Channel as well as an independent freelance cinematographer and have worked with all of the framerates over the years and I too prefer not to use "24p" unless the director or client is specifically asking for it. I loved the video the OP linked but I did see the jitter in most of the shots. Some were very obvious and some were harder to see but I didn't have to second guess myself wondering if I saw it. But really if you think about it, we all see that in movies we watch whether it's on the silver screen, on a TV or a mobile device. Some shots are just more obvious than others but if it's less than 30p which is what our eyes and brain normally handle, it's there. I'd say most of those movie companies have proprietary compression software they use that makes what we see look so good.

The overall compression codec used for the OP's export was very, very good but like others have mentioned, YT is definitely squeezing it a bit more. In fact, there is great Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial that I'll link below in which the guy explains the best settings for YouTube and says that adding too many Mbps in the export settings (thinking more is better) will actually make the YT algorithms compress your video even more. He provided a link to YT's suggestions based on framerate. It's a good document to have on hand if you're constantly exporting various framerates so you remember what to use.

About 10 years ago, there was a big push in our production department to get every external production company as well as our internal PC to change from 24p to 30p because of how the networks air the final shows and promos which is at a framerate of 59.94i. When we had to up-convert all of their shoot footage from 23.976 (24p) to 59.94 (29.97p) just to work with it in our timelines, holy crap was it awful to work with. Talk about jittery video. I kept a bottle of extra strength Tylenol at my desk when my eyes just said STOP IT!!

Anyway, at first the directors stomped their feet because 24p was all they ever used but after we gave them many side by side 24p/30p comparisons without telling them which was which, all but the purists and pixel peepers could tell the difference. So they finally started shooting 30/60/120p for our promo productions (probably by force).

My loooong point to all of that was, for most of the professionals in the TV business who stare at frames their whole career, I bet they can't really tell the difference between 24/50p or 30/60p so if you like the extra frames, go with it. It's still gonna look incredible either way and no one is gonna give you crap as to why you didn't shoot 24p. Now maybe In our drone world where scenery is going by fast, it is more obvious that something was shot in 24p so, you'll just have to choose how you want the world to see it all. Smooth as butter or jittery like your watching the video while running down steps.


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