Video judder when panning - newbie question

[Bruce Lythe]

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I have a perception of a lack of smoothness in the background in this video segment. Recorded 4k at 25. No filters or anything. Constant pressure on left stick. Drone stationary.

Clip put into VideoPad Editor and exported at 1080p with same frame rate. That's what I can view on my laptop and upload to youtube.

What am I doing wrong? Was I simply panning too fast??? Or is it my laptop having problems in playback??

Its probably i need an ND filter - Was 9am bright sun here.

But am i missing something?

 

[brett8883]

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I have a perception of a lack of smoothness in the background in this video segment. Recorded 4k at 25. No filters or anything. Constant pressure on left stick. Drone stationary.

Clip put into VideoPad Editor and exported at 1080p with same frame rate. That's what I can view on my laptop and upload to youtube.

What am I doing wrong? Was I simply panning too fast??? Or is it my laptop having problems in playback??

Its probably i need an ND filter - Was 9am bright sun here.

But am i missing something?

It’s actually pretty good but it’s a combination of all the above I think but just a tiny bit of each one cause it really isn’t that bad.

First off if you are filming outside during the day you need an ND filter. The judder is because your shutter speed is too fast for your frame rate. We know that a video is just a series of photos played back quickly. I am going to take a wild guess that your shutter speed is in the neighborhood of 1/500. I could be way off but my point would still be the same. So if you frame rate is 25 frames per second and your shutter speed is 500 shutter per second(1/500) that means you are releasing the shutter and reexposing each frame 20 times. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if there were a few things here and there moving in your frame but when you are panning the ENTIRE frame is moving and so you are never actually exposing the frame completely with a coherent image. Instead you are boom boom boom 20 times on each frame a new image. In terms of photography it’s like you’ve done a double exposure except it’s a 20 times exposure. The way to fix this is to use an and filter to slow down the shutter speed to get a blurring motion instead of the boom boom boom stutter steps with a faster shutter speed.

The human eye expects to see a certain amount of blurring when there is motion so without it it just doesn’t feel right and that’s what you are picking up on without being able to really put your finger on.

You always want to ideally or as close as you can do your shutter speed is twice your frame rate. In your case 25 frames per second you’d want your shutter speed to be 1/50. That way you only have two exposures per frame. Use the ND filter that allows this while still getting the exposure value you want.

Second thing is you have a real great slow pan going there but it’s just a hair fast. With a Mavic’s focal length 4K 25 FPS you ideally would want a 13 second pan meaning that an object that enters the frame during panning takes 13 seconds to pass the entire length of the frame. This is actually the most difficult camera maneuver there is and it’s gonna seem painfully slow as you are filming but you’ll appreciate it afterwards.

ND filters are a must to get high quality video and just will improve the feel a lot. It’s already pretty darn good though. Little things is all, little very tiny things

 

[e143slime8]

"brett8883" nice little tutorial, thanks.

 

[Bruce Lythe]

Thank you SOOOO very much. This is just what a forum like this should be for. I am just home after a long long drive and will read carefully tomorrow.

 

[RobH2]

This is the first time I've seen the recommendation of "13" seconds to pan edge to edge. I look forward to trying it. I always seem to get judder no matter what I do and I see a lot of videos that have none. So I know it's a flaw in my technique. I guess I'm just panning too fast, even as I think I'm panning slowly. I'll try "13" seconds.

Thanks.

 

[Sky Monkey]

A great way to explain some of the mysteries of cinematography, thank you.

 

[Enzoxs]

Having this exact issue, shooting on a Sandisk Extreme 32GB, at 25fps shutter speed 1/50. Happens at all resolutions, at first I thought it was a slow SD card, although it persisted even after getting this new one. Happens when saving to the onboard storage, and at all resolutions. It's really bugging me, I would say a lot of my clips are unusable because of it. I've tried to just pan and move the gimbal slower, and the juddering effect is still present. It seems to me it only happens when the gimbal having to do more work but I'm not sure. It is much less noticeable when movements are very slower, but it doesn't feel right that you should have to fly this way to get smooth looking shots. Does everyone have this issue?

Here's some of the juddery footage.

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These are all straight from the SD card.