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GH2 Stutter/Judder/Strobe issues discussion
  • DalefpfDalefpf
    Hello,

    First off, thanks for all of the great work being done here. I was wondering if any of the new settings could help reduce the effect of judder and strobe I tend to see while using the GH2? I actually returned my first GH2 because I believed it was faulty. Now, on my second camera, I see the same effect. I know a few others have felt the same way and was hoping to get an understanding of what causes the effect and what might be done to help resolve it. Maybe it is what it is?
  • 218 Replies sorted by
  • tihontihon

    Well, it's time to up this thread. I have the same 24 fps strobe problem. I remember i can fix it a little. I put my 24fps files in 30fps composition and use frame blending. I think it helps, but it can be placebo effect)

  • goannagoanna

    Like with other shots of this type, I'm afraid the sample is too jerky to really be able to make a good appraisal. A good fluid tripod at a reasonably firm damper will ease out the jerks. Your pan allows any given object in the room those 3 arbitrary seconds from one side of the frame to another, at a constant speed, to make a smooth textbook pan - except there are those momentary accelerations and slowdowns happening in between as well, (also tilting up and down).

    Yes, we can say your camera should be able to do all the jerks it wants - but we'd still need a good sample so as to watch one thing at a time.

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    @falconking Shot in the dark here - are you on a tripod and also using a lens with OIS switched on? I've heard OIS needs to be switched off when on a tripod or it can introduce problems with the image.

  • falconkingfalconking

    I have tried many settings and hacks, but the strobing/judder refuses to go away. Even without the hacks, the result is the same. settings: 24h , 1/30th ISO 1250, cinema mode. take a look:

  • _gl_gl

    Apart from fps, other causes of judder people aren't aware of is that LCD-based screens hate switching from very dark < > very bright colours quickly. This causes a horrible flicker that has nothing to do with the footage.

    Try this checkerboard image - make sure you're zoomed to 100% so there's no scaling: http://slorg.freeshell.org/pictures/checkerboard%27.png Resize the browser window so you can scroll it a bit. On an LCD based screen, when you scroll it will flicker really badly (some screens are worse than others). Nothing to do with the image, just LCD pixel-refresh issues. On videos, the same thing happens with high contrast movement, eg. panning on sharp dense bare tree branches (which is where people often see it).

    Another reason for stutter on computer monitors is refresh rate to fps mismatch. If they don't match perfectly, it will judder, and often in a pretty random way. In fact, Nvidia's new 'GSync' technology (http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/technology/g-sync) will fix that, it matches the monitor's frame rate dynamically to your output. That's especially important with games (who's FPS is all over the place), but will also fix refresh-rate judder in video playback. I'm very sensitive to this and hate it with a vengeance.

  • goannagoanna

    24P strobes and stutters always if there is movement in scene.

    Yes. But only with certain Group-Of_Pictures codecs. Film does not stutter when watched from an optical projector. Its individual frames show consistent trailing-edge "feathered" blur - even with a zip-pan. Take a look at the individual frames of your GH2's zip-pan and you'll see that the compression can't cope, producing a pizza-like heap of smears and artefacts. An MPEG2, an H.264 or an early-codec DVD will add stutter to any previously smooth 24fps film once telecine'd and digitised. A high compression (DivX) downloaded film can look terrible.

    The thing is, they will continue to produce codecs, like the proprietory H.264, according to consumer, market storage & bandwidth demands. When consuming video we don't complain about the jerky background - because mostly when we're watching slow panning in a movie, the camera is tracking an actor, a car or some other moving object so we're not looking at the background.

    H.265 is promising in that it includes a high number of mathematical algorithms in order to track movement within frames. It might be capable of the forward and backward interpolation of i-frames to produce the superior intermediate frames which @driftwood refers to.

    However, H.265 is currently not aiming at better quality but rather at even higher compression - and for the consumer, not the producer. Whether we camera users get any benefit out of it is yet to be revealed. Until then, we can minimise jitter by using higher frame rates, blurring, careful clean-up in post etc. But I'd beware of any snake-oil merchants who claim miracle cures.

  • CienakisCienakis

    This comment doesn't reference any particular comment but may be worthwhile as a comment on the whole topic of judder. If someone else has covered this I apologize.
    Judder or stuttering is prone to subjective interpretation. Further it is difficult to watch an on-line clip and really be sure that what you are seeing is what the poster is seeing at the source. When I got my GH3 I was very convinced that what I was seeing was what was actually what was being captured within the camera. Even when reviewing a clip as played directly from the camera I could see judder on slow pans. After running the clips on a variety of video cards I've came to the conclusion that the high bit rates of the codecs used are generally just too much for many video cards including the one within the camera. The result is slowed or dropped frames and visible judder. I upgraded to a GTX770 video card and many of the problems disappeared. Within Premiere Pro I may still see some judder/stuttering after applying an effect like Warp Stabilizer but that too disappears as soon as the clip is rendered down to a more playable format.

  • MckiniseMckinise

    Saying you needed 24fps and you are recording sound separately, would you shoot at 60fps and just frame blend it to 24p?

  • VeskuVesku

    24P strobes and stutters always if there is movement in scene. 30P handles little better but 60P is OK for movement. I hope standards will some day meet that.

  • nobbystylusnobbystylus

    I've seen the same 'strobe' with panning shot @24fps or 25fps on C300 footage, F5 Footage as well as GH2, GH3 etc etc. I think its an issue with rolling shutter based digital 'cinema' cameras and its something thats hard to avoid when shooting at 1/50 shutter. Global shutters may provide an answer in the long term.

  • luekioluekio

    Yes, if you prefer your footage to look like a video game, shoot in 30 fps :P

  • dado023dado023

    i have noticed 29.97 works better, video is more fluid...as in your words, it was epileptic before :)

  • AstroAstro

    @jthomps123 Probably a bit late for this reply. But I became obsessed with the strobe issues on the GH2 (especially when panning) accompanied by an annoying flicker. I live in PAL land so I used the HBR 25frame and also the 24P, and tried a lot of the hacks, nothing worked, filters, Screen resolution refresh rate, turning off I.R, all manner of shutter speeds etc..decreasing sharpening ...Plus I read countless forums. My TM700 at 1080 50P does not do this at all, but if the footage is converted to 25P then it is not as smooth, so frame rate does help a lot. Then I read someone said shoot at 29.97 all the time, so I switched my cam to NTSC, set the shutter to 50 (for lights in PAL land) and 60 as well...and lo and behold the problem was FIXED.

    No more flickering, very little strobe effects AWESOME!! Try it ....do some A/B's you will see a big difference, and the best part is I can use 29.97 for just about everything I need to, so for me anyway the problem is solved. Cinematic look (24P) just does not work that well on current digital CMOS cameras, its not a Cinema look, its more of an epileptic fit inducing look...29.97 has made me love the GH2 LOL!!

    Cheers

  • vidpro40vidpro40

    I should add that when I exported what I believe to be a PRORES version of my footage -- Premiere Pro CS6 was able to play that back equally as well so..............

  • vidpro40vidpro40

    Here is what I discovered with the strobing/judder issue:

    In my case (basic hack, 44kb cinema mode) my GH2 footage looked unaaceptable -- judder / strobing when I tried to play it back in Premiere Pro CS5.5 PC and even in CS6 for Mac. No preset that I could find fixed the problem.... AVCHD, DSLR etc.

    When I played the raw clips back right from the sd card in my sony Blue Ray player (with an sd card adapter no less thru usb) HD to an hdmi monitor, the footage looked AWESOME --thank you to the guy who recomended this btw...

    SO I KNEW THIS GH2 CAN REALLY REPRESENT

    When I used Final Cut Pro X 10.3, to "import from camera" --- it captures automatically -- and looks pretty damn good --not sure what the tech specs are - it even burned a regular sd dvd and IT looked good..........

    fucking AWESOME

    So it's some kind of transcode issue, fields and framerates

    the footage is a little blurry during motion - wise

    but you can pay a lot for that feature...

    solved my problem

    VERY usable

  • mo7iesmo7ies

    Here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/55910#Comment_55910

  • jthomps123jthomps123

    So whats the consensus here? Is there no real resolution for the strobing?

  • JackBayerJackBayer

    Damn! I picked the wrong files for upload. I will upload the ones with the champagne cooler later again as mts. Sorry for the hassle and thanks for looking!

    Edit: No, I won´t, as I only kept the Cineform versions...

  • LPowellLPowell

    @JackBayer I downloaded both MTS files above and I'm afraid you've made a serious mistake. The video titled "GH2 juddering with FloMo" was definitely NOT shot with Flow Motion. It is an all-Intra-frame 1080p25 HBR video with a bitrate of about 78Mbps. Sorry, but in this case, I suspect you'll need to take your juddering issues up with Mr. Driftwood...

  • JackBayerJackBayer

    @LPowell

    Ok, here it is:

    GH1 piece first (I guess you won´t need it, but it could not hurt:

    an here GH2 with FloMo:

    I´ve just uploaded, so maybe it´ll take Vimeo some time to finish the process (seems so...).

    Thanks!

  • JackBayerJackBayer

    OK, I´ll upload them in an hour or so when I´m back home.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @JackBayer Thanks for the quick response, this is the kind of testing that is most helpful to me. However, the Vimeo pages currently have MOV files available for download, I'd need to examine the original MTS files.

  • JackBayerJackBayer

    and:

    (GH1) and:
    (GH2 with FloMo)

    Honestly, I´ve been watching my monitors all day, I can´t see sh** anymore...the real world studders!!

  • JackBayerJackBayer

    EDIT: Here´s the test I shot

    Embedding wouldn´t work.

    2 other videos from the shooting I mentioned are uploading right now.

  • JackBayerJackBayer

    @LPowell Yes I will, when I get home. And by all means no offence, man! :)

    I am in the middle of testing all driftwoods against my GH1 with "High reliability 75" but I will put on the Flowmotion one more time to compare it aswell. I have both cams on the same tripod and perform pans on different speeds...

    I was shooting some beauty shots yesterday with GH2 Flow Motion. Even on its display I saw confusing studder so I changed to my GH1. I will post those examples too.

    Right now I gotta tell you, it´s all I see with whatever patch...studder everywhere. I guess it becomes worse once you train your eye on it,

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