24p on GH2 will always stutter. At first I was really freaked out when I realized it :)

Maybe 25p and shutter 50 will do better. I have G6 with 50p for panning.

As @vicharris once said,

Is it me or does this topic come up every 6 months?

To avoid this Ground Hog Day scenario, could we maybe put the explanation into the FAQ?

And the answer is almost always...

What are you viewing it on?

A 24p or 25p file being played on a 60hz monitor will always stutter and look strange. Watch it on your TV through HDMI and it'll look fine, or convert it to 30/60p in your editor and it'll look fine.

@jonmarcos @DrDave another thing to test: are you panning with an IS lens with image stabilization on? If so, try turning it off when panning and see if that mitigates some of the stutter.

did you check @svart advice @DrDave ? I used to always move my cam for my shots (I'm more calm now ;) ) and never had any problem with my gh2 footage be it on tv or projected. only way to see probs is on 60hz screen (same for a gh2 or an alexa : shame to use it like a fixed cam only...)

I only really noticed it in outdoor, foliage shots. But I use my G10s for panning shots. Waiting for the Panasonic 4K and then I can pan without panning.

I started using 1/40 a long time ago on my GH2 and suggested it to people only to get blasted for doing something so stupid because it wasn't the rule. Kinda funny. I even dropped it down to 1/30 and I never heard anyone say anything about the motion being off. Whatdda gonna do! :)

As far as I am concerned, I'm satisfied this old issue was explained and solved by @driftwood in June 2012.

His explanation, along with references to i-frame hacks and appropriate fps settings deserves a place in the FAQ so we can avoid this merry-go-round.

One of my goals was to see if I could improve frame-to-frame motion picture continuity by boosting B-frame image quality to match the quantization quality of the I-frames. In an FM2 1080p video, there are two B-frames between each pair of I-frames. The macroblocks in each B-frame are formed from reference blocks taken from both previous and following I-frames, averaged together. This inter-frame compression process is similar to techniques used to generate "tweened" frames between the key frames in animated videos.

In FM2, the theory is that high-quality B-frames can effectively form a bridge between consecutive I-frames, by blending object details from both I-frames together. (Of course, B-frames are not simply averaged pixels, the details in each frame are individually refined to closely approximate the details captured by the image sensor for that frame.) My hunch is that when viewing moving objects in a video, your eyes make every effort to integrate the consecutive frames into a continuous stream, and that random frame-to-frame discrepancies are perceived as undesirable distractions. Hence, the disturbing judder we see in some videos, that mysteriously vanishes when you step through the video frame-by-frame.

In an intra-frame motion picture, whether film or video, each frame is individually captured as a self-contained still image, with no inherent connectivity to any other frame. Frame-to-frame continuity is produced only by the coincidence of having captured consecutive frames at very short time intervals. [...]

Well thanks everyone for the feedback. I will try a 1/40 shutter and see if that makes a difference. The lens I am using is the 20mm 1.7 which doesn't have IS.

I see your point @astraban , but most of what I do will be viewed on a computer screen in the final form, so I am looking for a solution for that.

For me the issue isn't solved by not moving the camera :) That would be quite limiting.

To be honest I am having a lot of issues with the GH2 and the most frustrating thing is that compared to the Canon DSLRs it seems like there are not a lot of easy to understand resources on how to resolve some of these problems. I applaud all the work that has been done with the hack and patches. It really unlocks this camera's true potential. However, sometimes it seems to me that many GH2 users, specifically those active online, possess a level of technical expertise far beyond my experience. I am more a DP and filmmaker looking to make the camera work, as opposed to a more techy person who understands things like @goanna referenced above.

I do have Andrew's book on the GH2 and it was a great help in getting started and I constantly use it as a reference. But there are things not in the book, like the major problem with green, stuttering, etc, that are still issues I need to overcome.

Hi @svart, you mention that converting to 30/60p in the editor will help .. Can I put my pre cut piece (made in avid in a 23.98 project) through Sorenson Squeeze outputting a 30/60p file, or will I have to rebuild as a 30 /60P project in Avid? I'll check both but if you know already ..... thanks

Alan

The jitter one sees when panning is mostly due to the human eye ' persistence of vision' effect. The retina holds an image for a short time; turn off a light at night and the light seems to fade quickly, not instantly. Film projectors have a 3 bladed shutter to project each frame 3 times to increase the 'refresh' rate and make the flicker almost unoticable. Interlacing was designed for TV signals to create a similar higher refresh rate to reduce flicker. 50/60i looks smoother on panning than 25/30p for this reason. The best way to smooth motion at 25/30p frame rates is to have more motion blur in the pan. Reducing shutter speed to 1/25 for 25p or 1/30 for 30p is like using a 360 deg shutter on film. Camera motion is now more blurred and this helps the eye to see smooth motion, as there is less detail on the retina when viewing the image, helping to create the impression of smoother motion. The best solution for this issue would be a video standard with a high frame rate as standard, but existing technologies are all based around old film and TV frame rates.