Advice needed about video quality

[clive long]

Hey guys I've had a quick look around and can't find what I'm after. I don't want to film in 4k as none of my devices support it and I just can't tell if its a good vid.
I want just regular 1080 but I'm not sure what frame rate I need just for regular filming. I've heard 1080 x120 is for slow mo.so the one under it 1080x60 is that the one I need to select?
Cheers guys.

(I need to read up on this sort of stuff really)

 

[CAPTAINDRONE]

Hey guys I've had a quick look around and can't find what I'm after. I don't want to film in 4k as none of my devices support it and I just can't tell if its a good vid.
I want just regular 1080 but I'm not sure what frame rate I need just for regular filming. I've heard 1080 x120 is for slow mo.so the one under it 1080x60 is that the one I need to select?
Cheers guys.

(I need to read up on this sort of stuff really)

1080P 30FPS = Slow sweeping video which makes for best videos (day or night in all lighting conditions).
1080P 60FPS = Fast movement. Either flying low over objects or filming fast objects move by (day, sunny or cloudy, but not night). If you are going at same speed as object, use 1080P 30FPS.
1080P 120FPS = Fast movement that you wish to slow down in post production. Only use if you are standing still and filming a fast moving object. You can slow it down in post production (day sunny).

 

[yuneec53]

I think you are UK based in which case best to accept 1080x50. Nothing wrong with 120 fps it should make for a smoother picture (the Movie the Hobbit was shot at higher FPS maybe 100 which helped all the CGI parts) . Obviously if it is put on the internet and viewed there due to the processing that they do the higher frame rate would probably not be noticed. The 50 and 60 rates which you probably know historically were to fit in with the electricity cycles of 24 USA and 25 UK. Modern computer editing systems deal with this now.

 

[clive long]

Great, thanks for the help

 

[Subtle Shots]

You tube now lets you upload and play 60p
It looks very clear and realistic on my new 4K sony smart tv.
One thing I noticed when shooting 120fps with the CGO3 camera is that it zooms in 50%!
So instead of 115 degree wide angle view, it shoots a 57.5 degree shot....could be useful for closeup shooting.....but the image looks a bit degraded also...

 

[DefaultIT]

There are some largely psychological effects to how we perceive motion from different frame rates; movies have been 24fps since before any of us were watching them, and it's near the edge of what people perceive as fluid motion. Mostly for conditioning reasons, many of us associate that very slight stutter with high production value and it has a romanticizing effect–feels like a movie

50/60 fps will be more than twice the temporal resolution (frames per time) and appears utterly smooth and...well, video-y to a lot of us. We're suspecting younger viewers don't make that association quite as much - which may explain why they like the 120hz interpolation on newer TVs while many of us can't stand it.

The one other consideration to throw in is how much detail is in your subject matter. In my experience, these kinds of cameras will split their bitrate over however many FPS you have selected, meaning the faster frame rates get fewer bits/image, and wind up softer as a result.

So...what're you after? Aerial movies? 24/25fps. Put-you-there FPV? 50/60fps Graceful (but soft) slow motion? max it out!

 

[Subtle Shots]

There are some largely psychological effects to how we perceive motion from different frame rates; movies have been 24fps since before any of us were watching them, and it's near the edge of what people perceive as fluid motion. Mostly for conditioning reasons, many of us associate that very slight stutter with high production value and it has a romanticizing effect–feels like a movie

50/60 fps will be more the twice the temporal resolution (frames per time) and appears utterly smooth and...well, video-y to a lot of us. We're suspecting younger viewers don't make that association quite as much - which may explain why they like the 120hz interpolation on newer TVs while many of us can't stand it.

The one other consideration to throw in is how much detail is in your subject matter. In my experience, these kinds of cameras will split their bitrate over however many FPS you have selected, meaning the faster frame rates get fewer bits/image, and wind up softer as a result.

So...what're you after? Aerial movies? 24/25fps. Put-you-there FPV? 50/60fps Graceful (but soft) slow motion? max it out!

Hi defaultIT
I LIKE YOUR POST INFO.
Do you know the frame rate the human eye operates at?
I ask all the eye doctors I come across and none of them even know what I'm talking about!

 

[yuneec53]

Hi defaultIT
I LIKE YOUR POST INFO.
Do you know the frame rate the human eye operates at?
I ask all the eye doctors I come across and none of them even know what I'm talking about!

What you are after is persistence of vision. The very early cinematographs only worked at 16fps this being the speed where the human brain could not distinguish between some many still pictures and therefore interpreted it as motion. Very jerky perhps but motion anyhow, The advent of sound demanded a faster speed to maintain the integrity of the recorded material. Originally photographic and subsequently magnetic. The advent of the computer and modern digital camcorders made all these things old hat as modern equipment deals with all sorts of things.

 

[CAPTAINDRONE]

You tube now lets you upload and play 60p
It looks very clear and realistic on my new 4K sony smart tv.
One thing I noticed when shooting 120fps with the CGO3 camera is that it zooms in 50%!
So instead of 115 degree wide angle view, it shoots a 57.5 degree shot....could be useful for closeup shooting.....but the image looks a bit degraded also...

That is due to processing power. This is the low cost way of increasing frame rate. DJI Phantom 4 does same low cost thing.

 

[DefaultIT]

What you are after is persistence of vision. [...]

^ That. Getting above my pay grade pretty quick..but as I understand it, our eyes work in more of a continuous manner than any camera yet put to use: you've got a bunch of photosensors on your retina that fire off somewhat randomly, generating a stream of nerve impulses that is (somehow, miraculously) interpreted by your brain as a spatial image. There's some lingering effect – I presume to overlap enough "pixels" across your field of vision to form a coherent picture – that causes what we call "persistence of vision," wherein an image you see persists for a brief moment until enough new info takes its place.

Early on, people figured out you could show separate, single images faster than your eyes can fully differentiate them (look up thaumatrope and zoetrope) and this is pretty much what we depend on in order for a series of still images to be interpreted as fluid motion.

All that said, while your brain isn't really dealing in 'frames' per se, there is an upper limit to how quickly new visual info is registered, and it's being shown that something near 60fps is sufficiently fast enough to 'beat' your vision's ability to keep up (mentioned, with funky examples, here)....so that's about as close to an answer as I get

 

[Forrestt]

Remember whatever frame rate you are filming in to double your shutter speed. 25 frames = 1/50th shutter and so on. At least this is a good rule of thumb to follow but not always ideal for every situation.

 

[vidwiz]

One thing I noticed when shooting 120fps with the CGO3 camera is that it zooms in 50%!
So instead of 115 degree wide angle view, it shoots a 57.5 degree shot....could be useful for closeup shooting.....but the image looks a bit degraded also...

Noticed this too. Image is grossly pixelated, very low res, completely unusable, so much for slomo. Not sure what the processing power limitation is, data rate of 1080p@120fps=2160@30fps.

1080p@60fps DOES, however, greatly improve the motion of pans/turns in particular. I'm kinda stuck on 4k res though.

 

[gregreh]

Hi,

I took my H out for its first flight yesterday and shot in 4k 30fps.
When flying straight the video is perfectly smooth but as soon as you pan there is some jerkiness. You can see what I mean in the video below

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Is this purely down to framerate? or SD card speed? I'd have thought 30fps would have been enough.

Thanks for you help

 

[yuneec53]

Hi,

I took my H out for its first flight yesterday and shot in 4k 30fps.
When flying straight the video is perfectly smooth but as soon as you pan there is some jerkiness. You can see what I mean in the video below

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Is this purely down to framerate? or SD card speed? I'd have thought 30fps would have been enough.

Thanks for you help

Yes I see what you mean. Personally I would run at 50fps a long while back there used to be a correlation with our UK electricity cycles and video frame rates. I am not too sure if this matters any more but you could try 25 fps rather than 30fps. If the SD card is a class 10 which the one that came with the H is all should be well.

 

[DefaultIT]

Yes...looks to me like frame dropping due to conversion. It's doing it the whole time if you look closely, not just during pans. This can happen when your shooting frame rate is different from playback; common problems are between NTSC and PAL (60/50fps respectively), 24 and 23.98 (long story dating back to early color broadcasting), but it's not too common to get a native 24fps any more because of that. See if 50 or 25 helps, but mostly make sure your editor has the correct setting for what you shot. If you shoot 30, you should be able to edit and upload to youtube without this problem no matter where you are, but your system may be defaulting to something else.

 

[gregreh]

Yes...looks to me like frame dropping due to conversion. It's doing it the whole time if you look closely, not just during pans. This can happen when your shooting frame rate is different from playback; common problems are between NTSC and PAL (60/50fps respectively), 24 and 23.98 (long story dating back to early color broadcasting), but it's not too common to get a native 24fps any more because of that. See if 50 or 25 helps, but mostly make sure your editor has the correct setting for what you shot. If you shoot 30, you should be able to edit and upload to youtube without this problem no matter where you are, but your system may be defaulting to something else.

Its strange because the software I use creates the project based on the first clip added, so the project is the same 30fps. I notice the jerkiness even when just viewing the raw footage on my computer but I know its not a hardware playback issue as have no problem playing 4k back normally.

 

[eric bee]

i have tested today in lo light. cam was in auto-mode

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Paladin]

Hi,

I took my H out for its first flight yesterday and shot in 4k 30fps.
When flying straight the video is perfectly smooth but as soon as you pan there is some jerkiness. You can see what I mean in the video below

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Is this purely down to framerate? or SD card speed? I'd have thought 30fps would have been enough.

Thanks for you help

May be your SD card What kind are you using spec wise? If it is on the edge of being fast enough, write speed wise, that could cause slight delays at times with the buffer writing to the card and could cause that.

Just conjecture on my part mind you.

As for the 4K versus 1080. in my opinion always shoot in 4K. if you want 1080 then convert it. Capturing more information is always best and you will get much cleaner 1080 footage of a 4K conversion than native 1080.

Of course if you want fast FPS etc.. you have to use 1080 native. If I have a choice I shoot in 4K.

 

[gregreh]

So looking abit more into this Final Cut Pro X can import fps rates of 23.98, 24p amd 25p. The 4K video shot by the H when set to 24p when inspected reports the fps as 23.99, so I am not sure if this mismatch of frame rate causes the jerkiness. Id be interested if someone else can do some experiments with their editing software.

 

[gregreh]

"As for the 4K versus 1080. in my opinion always shoot in 4K. if you want 1080 then convert it. Capturing more information is always best and you will get much cleaner 1080 footage of a 4K conversion than native 1080.

Of course if you want fast FPS etc.. you have to use 1080 native. If I have a choice I shoot in 4K."

Thats the thing tho, if only we had a 4k 30/60fps it would be perfect.