Help!

So I received my LS300 last week and have been doing some test shooting with it. I'm having an issue with playback on my computer, the video seems to skip frames which is very noticeable during pans. I've tried different frame rates, resolutions and codecs. I've tried QuickTime, WMP, and VLC. I've compressed web videos in Sony Vegas....and still get stutter steps during playback. I tried three different computers at home(2 PC and a MacBook Pro). I even took the card to an editor friend who edits on FCX and saw the same issue.

Could the internal clock/sync be off in the camera?

Scott Berrington

Can you maybe shoot a few seconds of testfootage showing the problem and make the clip straight from the card available for download?

Interestingly I was just working with footage from an HD camera that had a random recording error so your worry isn't unwarranted. The footage had to be rescued with a free program called MPEGStreamclip as every other program would get stuck on the frame breaks and not even recognize the footage. Even then I could only rescue the footage around the frame breaks as the breaks would halt the conversion from mp4 to ProRes.

First of all, don't play 4K directly off the card if that's what you've been doing. Card readers may not all have the ability to play the footage fast enough for smooth playback. Second, you should be sure that the video cards in the computers you are using have the ability to decode h264 4K fast enough. This is one of the reasons that programs like Final Cut Pro X have a proxy option.

To see if the footage is OK, load the footage in any suitable player and go frame by frame with the keyboard for several seconds worth of footage. If the recording is OK every frame will be there. If the frames skip or there is a frame of digital distortion then, yes, the camera is broken.

I tried 4K, HD(50mbs, 35Mbs) and AVCHD(28Mbs). I tried to play off the card(Sandisk U3) on 2 PC's, a brand new MacBook Pro, and a new Mac Pro. We saved the media to the Mac Pro SSD and still had the issue. Even compressing the shots to small web videos wouldn't play smoothly.

I went through a few of the shots frame by frame, all the frames were there with no picture breakup.

I've tried to upload a sample here, but the website won't allow me to do that.

Here is a Vimeo link.

Test on Vimeo

You can upload the raw file to a google drive, hotmail one drive or you can use some free cloud services. It's better if we can have a look at a raw file instead of one that has been passed through a NLE or a service like vimeo.

Or is the original file on vimeo that can be accessed through the download button straight from the card?
edit: just see it's not as it has a 12mbs bitrate.

I just downloaded the lower bitrate file to my pc and had a look at that, it appears to play smooth when you are panning? Not sure if others see this as well?

Let's try this.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzPxW_nJMltGLTRMSGVmcG1lYlE

The 50mbs file was smooth while panning, the 35mbs file not, if you want I can do the same today with my ls300 so we can see if it is a "bug" or not.

edit: just looked at the files again and now the 35mbs file was smooth also. Not sure what's going on here.

I've put your two files into FCPX.
Playing back in the browser had slight stuttering which went away when FCPX transcoded them into ProRes.

Using a 25p timeline I set the clips to 'Automatic Speed' to retime the 29.97 down to 25fps.
Again both clips played back fine.

I tried 4K, HD(50mbs, 35Mbs) and AVCHD(28Mbs). I tried to play off the card(Sandisk U3) on 2 PC's, a brand new MacBook Pro, and a new Mac Pro. We saved the media to the Mac Pro SSD and still had the issue. Even compressing the shots to small web videos wouldn't play smoothly.

I went through a few of the shots frame by frame, all the frames were there with no picture breakup.

I've tried to upload a sample here, but the website won't allow me to do that.

Here is a Vimeo link.

Test on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/160029908)

Scott, Thank you very much for this thread. I absolutely see it in your video. I have the same exact problem and I'm at my wits end. You can see in my signature I have a lot of great gear. I bought my iMac 5K retina computer (fully loaded) thinking I would have no problem editing HD and 4K video. I was wrong, I cannot pan, tilt, or zoom without this horrible judder. After searching the internet and consulting my friends who do not have this problem I have come to the conclusion that it is graphics card related. Our cards not everyone else's.

Michael,

I don't think it's a graphics card issue, but I could be wrong. I've tried all the frame rates and codecs on the camera with four different computers. Even editing and compressing shots to YouTube videos will playback with stutter. Tomorrow I'll try some test footage on another system with Adobe Premier.

Fingers crossed.

I just looked at your videos again (I use vlc player) and both play fine, I don't get any stutter. I took your native files into edius and rendered a h.264 mp4 file and placed this on my vimeo account, can you have a look to see if it still stutters?

password: test
vimeo.com/160203257
vimeo.com/160203256

Hi Noa, just took a look at your Vimeo links and I'm still seeing the stutter at my end...strange. JVC has posted a new firmware(v0204-137) update just yesterday. I'll update the camera and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for your help.

Scott

Yeah it's weird because when I look at the vimeo videos I uploaded they don't stutter. Do you have a link to that firmwareupdate because acc to jvc it was going to be released in April?

Are we taking into account the natural judder that occurs with 24p while panning and tilting at certain rates? I played the Vimeo file and the pan in one direction is fine but the opposite direction has a slight judder. Film camera operators learn to avoid certain pan speeds when filming landscape shots without a subject to follow in the frame. I am not insisting that this is the problem but a consideration. Also there might be something screwy with the codec that JVC programmed that confounds some graphic cards.

I went out today to do more test shooting, and later I brought the media to another editor to see if the playback issue was present. I recorded various shots at 30p and 24p in HD, using 50Mbs and 35Mbs. My editor friend imported the media in Adobe Premiere on a high powered system. Playback on the timeline was choppy and rendered videos did not play back smoothly. "I don't know what to tell you" was his comment.

So now I don't have confidence to use the camera on a paying gig next week...I guess I'll have to use the 700...not happy.

It's weird, even 4k on a 4k timeline plays smooth in Edius, what I also don't understand how it can play smooth on my system yet be choppy on multiple systems you have tried it on.

On my 2013 MacPro, taking the HD files from the Google Drive and loaded onto a RAID5 drive, the files play slightly rough in QuickTime but perfectly in FCPX. The one question I have is what was the shutter rate on the footage? More than 1/60?

The shutter was 1/60sec. I know about low frame rate shuttering, I can deal with that, the issue I'm seeing is more like frames being dropped and the video "jumps" randomly. I only seem to notice this problem when the shots are panning. Static shots look fine.

I haven't played with 60p or 60i footage, maybe I look at that tomorrow.

Thought I had an issue with the 4GB spanning, just misunderstood the setting.