Video Skipping Ocasionally in Shutter Priority Mode

[Wayne Mann]

Hi Guys,

We were shooting some aerial video of a sunset over a lake yesterday and I was shooting in Shutter priority mode. The video will ocasionally jump or skip, auto too. I have a lot of time on this 5D Mark ll and I have never had it do anything like this. It has the new software and I am shooting in 24p. It has never done this in manual mode, nor did it do it with the old software when recording in auto exposure mode at 30p. I have two ScanDisk Extreme lll 8 gig 30 MB/s cards.

Any ideas?


Wayne Mann

[Evan Donn]

What lens were you using? I just got jumping in some shots from the back of a car; the image stabilization was trying to correct the movement of the background and the jump was when it hit it's limits and reset. That's with the 24-105mm f/4 L which doesn't have a second IS mode for panning.

[Bill Binder]

I had this EXACT same thing happen right after upgrading to the new firmware. I detailed my account somewhere in this forum, but now I can't find it.

Basically, I thought Shutter Priority might be a great mode for run-n-gun, just lock to 1/50th and roll. However, I had multiple instances of frozen frames during movement. This was ABSOLUTELY not due to IS (didn't have an IS lens on at the time), and wasn't related to 24p's slower framerate. I had repeated frames that could easily be seen as identical when reviewing frame-by-frame. I'm still not sure what caused it, but I went back to manual and haven't seen it again (although I haven't shot much on the new firmware yet, tonight is my first major run on the new firmware). I could actually repeat it after some effort, usually during quick pans.

Anyway, you aren't crazy, I've seen it with my own eyes, and I'm nearly certain I was also in shutter priority when it happened. Although if you post about this, you're libel to get a lot lot of people telling you you're doing something wrong. I don't think so, there's no instance EVER where frames should repeat with the 5D2.

[Wayne Mann]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replys. I was using the 16-35 L 2 at 24 mm.


Wayne Mann

[Arte Richard]

Man, am I glad to have found you guys. Got mine two weeks ago and it repeats frames (sometimes as many as 4) in 24p in Shutter & Aperture Priority modes and in Manual. Seen it panning. Seen it locked down on a tripod. All I've been doing for two weeks is scouring the internet for help and testing different set-ups in the hope I could make it stop. I shoot a lot of band gigs and it's ruining 1 of every 5-10 shots. Lowest ISO I've seen it happen in is 800, so we're not talking candlelight here. Haven't seen the problem in bright light situations. Never happens in 30p. Gimme 5 minutes in 24p and it'll happen.

I finally sucked it up and emailed Canon tech support. They want me to send it in for diagnosis, but I think I'll wait to see if more folks like us start surfacing. 24-105 IS f/4 L lens. Sandisk 60mb/s cards. Bummer.

[Wayne Mann]

Hi Arte,

Mine has never done this in manual mode. I have now shot a bunch of aerial video with the camera in 24p mode. I just don't do shutter priority anymore.


Wayne Mann

[James Miller]

Hi, didn't this crop up in late 2008? If I remember it's when the lens changes aperture, you can hear the lens auto adjust and that when the jump occurs. In the days before full manual, the lens twist used to take care of this or is this something new.

[Bill Binder]

Originally Posted by James Miller

Hi, didn't this crop up in late 2008? If I remember it's when the lens changes aperture, you can hear the lens auto adjust and that when the jump occurs. In the days before full manual, the lens twist used to take care of this or is this something new.

I personally think it's more than that, but I'm a little surprised by the lack of anyone else chiming in, so maybe I'm clueless.

Most often this is blamed on auto aperture (or aperture changing due to non-constant aperture lenses) or a slow memory card. My theory is it can't be the card unless you're also getting the buffer signal on the screen. In my cases, I was never getting any buffer signal (not even one bar) when it happened, so I kind of personally doubt it's the speed of the card like many imply, but I do use slow cards so who knows. I personally think it has more to do with taxing the processing to the point that it must repeat frames to catch up with real time. By "processing," I mean anything the brains of the camera might be dealing with while recording in real time, that might include calculating auto iso (or not), correcting vingetting (or not), applying noise reduction (or not), highlight tone priority (or not), etc. Also, things like feeding it something hard to encode to the codec, etc.

My theory is that if you get enough of that stuff going on, and combine it with something like a nasty pan from bright to dark or something (i.e. lots of movement and changes frame to frame for the codec to chew on), and with enough experimenting, anyone could replicate it every once in a while in 24p on a 5D2 in M mode.

But I could be wrong, or maybe I just have a bad unit, or ? Again, it didn't happen often for me, and it's never happened since running M with all the "extras" turned off. But am I curious if others could recreate it or not. There's more than one or two of us out here though, so it doesn't feel like a completely one-off thing.

[Chris Barcellos]

As I recall, when 5D first came out, this complaint came up early on. Indeed, people concluded it had to do with aperature changes. For instance, when people were zooming, the aperature would change, and this would occur. I think this sounds like the same thing.... with fixed shutter speen, camera tries adjusting aperature, and hangs while doing it. I shoot with Nikon non auto lenses, and I don't have this issue. And I sometimes shoot auto ISO, and still not a problem. So you might try setting aperature and shutter speed manually in manual settings, and then set to auto ISO.

[Julian Frost]

I know in my case it's NOT caused by aperture changes.

I just got back from Las Vegas where I took a shot of the Golden Nugget's shark tank. The camera was resting on the lifeguard's chair and was not moving. The camera was set to 1/50th second shutter speed, 24fps, MANUAL mode, on a 17-40 L lens (with no IS). As I watched the camera's LCD, I clearly saw it skip. When I played the clip back, the skip was recorded to the card (a freshly formatted 16GB Transcend UDMA 300). This has happened to me many times, in both 30fps and 24fps modes. It also occurred in 30fps mode with the earlier firmware. It doesn't seem to matter what ISO the camera has been set to. I've seen it happen at ISO 100, all the way up to ISO 6400.

[Chris Barcellos]

Other things to check Speed of card. When was last time card was formatted. Try a reformat and see if anything changes. If it continues, talk to Canon support by email, and see what they say.

[Bill Binder]

Like I said, this always gets blamed on aperture change, auto iso, slow card, etc., but I maintain this is more than that. Not saying a lot of people on the web are having the more common issues, but there's many people like us out there that are very competent and know there's something more to this.

In most of my cases I was in shutter priority (just after the firmware got released), BUT... I always had the exposure lock set. I thought that might be a good (new b/c of firmware) approach for run-n-gun: set 1/50 in Shutter Priority and then touch the exposure lock button to update (but lock) the exposure at will. It works great by the way, except that I had a few instances of stutter (true repeated frames in the file). I even think it happened in M mode once, but I forget now. However, once I turned off all the crap, I haven't had it happen in M since. That said, I still think that this might be reproducible by all 5D2s under the right conditions.

Also, like I said before, I never saw the buffer, not even one bar. And most of the reports of this I have seen say the same (no buffer). Combine that with the guy above with UDMA, and I really don't think this is a card speed thing. I think it is a PROCESSING THING. The more of it you are doing real-time, the more likely you are to see this, even in M.

But again, maybe I'm offbase on this, but the more of these experiences I see documented, the more I think there's something to this.

[Julian Frost]

I sent an email to Canon support, which basically outlined what I said in my post above: That the problem has been there since day one (first thru latest iteration of the firmware), doesn't matter what lens, ISO, shutter speed, aperture, frame rate, or mode the camera is in, neither does it matter what CF card is in the camera. The buffering bars have never appeared, yet it still repeats 3 frames, intermittently. The only constant, is the camera itself.

I told them to look on the DVI 5D mk II forums to see that it's not an isolated issue.

I'll let you know what they say, if anything.

[Arte Richard]

Dead on, Julian. Did some more tests tonight and finally saw it happen in 30p mode. I've tried every possible set up I can think of from full auto to full manual (including preset WB) and everything in between. I've seen posts from guys who sent their camera in and got it back with a response from Canon that there is nothing wrong with their camera. If that happens to me, we are all screwed because I seem to have bought the king of frame-skipping shot ruiners. Fact of the matter is this: regardless of which mode the camera is in, it should NEVER EVER happen no matter what.

Tim, Mike and Erik at Canon tech support told me they have never heard of this before. Actually, their initial response to my question of whether or not they had ever heard of it was:

"We are not aware of this to be a model wide issue with the EOS 5D Mark II."

Note the choice of the words "model wide". Sounded like an answer a PR guy might give, so I forced the issue and asked for a yes or no answer and they replied with a "no". If your tech support person tells you he's never heard of it, tell em Tim, Erik and Mike have.

Thanks again for all the help, guys. I was feeling pretty broke and lonely for awhile there. Now, I'm just broke. Which reminds me, when I asked tech support if I get reimbursed for shipping if the problem ends up being with the camera, I got another "no".

[Julian Frost]

Although they don't deny it happens, they also don't acknowledge that anyone else is having the same issue, or that it's a wide-spread problem. Here's their response, in its entirety:


Thank you for writing to us. We value you as a Canon customer and
appreciate the opportunity to assist you. I am sorry to hear about the
difficulty you are experiencing with the video on your EOS 5D Mark II.

If you have tried numerous memory cards (and speeds), different shutter
speeds, subjects, and still experiencing the same issue, I would suggest
to send the camera in for service.

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