Motion Cadencemo

[AaronChicago]

I hate numbers too, but I have a feeling its how each frame is processed. Compression can totally ruin motion cadence. One good example is when you see 5D h264 footage vs RAW. Film is literally just 24 individual frames, one after another.

[andrgl]

​Thanks! The F35 certainly does look a lot better in the panning shots. The video doesn't give any details about the shutter speed though... 

​Must be magic!

Oh wait, no, the F35 has a global shutter and the A7S has a rolling shutter.

 

 

There is no magic folks. Some of you are verging on clueless audiophiles.

[Ed_David]

​Must be magic!

Oh wait, no, the F35 has a global shutter and the A7S has a rolling shutter.

 

 

There is no magic folks. Some of you are verging on clueless audiophiles.

​here's the thing about the sony f35 since I have two of them - you can record 12 bit 444 DPX files out of them into the odyssey 7q and it has a lot of professional features like XLR inputs and multiple hd sdi outputs

the digital bolex looks absolutely amazing - that footage was gorgeous - I think the only issue I saw was the video noise in the image - but that's pretty minor - all the footage I'm seeing looks incredible - I just wish the camera was built better - with removable ssd cards or cfast cards and a viewfinder that's more logical.

her skintone - her face was gorgeous - I would be curious about this camera - but also though you have to have a viewfinder and all that too

anyway the d21 is really lovely too - it's a 250 ASA camera though - the f35 is 640 ASA (that's what I rate it) - also I rate the red dragon at 320 ASA - the OLPH sensor - I rate camera's ASA based on my own artistic likes and wants in highlights and shadows. I don't listen to the "camera makers" - but

motion to me is also really important, so is natural sharpness, resolution, skin tones, highlight handling, and the userbility of the camera and the weight

a lot of factors - paired with lenses and filtration and you have tons of variables.  Also I like how it gets people to use vintage glass on their cameras.

also the control over the image you can output - so many amazing things to obsess over.

also motion is magic - digital cameras may have a global or mechanical or rolling shutter - but it's also the compression and resolution of the sensor and how it interpolates this data that creates the motion feeling -  one camera's 180 degree shutter will feel different than another on many complex algorithms.

also the look of film - we are seeing it thru a telecine - we aren't watching 35mm film prints anymore - we know and love about film is how it got processed in its pipeline to digital or vhs or dvd or blu ray. degredation of the image this way.  so film is complex too.

this is all digital, nothing is organic - this isn't as simple as a bunch of photos taken together 24 frames a second - it's how the codec and interpoloation of all that data comes together and streams together to make motion and also how we view this motion on our monitors or iphones or god knows what.  

Before I shoot a movie I do tests then project and now projection doesn't even matter - it's how it looks on a tiny iphone.

[Andrew Reid]

+1 for the Digital Bolex motion cadence.

Even slowed down to 18fps like an old film camera, you can tell it is different to the CMOS sensors.

And I have absolut​ely no idea why

[Mattias Burling]

After buying the Blackmagic Production a Global Shutter is my #1 priority. I can of course not always get it but I will trade it for Resolution and even DR at any given moment. 

After evaluation of what I missed in the Production Camera and what I wanted to add to the Pocket Camera it was clear as a summer morning. The D16 already had it all.

The Organic texture, the motion and the color combined is the most filmic looking stuff I ever shot.

Im actually going to start experimenting with how to get it to not look like film, in case I would need it.

​And spec wise it holds up very well. 5 hours internal battery, analog audio gain, 2h internal storage, above HD res, Raw, we all know the rest. Short story is that it's a serious piece of kit. 

Of course there is trade offs but so has every camera. Its just about figuring if one can deal with them. 

In the next firmware that's being tested right now is also background off load and last clip deletion. 

[AaronChicago]

​Must be magic!

Oh wait, no, the F35 has a global shutter and the A7S has a rolling shutter.

 

 

There is no magic folks. Some of you are verging on clueless audiophiles.

​So what are you saying is the key to great motion cadence? Global shutter? I don't think so. Alexa and Blackmagic Cinema Camera have a beautiful motion cadence and they're both CMOS.

[cantsin]

Just a word of caution: "motion cadence"  is neither a scientific, nor a technical term, but a term that only exists on videographer forums...

[Vesku]

Use very old soft lens and 1/25 shutter speed and avoid any fast subject or camera movement. Then you get pleasing motion. If you see any disturbing detail you can blur in post more.

[Liam]

Use very old soft lens and 1/25 shutter speed and avoid any fast subject or camera movement. Then you get pleasing motion. If you see any disturbing detail you can blur in post more.

Interesting. I definitely have done this and like the look, but is that what people here are talking about for the most part? Seems like there's the idea here of 24 frames per second, each frame being held for the exact same amount of time. Like in some cameras you might not get "frame, frame, frame.." you'd get "frame, fraame, frame, frame, fraame.." which shouldn't have anything to do with rolling shutter. Though obviously that affects motion. And there's kind of a charm to a perfectly choppy low frame rate. Idk, are we talking about all these things added up? Feel like maybe this is too general

[Vesku]

Just a word of caution: "motion cadence"  is neither a scientific, nor a technical term, but a term that only exists on videographer forums...

​Sounds like a religious term to me

Some smartphones like to record uneven frame rate and computers and Youtube usually drop frames during playback. It certainly makes motion look bad.

[dahlfors]

One film that I love, but that has always annoyed me with its jittery motion (only in some shots though) is Art of Flight. Some of the jitter can be seen here on the YouTube trailer, and it looks like that when the original is played back without smoothing on television/computer too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh29_SERH0Y

And that's a film that is shot with high end equipment: http://www.artofflightmovie.com/news/permalink.php?aid=43

I still have no idea why the motion looks so stuttering in some of the wide opening shots in that film (which is a shame, due to the beauty of the film).

I don't like the motion from my NEX-5 at all, but how good the motion looks seems to depend on the scenes, so I think it's a codec-related issue. I guess the same goes for a lot of lower end low bitrate cameras.

[Oliver Daniel]

Nice motion cadence is the key to suspending that disbelief. When modern TVs ruin it with these weird smooth modes, I personally feel like I'm watching a cheap home movie, when really it's a very well made feature film. Goes from one extreme to the other just from the flick of a "motion" switch. 

48fps for features is a terrible idea. I tried The Hobbit in 48fps and turned it off within a minute. I didn't believe a load of hairy big footed little men were trying to steal a magical stone from a maniac dragon, I thought a bunch of actors were having a theatre dress rehearsal in someone's fancy back garden in the countryside. 

For this effect alone, this motion cadence is far more important than a lot of us think. The further we are suspended the better. So cameras with more pleasing motion cadence should be a very important factor when considering shooting a film. Much more so than resolution. 

[Ed_David]

I think an examination of 23.98 vs recording 24 FPS would be interesting

also on my f35 I am going PSF to record the images.

also to look at how sharpness or softness and the inherient grain and softness in the D16 takes the edge off

also how it handles highlights.

I think the D16 looks incredibly filmic in many ways - but I need to start seeing side by side with other cameras to make an scientific understanding to it.

it reminds me a lot of the ikonoscope camera which may have a similar sensor.

here's a film my friend Hunter shot on Super 16 fujifilm film stock - it looks very similar to what we are seeing with the D16 stuff - 

 

 

[midloch]

You said one very important thing that expensive films on modern TV look so cheap!

YES, I have noticed this many times but only on LCD (LED) TVs that now rule our homes. Fortunately 3 years ago I bought PANASONIC NEO PLASMA TV 165cm. The picture and as you say the "motion cadence" is much much much better than any LCD (LED) TV. These last plasma Panasonic TVs (the production was ended) are the best I have seen so far and the picture quality is the same as in true cinema.

[hmcindie]

I agree with midloch, I have one the last Pioneer Kuro plasmas before Panasonic bought them and it's a treat. Some people can't stand the slight flickering of plasmas but I love the Kuro and have no need to ever replace it, until it breaks down. I'd go as far as claiming it has better image quality than the local theatres here.

About the Art of Flight and stutting, most of that is because they shoot with high frame rates and then try to drop it down to 24. If you just do it the simple way, you will get stutters as some frames are a bit offset from others, depending on the speed adjustments. Especially if some speed ramps are arbitrary like going from 100 fps to 24.

Stutter is also used in an "artistic" way in some action scenes. Filmmakers and directors might like the staccato that makes their action scene a bit more "rough" and "edgy".

[Christina Ava]

i have stopped watching television almost 15 years now, i do not own one anymore.

i went to my friends house and they where watching tv in a huge samsung, i noticed what you said! the movement was spastic and felt out of place it was jumpy.

i questioned them if they saw it and they said no, for me it was unwatchable, garbage so i guess this is what you are describing. 

shooting at 24fps also helps i think to what you are describing

[Oliver Daniel]

i have stopped watching television almost 15 years now, i do not own one anymore.

i went to my friends house and they where watching tv in a huge samsung, i noticed what you said! the movement was spastic and felt out of place it was jumpy.

i questioned them if they saw it and they said no, for me it was unwatchable, garbage so i guess this is what you are describing. 

shooting at 24fps also helps i think to what you are describing

 

Seriously the amount of friends I have who have been watching Breaking Bad, Game Of Thrones etc in these weird TV modes, and not noticing anything is strange to me. When I "fix" the issue, they think I'm some sort of holy grail TV wizard. Why do you think the TV manufacturers put these settings on default? Why make your product look worse? It's madness! 

Lots of metion of the D16 here. Such an amazing achievement. 

 

 

[cantsin]

OK guys, please allow me to be polemical (no personal offense to anyone here intended):

Nowadays, "motion cadence" is snake oil and hogwash. Much of this discussion here proves it since we're happily lumping together a whole number of different things:

• recording frame rate
• playback frame rate (including interpolated/software-generated higher frame rates in flatscreen TVs)
• shutter speed/angle
• rolling shutter vs. global shutter
• motion encoding in the codec (such as: interframe vs. intraframe).

You could argue that all these factors combined amount to "motion cadence" - but why not more simply and correctly: "motion look" of footage. In video forum discussions, however, "motion cadence" is mostly referred to as some elusive quality of how a camera renders motion. Typical discussions concern a camera A versus a camera B, both recording video at 24 fps with 1/48 global shutter, yet people think that footage recorded with camera A has a "more beautiful motion cadence" than camera B - whatever that is.

I found the earliest mention of "motion cadence"  in a 2005 discussion thread on DVXuser.com. I could find zero (in other words: zero) mentions of "motion cadence" in any technical papers on Google Scholar or research databases, zero occurrences in books (when searching Google Books and Amazon) or periodicals.

The original thread on DVXuser, and a Wikipedia article on Sony camcorders, mention "motion cadence" in the context of true vs. fake 24p video recording. Back in the dark ages of ten years ago, most camcorders only recorded interlaced video. Some offered pseudo-24p that in reality was 48i footage deinterlaced in the camera. There's truth to the argument that real 24p and 24p deinterlaced from 48i have different "motion cadences"  (even if the word remains fuzzy) because it literally concerns different cadences/intervals of recorded frames as opposed to the interval of frames encoded in the digital footage. 

To my knowledge, we no longer live in these dark ages, and all cameras that record 24p today record true 24p - or at least, the cameras we're discussing here on this forum. Issues with the motion look can stem from all the factors mentioned in the bullet list above, but they have nothing to do with recorded motion cadence/intervals.

[Oliver Daniel]

OK guys, please allow me to polemic (no personal offense to anyone here intended):

Nowadays, "motion cadence" is snake oil and hogwash. Much of this discussion here proves it since we're happily lumping together a whole number of different things:

• recording frame rate
• playback frame rate (including interpolated/software-generated higher frame rates in flatscreen TVs)
• shutter speed/angle
• rolling shutter vs. global shutter
• motion encoding in the codec (such as: interframe vs. intraframe).

You could argue that all these factors combined amount to "motion cadence" - but why not more simply and correctly: "motion look" of footage. In video forum discussions, however, "motion cadence" is mostly referred to as some elusive quality of how a camera renders motion. Typical discussions concern a camera A versus a camera B, both recording video at 24 fps with 1/48 global shutter, yet people think that footage recorded with camera A has a "more beautiful motion cadence" than camera B - whatever that is.

I found the earliest mention of "motion cadence"  in a 2005 discussion thread on DVXuser.com. I could find zero (in other words: zero) mentions of "motion cadence" in any technical papers on Google Scholar or research databases, zero occurrences in books (when search Google Books and Amazon) or periodicals.

The original thread on DVXuser, and a Wikipedia article on Sony camcorders, mention "motion cadence" in the context of true vs. fake 24p video recording. Back in the dark ages of ten years ago, most camcorders only recorded interlaced video, some offered pseudo-24p that was in reality 48i footage deinterlaced in the camera. The argument that true 24p and 24p deinterlaced from 48i have different "motion cadences"  (even if the word remains fuzzy) holds some water, because it's literally about a different cadence/interval of recorded frames vs. its representation in the footage. 

To my knowledge, we no longer live in these dark ages, and all cameras that record 24p today record true 24p. Issues with the motion look can stem from all the factors mentioned in the bullet list above, but they have nothing to do with recorded motion cadence/intervals.

​

I picked up the word from internet forums and professionals on set. I don't know what the actual term is, but a lot of us understand it as "motion cadence". Maybe in 2005 some one made it up and it's stuck for some of us. 

I'm 29 now and I picked up my first camera when I was 17. I bought a cheap JVC handy cam for £400 and started experimenting with it. The "motion cadence " thing was something I noticed straight away, I wanted a filmic feel in the image out of the camera and changed the settings to make it very motion blurry. I then recorded the final film onto a new tape by actually filming it straight off a TFT monitor, because the motion on the TFT monitor was better than straight from the camera. Sounds ridiculous, but loads of my fellow students thought I shot on film (again ridiculous), but shows you how changing the conditions attributed to this look of filmic "motion cadence". 

So I think your bullet points are right, although i definitely think the motion encoding is the "magic" some of us look for in the overall feel. 

[Vesku]

Is it a bad or cheap thing if you see details in motion or panning without stuttering or blurring. It was impossible with 24P film but now with 60P and powerful cameras it is possible. I think that 24P film look is now just one art style of film making like pointillism or impressionism in painting world. Why so many are afraid of added realism in moving pictures? Is the 24P fairy tale look all there is in film world?