Video jerk after 10% slowdown

I have an aerial clip recorded @23.98 rec 709. I panned too quickly and I see some slight blurring. I tried to slow the clip down 10% and playback is jerky. I tried the video quality options and it smoothed from very jerky a blended jerky. I was surprised that I would see this at such a small reduction in speed.

I tried sharing as a file and still got the blurry motion.This clip was taken this summer and I have since learned how to slow the panning speed. But I would like to use this clip in a project.

Any suggestions how to correct this?

Rich
Rich

You think this is a mistreatment through FCP? Sounds to me like the notorious rock and a hard place of 24p: too few motion phases with too much motion blur. And you can't even use optical flow to smooth it out because motion blur looks like jelly and all you're going to get is more jelly.

Yeah check out the credits of Rambo Last Blood where they used Optical Flow on scenes from the old movies and even a few from the newest one. It's BAD. Especially the one where he's riding away on the horse and its legs basically just melt from one position to the next. Optical flow can't fix everything.

What you may want to try is the stabilization feature. If that doesn't work then redo the shoot.

And that motion blur is baked into the original, you can only get so much clarity. You can't get more clarity than is there originally, and if the blur was recorded, not much chance you'll get rid of it, really. Try things like making it black and white, vignettes, etc, to stylize it to make it fit better. Fake it.

What confuses me (an amateur) is that when you hear mention of 23.98 or 24 is that "it is the most cinematic and smooth". So i do not understand how smooth gets baked into blur and jerky. The video is not a very fast pan it is really slow.

In some cases I may be required to do a 360 or 180 pan or rotation. There is no auto setting on the drone to set the speed of rotation. It is all manual and I do work on trying to eliminate blur.

So how do i get an aerial pan get less blurry? Do I shoot at a higher frame rate and reduce it in post? Would shooting at a higher frame rate and slow it down work?

Thanks for all your help.
Rich

24fps is theoretically the most "film like" because film is 24fps. Unfortunately, it takes more than frame rate to make digital video look like film. 24fps is not "smooth" for motion, it is the jerkiest and prone to motion blur. If you're doing drone shots, pan more slowly to start with. Second, film at 60fps progressive if possible. I do drone work weekly for the TV station I'm with, and I'd never shoot a moving drone shot at 24fps.

Fewer frames per second the more jerky it is for motion in the shots, not less.

Higher frame rate, slower moments. I'd rather have to speed up a shot in post, than slow it down.

ETdroneHome wrote:

What confuses me (an amateur) is that when you hear mention of 23.98 or 24 is that "it is the most cinematic and smooth". So i do not understand how smooth gets baked into blur and jerky.


It all depends. 24p is and will always be the only framerate for cinema, for two reasons:

1. Due to viewing habits of decades of cinemagoers and TV viewers, higher frame rates are subconsciously associated with live video. they signal present tense. 24p say that there is a narration, past tense.

2. Motion blur is actually crucial to add momentum and gravity to motion. Too little motion blur through HFR make even the most dramatic action look lame and slightly sped up at the same time (see Ang Lees last effort to establish HFR with Gemini Man. People who saw it in it's original 120 fps were bored to death. John Hess from Filmmaker IQ said: "it takes a lot of money to look that cheap".)

As I said, it depends. Aerial shots with drones are neither action, nor drama or narration. They can and perhaps should look live.