Has the Olympus OM-D E-M5 conquered the notorious rolling shutter video jello effect?

[Ned]

29.97 fps can be referred to as 30fps "drop frame timecode", meaning that a frame is dropped every few seconds.

There is technically a difference between 30fps and 30fps Drop Frame, but when saying "30 fps" MOST people are actually talking about drop frame timecode. Saying 29.97fps naturally assumes that you're talking in non-drop frame timecode.

[Ian]

I have been doing some more homework on GH2 video and also been talking to Mr.Uematsu at Panasonic. The sensor outputs video footage progressively at all times, including 1080 at 50 and 60 fps. As we already know, 1080HD 24p AVCHD footage can be recorded and it used to be at 17mbps but is apparently increased to 24mbps after the firmware update.

Mr.Uematsu only says that 25p and 30p recordings are possible, technically, but files are encoded in 50i and 60i, respectively.

I wonder if this is something to do with the codec? AVCHD actually uses the same H.264 codec as the E-M5 but the packaging is different (AVCHD uses .MTS files and Olympus chose .MOV for its MPEG-4 AVC packaging). H.264 requires a lot of horse power for compression. Panasonic's Venus Engine was upgraded to 3 and then 4 cores to number crunch video compression adequately. Olympus TruePic VI was also upgraded to multi-core hardware last year.

I need to do some more research - but I'm beginning to understand video a little better

Ian

[Ned]

Originally Posted by Ian

Mr.Uematsu only says that 25p and 30p recordings are possible, technically, but files are encoded in 50i and 60i, respectively.

So with the exception of PAL compatibility (25p/50i), does that mean that the Olympus cameras have the same capabilities as the Panasonic cameras for NTSC at 30p/60i?

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Ned

So with the exception of PAL compatibility (25p/50i), does that mean that the Olympus cameras have the same capabilities as the Panasonic cameras for NTSC at 30p/60i?

On paper very similar but I don't know what the data rate is for the E-M5 (17/24Mbps for the GH2).

Ian

[Robert Watcher]

Originally Posted by Ian

On paper very similar but I don't know what the data rate is for the E-M5 (17/24Mbps for the GH2).

Ian

Apparently with the E-M5 shooting at 1,920 x 1,080 HD, 2 bit rates are available - 17mbps and 20mbps

As for the videos being saved using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec - - - being "saved in the MOV container and in the same location as still images, meaning that if you like to copy data manually, you won't need to dig through folders trying to remember where the videos are saved. "

[M4/3]

Looks like the E-P3 and E-M5 have similar recording choices, but the E-M5 movies are saved using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec instead of AVCHD for easier viewing and editing:

[Ian]

One thing that does frustrate me is that there doesn't appear to be any useful metadata in these files to identify the camera used, for a start, nor for aperture or shutter speed, ISO setting, etc. My old Mini DV tape camcorder had real time info embedded after all. If anyone can point me towards something like this - very much like to be shown!

Ian

[Ian]

Originally Posted by M4/3

Looks like the E-P3 and E-M5 have similar recording choices, but the E-M5 movies are saved using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec instead of AVCHD for easier viewing and editing:

That suggests 720HD @60p is possible - might be the best choice?

Ian