Friday, March 26, 2010

Sony HX5V - video wobble/rolling shutter

As some of you might know, the new Sony HX5V use a CMOS sensor to capture the still and the videos. If you google a little about CMOS vs CCD in terms of video properties you will soon come upon a thing that is called a rolling shutter or wobble effect. It happens because on a CMOS sensor the frame is normally read out from top to bottom and in video that means that the scene changes in a video frame. If you have a "normal" scene you really will not see much at all. Take all the example videos I have posted here, I bet there's nothing to be seen of the effect there. Today I made an experiment by taking a video of the end of a vertical wall and then very quickly panning from left to right and back. The unmodified videos are here for your enjoyment...

(boring) Panning video in MP4 format
(boring) Panning video in AVCHD format


Now, if you do look at them, you will realize how ridiculous the test is. But there are probably some "real" cases where you could see it (and I will try to get one of these), like a truck driving by on a highway when the camera is still or so.

I personally have not much experience on this effect, but I really think it is not showing much in a normal case, and I would not want to take a video that pans as fast as I did in the example anyway.... YMMW.... :)

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