Paris Trip Vlog One and a day at Versailles

Here is my first video/vlog on my trip to Paris. In this video I share a tour of the brilliant flat I stayed in when visiting Paris. I stayed in a wonderful neighborhood called Boulogne Billancourt, which is considered a “suburb” but it is not a suburb in the American idea of it. This neighborhood is ten minutes from the city center. It is more like Brooklyn and I like to call it the Park Slope of Paris.

 I have never ridden a motorcycle before and it was quite the experience

I also share my trip to Versailles. Which I traveled to from Paris on a motorcycle. I have never ridden a motorcycle before and it was quite the experience. Just note, even as a passenger you are not just passively sitting there, you have to work to stay on the motorcycle. We took the long route as it is more scenic. And it was both exciting and scary! And read below for further technical information and the problem of “judder”.

You will notice a lot of judder in the video, at first I was not sure why. This happens when the frame rates do not match. So if the video is captured at 23.97 FPS then when you export the video it should also be exported at 23.97 FPS. It also happens when you shoot at 23.97 or 29.97 and slow it down in post. This is because when you “slow down” a video you are really adding more frames, and if the frames are not there on the original footage then the software has to compensate and you end up with a choppy video.

Well I have my camera settings set to 23.97 and I did not change this. I am using the G7X and I like to shoot in 23.97 as it is more cinematic looking. However everything I shot in Paris was shot in 29.97. I did not know why—at first. Then I figured out why—it was because when shooting I did not have the camera “set to” or have the dial on “video.” I had changed this to take some still photos and had not switched it back to video. I then started shooting video, which the G7X allowed me to do, even though the dial was not set to video.

I had no idea you could shoot video when not in video mode. So I discovered that when you shoot video on any other mode besides video it automatically defaults to 29.97. So I then downloaded and edited the film and exported at 23.97 and there is noticeable judder/ choppiness to pans. So I then tried exporting it at 29.97 and the judder was actually much worse. I thought that if I matched how it was shot it would resolve this problem. It did not. The judder was noticeable when exported at 23.97, and even MORE noticeable at 29.97. even though the frame rates matched. I was confused.

I then looked closely at the original footage and realized that you can could even see some judder on the original footage—that is footage downloaded from the camera and viewed in Quick Time pre-edting. And this not just shakiness from me moving the camera but choppy pans, or pans that are not smooth.

So I now believe that the judder could be inherent because my camera was set to 23.97, but the footage was shot in 29.97. So the frame rates did not match when shooting. When I switched off video (not intentionally) and shot in 29.97 if I had gone in first and changed the camera settings to 29.97 so it matched what I was shooting at,  I believe I would not have had judder.  And I think it is this discrepancy with the frame rates when shooting that could be the cause of the judder.

Figuring this out took a lot of trial and error and problem solving on my part. There was no information on You Tube on this specific problem. I wanted to share this with you as the G7 is a very popular vlogging camera and I could see this easily happening to someone else.