Drone motion blur
Also known as: aerial motion blur
The blur a moving aircraft leaves in each frame, which reads as cinematic when the shutter is right and as stuttering when it is not.
Updated
What it means
Blur is not a fault. A frame exposed for half its duration smears movement slightly, and that smear is what makes motion look continuous rather than sampled. Remove it and footage looks like a slideshow.
Aerial work exaggerates both outcomes. A pass over a forest at speed either flows or strobes, and the difference is one shutter setting rather than anything about the aircraft. Altitude hides it; low flying exposes it.
The reference is the 180-degree shutter rule: shutter at roughly double the Frame rate (fps), which at thirty frames lands near a sixtieth.
How it works in practice
Daylight forces a filter. Holding a slow shutter under a bright sky means cutting light, which is what a Variable ND filter does without touching sensitivity or aperture. Two stops is usually enough.
Speed and altitude change the requirement. High and slow forgives a fast shutter, while a low pass needs the blur, so pilots set filters for the move rather than for the day. A filter swapped between batteries is normal on a planned shoot.
Automatic shutter is the thing to switch off. A camera left to choose will pick a fast exposure in bright light, and the resulting clip strobes while looking correctly exposed. Nothing in the histogram warns about it.
What to watch out for
A strobing pass cannot be repaired. Frame interpolation can smooth it, and the result is a different kind of wrong, with soft edges where crisp ones were. Setting it on the ground is the only real answer.
Too much blur is the opposite failure. A very slow shutter over fast ground turns detail into mush, and no amount of Sharpening brings a tree back.
Mixed shutter across a session is the quiet version of the problem. Two clips of the same ridge, one smooth and one stuttering, read as a mistake when they sit beside each other.
How RawClip handles it
Strobing clips are not rejected outright, but smoother material covering the same moment generally scores higher during selection. Where a stuttering pass is the only coverage it is used short, because the effect becomes obvious the longer a shot stays on screen.