Here's the footage.
http://vimeo.com/30866882

D3s on a tripod. Sun was directly overhead slightly camera left about 1pm in the afternoon.

Again - 720p was fine but 640 x 424 was unacceptable. The above video was shot at 640 and transcoded to an mp4 then uploaded to Vimeo. What you should note is that the fidelity of the original versus the copy on Vimeo are practically identical to my eye.

Buggy,

I had the exact same thing happen to me.

Mounted it on a tripod, shooting outdoors...I was grabbing footage of some new outdoor power tools so lots of detail in the background (leaves, branches etc...)

Got the exact same pixelation you were seeing but at the 640 size. 720p mode wasn't too bad (but surprisingly grainy for the outdoors at ISO 200), but at 640 x 424 - the image quality was horrendous shooting in that scene. Yet if I zoomed in a single leaf - no issues.

Shame about the compression effect of high detail scenes...

Fantastic info everyone.
I shoot stills professionally and have just been messing about with the video function, more for fun than anything else. But it is very nice to gain an understanding of the technical reasons behind the wildly differing video qualities of my D3s.
I think if I were a wedding photographer, or similar, who had reason to switch to video mode once in a while for professional output, I would probably consider a D7000... or wait to see what's coming next?
Again, very helpful and thank you very much!
Buggy

I haven't seen a list of safe parameters for D3s video.

Generally speaking you will get poor results with MJPEG on most "complex" scenes: those dominated by large areas of fine detail, having sharp transitions, areas with smooth gradients, etc.

Unfortunately many "everyday" scenes are dominated by complex details, and even in a studio (depending what you're shooting) it might be hard to simplify the scene enough to avoid these artifacts completely. Or put it another way, it might be easier just to rent/use another camera.

A few other thoughts:

- If you've simplified the scene but still have minor artifacts, then a good noise reduction software might help. (I use Neat Video).

- For some types of shooting, getting the shot is often more important than pure video quality. We'd easily tolerate rough artifacts in a gripping war documentary, but not in that romantic close-up of the bride & groom.

- As you know, the camera you have on you is better than any other. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot some "bonus" or "extra" footage (perhaps unplanned) with the D3s if the circumstances arise.

If you haven't seen it yet, I'd recommend watching the Zacuto Shootout 2010 series on the web (just google for them, there are three episodes I believe). Zacuto collaborated with some prominent experts to evaluate DSLR video (including the D3s) and how they stack up against film.

Yea, that is bit starvation. And that is MJPEG, so you are out of luck, there is no fix except softening such a scene. f/1.4 is your friend. :(

But, as I said, that scene is one which is VERY hard to encode. Lots of fine detail in chaotic movement.

Ade Barkah said:
At some point we just have to accept the camera's limitations. The D3s is probably not "the" camera to rely on for professional video/film production, outside some specialized or supplementary uses (e.g., for low light).

Thanks Ade,
I certainly do accept the camera's limitations and I use it professionally for stills only. I am just curious about the huge variation in the D3s's video quality, depending it seems on the complexity of the scene being recorded.
There are many who are using this camera for short "films" and they look beautiful. My concern, or curiosity perhaps, is just that I can't imagine how you could count on this camera for video until you know exactly what circumstances cause the 'macroblocking'.
Have these short fimmakers discovered the safe parameters of the camera's video function and are they comfortable working within them? If so, I wish they would publish those parameters somewhere because for me it's a real stumper to get such beautiful images sometimes (I'll post some 'good' video momentarily) and such bad images at other times.

Buggy said:
This camera can produce some beautiful video, but the 'macroblocking'(thanks for the term) in this file and others like it really do leave me scratching my head how anyone could rely on it for professional (read consistent) video production.

At some point we just have to accept the camera's limitations. The D3s is probably not "the" camera to rely on for professional video/film production, outside some specialized or supplementary uses (e.g., for low light).

Pierre said:
Something's wrong with your last video link? I get a binary dump.

Works fine here.
Right-click, save as?

Something's wrong with your last video link? I get a binary dump.

Hi Drab,
I finally uploaded some original video here: https://files.me.com/mrorganic/mhes9r.mov
I locked down the camera and recorded (more or less) the same scene. Again, look closely at the flat, wood surface of the kids climber.
This camera can produce some beautiful video, but the 'macroblocking'(thanks for the term) in this file and others like it really do leave me scratching my head how anyone could rely on it for professional (read consistent) video production.
Thanks again for all of the great feedback!
Buggy

Buggy said: But at what point in the process can I make an improvement? Wouldn't it require a firmware update from Nikon?

It would not only require a firmware update, but possibly a hardware one. :(
How can you avoid it? Reduce detail in your movies? ;)

Macroblock based codecs spend the majority of their bits on the definition of edges and high contrast lines. MPEG (2, or 4) saves bits by storing frame N just like a jpeg, but frame N+1 as the difference between N and the predicted N+1. MJPEG can not do this. This makes it less than half as efficient.

Look at the file size of a JPEG of well-focused grass vs the same quality setting JPEG taken of the sky. The grass image will be MUCH larger. All Nikon digital cameras encode JPEGS in what's known as CQ mode - constant quality. User defines the quality and filesize (bitrate) will vary to accomplish that.

Due to bandwidth limitations your D3s is likely encoding the video in either CBR (constant bitrate (quality varies based on content but size is constant)) or ABR (average bitrate, which should be thought of as a constrained CQ mode). Either way macroblocking is the inevitable result of not enough bits to encode scenes with lots of fine detail.

I really don't think your video looks that bad, but will reserve final until I can see the original. As I said this looks like bit starvation, only two answers - increase bitrate (likely can't) or decrease complexity. Even holding the camera still will dramatically decrease bitrate needs (though less with MJPEG than MPEG).

Drab,
That's great feedback... thanks!
I'm pretty sure the D3s does in fact use MJPEG encoding as it was one of Nikon's first attempts at adding video to a full frame DSLR. But at what point in the process can I make an improvement? Wouldn't it require a firmware update from Nikon?
I will post the original video file online once I establish a place to do that... Stay tuned!
Thanks again
Buggy

I hadn't seen this thread before.

Buggy:
Looking at the back-yard video you linked in a previous comment the answer is simple: The encoder is bit-starved.

That is a very difficult scene to encode, between the fractal detailed vegetation and the chain link fence at a spatial frequency just above the AA filter it is a wonder you don't get more macroblocking (a better term than "JPEG artifacts" if you're talking to tech support or googling).

I have not paid much attention to video on Nikon DSLRs, but just looking at this video I'd assume the D3s has a much lower maximum bitrate than the D7000 (being on the bleeding edge of Nikon video)? Is this right? More bitrate would solve this problem fast, a more efficient codec would help*, but this is classic bit starvation.

*The more efficient codecs are more efficient for two key reasons:
1 - Better compression of dependent frame deltas
2 - Better use of perceptual techniques, shifting bits from where humans don't see them to where humans do.
The artifacting in this video appears to be present in the Independent frames as well (as I'm not seeing obvious "snap" at keyframes, if you really care you can post the original video somewhere and I'll take a look) - a place better codecs aren't better. Unless the D3s uses MJPEG. Does the D3s use MJPEG? In that case anything would help, more bits, better codec with any motion prediction yadda yadda yadda. MJPEG is a dog.

I'm stumped on this one. It seems to depend greatly on the position of the sun while shooting outside. If shooting with the sun behind your subject, things with detail like grass seem to have a lot of noise and artifacting.
Even slight over-exposure results in a very visible mosaic pattern of JPEG artifacts.
Shooting with the sun behind you seems to result in much smoother images.
This is not definitive. Just something I noticed this past weekend and will do more testing on. Aperture and shutter speed may also play a role in this... TBA
What's really frustrating is that none of this seems to be consistent. Sometimes the videos look really fantastic, smooth and cinematic while other videos taken under similar circumstances look awful with very significant compression noise (those irritating visible blocks that move slower than the overall image, the type you see on cheap/poorly encoded DVD's).
More to come...

I am experiencing the same problem with my D3s. I bought it to learn and get introduced into Filmmaking, so that is very important to me. However, I find a lot of videos, especially in the background, have a lot of grain, even outdoor in places one would consider to have great lighting conditions.

Thanks Photomatt, very helpful input indeed.
I am going to do a few tests to try and understand under what circumstances the artifacting is most noticeable as some of my videos look great to me while others don't look like they were even shot with the same camera.
I will report back to the group with my findings.

Hi! this is my first post and will give my opinion-

The sample looked good to me. i viewed it on my Mac Pro and saw very minor artifacting, but only when panning in your shot. What could be the issue is that if you are looking at QT files, be sure you have the right codec to view the file. Every video camera format file is different in some regards. Be it Sony, Panasonic, Canon , Red One, Phantom, or in this case Nikon.
I would go to the Apple site and see if there is a codec plug in for Nikon video format (for QT). Also, check with Nikon as well to see if there is also a QT plug in for there software as well.
It could also be a compression issue as mentioned earlier. After about a minute or two, the CPU on the camera may lag, causing artifacting, and thus, choppy video, gliphs, unexplained nonsense. I have seen this with numerous productions of the Canon 5d and 7d. It just doesn't hold up. In other words, the camera is meant to be a still camera and not a substitute for a real video camera. Just doesn't have the umph to move it along.
720p native will look a bit jittery when viewed in a 1080i environment. I see it on TV alot. But your sample is passable in most cases.

I hope my input helped.

Sorry for my absence everyone... I'm just back from a summer traveling.
I appreciate all of the input. I have shot loads of video since and sometimes it looks great and occasionally it looks horrible.
Here's a link to some that looks horrible: http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0097009/photos/beautifytheworld/5718713627/
It appears that flickr has compressed it on the upload making it look even worse but the stuff straight out of the camera (on this occasion) doesn't look that much better.
This was imported form the CF card into Lightroom 2. I have since tried Nikon's import software and there's no improvement.
I don't shoot video commercially, just stills, so this isn't a hugely pressing concern but I am curious if my camera a has a glitch or not.
Thanks again for the input.

wish buggy would let us know what was the solution to the problem

It could be the Mac not having the correct codec. Try using Nikon software that came with the camera to bring the video into the computer.

What are your camera settings? It still sounds like a software issue to me. Have you tried a hard reset of your D3?

Computer is a new MacBook Pro 2GHz i7 with HD display, 8GB Ram, 500GB HD 7200RPM, AMD Radeon. Running Snow Leopard 10.6.7
The video is unedited, simply transferred the file(s) from the Nikon's CF card via card reader to my Mac and double click. I've tried Quick Time Player and VLC, quality is the same.

What kind of computer (specs,RAM, video card, etc.) are you using? Are you doing any editing or is the video straight out of the D3? What program are you using to download the video?

Primitive motion JPEG codec, compression artifacts?

I looked back at some of my other footage and have noticed that there is some jpeg noise, particularly in the fringe edge between a focused subject and its out of focus surroundings.
The large jpeg blocks appear strongest in the out of focus areas of slow movement, e.g. out of focus tree branches and leaves gently blowing in the wind.
Under certain lighting conditions it seems very apparent. In the case above the subjects were backlit, outdoors with the sun behind them. It was shot from a distance with a 50mm lens 25+ feet from the subjects.
I also notice that close ups tend to look much better.
I'm working on uploading a sample video.
Thanks
Buggy