IPhone video has a strange FPS.

Question

There has been a lot written about "choppy playback" of iPhone video once it's trasferred to another device.  It seems to me that the problem is in the frame rate used in the original video.  In Quicktime, I'm seeing an actual frame rate on playback of something like 18 FPS, when the file is stamped with 30 FPS.  When will this issue be resolved by Apple?  And for now, what is the best work around?  I've already begun experimenting with different settings during export from Quicktime.  Choosing iPhone as a setting creates a .m4v file, but the image size is greatly reduced, and the conversion is very time consuming.  Howeber the frame rate issue seems to be resolved--no  more choppy playback and the new file is playing back at a true 30 FPS (or maybe it's 29.97 but that's another topic).
It's been said before but I'll say it again:  it's beyond belief that Apple can release hardware and software that is this buggy!  Even for the most novice user, this is totally unacceptable.  They love to say "it just works".  Well it doesn't.
Anyone with me on this?
Peter

Answer 1

Thanks for your response JD.  How can I tell if my MacBook Pro includes hardware MPEG-4 decoding?     My MBP specs are: 
  Model Name: MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,2
  Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
  Number Of Processors: 1
  Total Number Of Cores: 2
  L2 Cache: 6 MB
  Memory: 4 GB
  Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
  Boot ROM Version: MBP52.008E.B05
  SMC Version (system): 1.42f4
  Serial Number (system): W892518Q91T
  Hardware UUID: 14CDAEBD-197D-58FD-B89C-70DEDC7BA917
  Sudden Motion Sensor:
  State: Enabled
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT:
  Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
  Type: Display
  Bus: PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width: x16
  VRAM (Total): 512 MB
  Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID: 0x0647
  Revision ID: 0x00a1
  ROM Revision: 3436
  gMux Version: 1.7.10
  Displays:
Color LCD:
  Resolution: 1920 x 1200
  Depth: 32-Bit Color
  Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
  Main Display: Yes
  Mirror: Off
  Online: Yes
  Quartz Extreme: Supported
  Built-In: Yes
AFIK, this is all fairly late model Apple hardware and was top of the line when I bought it 3 years ago.  Also keep in mind I don't have any issues playing back any other HD content.  Only files created on the iPhone 4s.
It doesn't matter if I have other apps running or not--the symptom persists.
I've observed two seemingly identical video files created on my iPhone 4s (using Get Info in Quicktime all parameters are equal) where one plays smoothly and one has the jumpiness.  Other times a file that had been playing smoothly starts acting jumpy again after reopening.  Bear in mind, the jumpiness doesn't behave like a CPU being overloaded, but is a very regular rhythm--about a jump every second.  I would expect an overloaded CPU to produce more random symptoms during playback.  I'm now seeing the jumpiness even in the videos I exported using Picasa.  Keep in mind, I did not "upload to Picasa Web Albums" but just exported to another location on my internal hard disk.  The specs on the exported files look the same as the original including the data rate, which is 21.7 mbits/sec.  In other words, they were not optimized for streaming.  Why they played back smoothly before and not now is baffling. 
Some have speculated that movies created with the camera upside down maybe have some extra data attached in order to play back in the correct orientation.  However in most cases my problem files were recorded "right side up" and still they have the jerkiness upon playback.
Finally, you state that 720p is the default iPhone image size but these files appear to be 1080 (progressive or interlaced I don't know).  Isn't that what 1920 x 1080 implies?  And again, the data rate is 21.7 mbits (is that the same as the bitrate, which you said should be 11 Mbps?).
Your help in this matter is greatly appreciated.