K-S2 & MX-1

thanks for clarifying - this all makes sense (was there by default, i removed it)

Makes sense Steve, thanks. I was confused by the references to the
noises being made by the SR ...? Boudou said he was shocked by the noise of the AF but ' then realised it was the SR' ....

And trying to 'correct' for movements in a video seems a rather bizarre concept ... Surely things are meant to move in a video !? ... Correcting for camera movements I can understand.

The movie SR is there to dampen out sudden sharp movements (think steadicam). Mechanical SR seemed to do a better job, at the expense of introducing crunching noises in the audio recording. The software based movie SR is silent but not as smooth (and requires the image to be slightly cropped).

Steadicam is mechanical, MovieSR is like Warp Stablizer but 'on the fly'.
Crunching noises never happened with my K-7 and I don't think the K-5 either. But the consumer models I have recently found out (K-x for example) had terrible mechanical SR noises.
See ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SEAIcFFtX0

I distinctly remember it on my K7 (just a tiny 'chirk' as the SR motor kicks in) but it was fairly unobtrusive.

I'm still happy with the K7 SR, both for video and stills. I do mostly use a hotshoe MIC and have never heard any sensor shake noises on an audio track.

I recently got my first long zoom for Pentax, and I find I can shoot perfectly sharply at 300mm with a 1/80th sec time value ... Very happy with that!

The SR 'plate' is always active, even if SR is not actually being used because it's being 'held in place'.
There is however no SR motor. The IBIS system is a series of electro magnets which 'float' the plate.
Quite what causes the noise with the K-x and it's ilk isn't immediately clear, it does sound as if it's reaching the end of it's float limit and hitting the restraining stops.
I still have some K-7 video, none of which exhibit any SR noise. (Some do suffer the regular audio codec 'click' depending which software is used for playback)

I wish they'd give an option for turning it on or off (real mechanical stabilisation that is).
A lot of what I do would be described as music video style, so I often dump the original in camera audio track anyway.
Therefore I'd be more than happy to have stabilised images, regardless of any audible knocking etc captured on the on camera audio track.

I don't like the assumptions being made for us, on what should be very capable hardware for what I want out of it.

Camera store review video comments are completely fair, and pentax continues to offer the same generic video mode they've had since the K-30.
Poor bit rates, no focus peaking during video which is when you need it most, no 60fps in 1080p mode, no real stabilisation.

very disappointing for a 'new' product

If you really want to film you wouldn't buy a k-s2, but if you need a camera to take pictures and a decent video which is my case the k-s2 is perfect. The added levels and overall easier to use camera mode that have been added make it a real improvement - external mic is also a big step up (although I haven't used it). Anyway I am very happy with the video functions.

There seems to be improvement. The K-S2 has far less aliasing (almost zero jaggies) than the K-01/K-50 in this example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46S7yRGvu2I

It was a good and fair review by the camera store. The biggest problem for the K-S2 will be the lack of marketing from Pentax. It will be completely overshadowed by the Canon 760D and Canon's marketing might.

On the whole that does look quite a bit better.

Still the stupid shakes at
around here

And the leaves shot at the end shows where focus peaking during video mode would be really useful.

Yes, but you have to be looking for the wobble, rather than it being like a sudden 6.9 earthquake occurred..

I've had footage ruined by this system on the K-30, where the software thought the scene was moving. If sensor based stabilisation was being utilised, the sensors would have reported that no extreme correction was required, but visually something in the scene set the system off.

In my case the end result saw a babies forehead warp all over the place, in a way that I could never use or recover in post production.

It may be better here, but then the subject matter isn't that bad for it, but the same amount of warping on a persons face for instance is instantly recognisable as being wrong.