I think there are a number of different issues about the video camera.
Different people are addressing different aspects, at least in terms of complaints. I agree the first priority should be fixing the "stuttering", which is simply unacceptable for this kind of hardware!

Have you had a look at this bug report?
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7062

Clearly Nokia itself at one point acknowledged that performance was an issue, but then they decided it is a wontfix. At the same time, the homepage for the N900 at nokia still states that the device record dvd-quality video!! I think we as users should politely put some pressure on Nokia for this. This is a promised feature, one of the device clear selling points, so it's even more of a failure than the delay with turn-by-turn Ovi Maps, in a way (since that was not promised when we bought the device)

As you can read in that bug report, the range of experiences is pretty wide. One user claims that by using the memory card to save files, the stuttering was fixed for him. I bought a class 6 card to test (the same as he bought), but couldn't see a whole lot of difference between saving there and on the main drive.

However, today I did some tests, and learned that I only get a high number of dropped frames when I pan with the phone while shooting a video. If I keep the phone absolutely still and I take a video of a subject moving (whether it is a hand, or a person talking and moving), the video is very good. I am not very technical, but to me this seems to indicate that the problem is the software encoder, uncapable of keeping up with the amount of information "changing" when the lens is panning around.

Perhaps this is obvious to all of you...