Video, manual focus, and e-mount lenses vs legacy

The other night I tried shooting some video with the 35mm f/1.7 CCTV lens. I really liked the results and the feel of the physical operation of manual focus. I'm still a bit clumsy with it, the NEX is my first ILC camera. Sometimes I turn the focus ring in the exact wrong direction entirely! But there is a real "wow" factor to seeing a closeup of someone's face come into focus with such a shallow depth of field in your videos.

I tried manual focus with the 18-55mm and sigma 30mm lenses, and the focus by wire just didn't seem right for video. Does anybody else have this experience, that focus-by-wire is harder to get a feel for with video especially? I just never feel like I know what to expect when I start turning the focus ring.

I really like the FOV a 30-35mm lens gives on APS-C for video, and I have been hoping to eventually get the Sony 35mm, thinking that in addition to being a great normal still lens, it would be the "perfect" video lens due to OSS and wide aperture, but now I'm not so sure.

Part of this may also stem from the fact that I'm still a little uncertain about the exact behavior of the camera using autofocus in video mode. I also think auto-focus seems to jittery. So I'm starting to think I should just find the cheapest (non-CCTV) 30-35mm legacy lens money can buy, for video use. Am I right in thinking the importance of optical quality is diminished with shooting video, since the drastically lower resolution would mostly hide the flaws? I actually think the CCTV lens would be sufficient if it had a normal focal plane.