PH v. HA v. HG

[mikeymic]

has anyone shot in the lower resolutions? how does it hold up? Say you want to shot in HA or HG and make standard def widescreen videos...anyone?

i have to assume that even tho you are shooting in "hd" most people are still down rezzing and outputting to standard def or internet.

[Barry_Green]

HA (17mbps, I think) looks fantastic, and HG (13mbps, I think) looks as good as HDV. But keep in mind that you can only do 1080/60i in those modes. If you want progressive, you have to go to PH.

[mikeymic]

nice! that's great to hear.

have you shot in the lower modes and put them to sd dvd? You're getting me pretty excited with the talk of the class 4 32gb cards and the lower resolutions working well.

I'm pricing a long format gig for the fall where they will be doing 4 - 6 hour conferences. Now, I'm assuming that you can record to a hard drive as well giving you over 100 gb. So, there are prolly other options for something that resembles a studio setup.

[Barry_Green]

You cannot record directly to a hard disk from the camera. You'd have to use some sort of desktop computer with an HDMI input card, or some sort of portable recorder, but AVC-HD doesn't have firewire streaming of footage so that's not an option.

If all you need is 60i, you should be just fine with HA mode (17mbps). If it's a largely stationary event (i.e., the camera's locked down and you're pointing at talking heads) then even the 6mbps HE mode will probably be fine. At 6mpbs you could record 6 hours on a 16GB card.

[Evro]

Hey guys, last weekend I did a two camera shoot for a church documentary. One of the HMC152's was locked down and did the entire 2hr shoot in the 1080 50i 6mbps HE mode. The image looks great but best of all the whole 2 hours only used up a little over 4GB - man I'm loving this camera!!

[studio1972]

I use 17mbps all the time at the moment because FCE has problems with PH mode. The images look fantastic. I don't think PH would really make any difference for weddings etc, maybe for sports? I will probably use PH though, once I have a compatible NLE.

[Barry_Green]

Hey guys, last weekend I did a two camera shoot for a church documentary. One of the HMC152's was locked down and did the entire 2hr shoot in the 1080 50i 6mbps HE mode. The image looks great but best of all the whole 2 hours only used up a little over 4GB - man I'm loving this camera!!
Sounds like the ideal use of HE mode. I wouldn't want to go shooting a surfing competition handheld using HE, but for a locked-down church shot, AVCHD can be extremely efficient and I would bet that yes, the image looked just fine.

[thealbion]

I wonder , do you need as fast computer for native avchd 17mbps as for ph 21mbps , or how about 13mbps. sd cards are not expensive - size of file does not matter to me ,but good computer for NLE in avchd are still expensive. From what i read here 13mbps is as good as HDV , so maybe by recording in 13 or 17mbps i can go with intel q6600 4mb ram and nvidia 8800gt . I hate converting to other formats - time + something inside me think that by converting iam degrate original quality of my work. Sorry for my english. Please help if you know - thanks peter


P.S: I just get hmc150 on 3/7/09 and i made my decision by reading this forum. I was thinking about canon A1 but i wanted solid state , not tapes so thats why i asking this question about computer req. and bitrate

[Barry_Green]

Interesting question, and one that's reasonably easy to answer. I shot some clips in each mode and put them on the Vegas timeline in the appropriate project type. Vegas will tell you the actual frames-per-second playback rate you're getting, and... well, it's performance in the editing app that we're looking for, right?

So, on with the numbers:

HE mode, 6mbps, 1440x1080x60i, put on a 1440x1080x60i timeline, with playback settings set to Best/Full, and playback window of 960x540. Result: 29.970 fps (real time)

HG mode, 13mbps, 1920x1080x60i, put on a 1920x1080x60i timeline. Result: 29.970 fps (real time) usually, with occasional dips down to as low as 14fps.

HA mode, 17mbps, 1920x1080x60i on a 1920x1080x60i timeline. Result: frequently 29.970 fps, almost always 27fps or above, with more frequent dips down to as low as 14fps.

PH mode, 21mbps, 1920x1080x60i on a 1920x1080x60i timeline. Result: average 28fps, almost always 27fps or above, and occasionally 29.970 fps. Dips down to 18fps.

PH mode, 21mbps, 1920x1080x24P on a 1920x1080x24P timeline. Result: usually 23.976 fps, with occasional dips/stumbles down to as low as 10fps.

All this testing was on a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo laptop. Obviously a Quad should do even better.

[ecking]

so maybe by recording in 13 or 17mbps i can go with intel q6600 4mb ram and nvidia 8800gt

I love when people get scared and overshoot the computer requirements!
Dude I have cut 21mbs from the 150 on a q6600 with 2 gig ram and an ati card not as good as the 8800. You should be fine.

[thealbion]

Thanks guys.
I am a new guy in the whole NLE and in APE7 i got a real stuck (drop frames) on my q6600 in ph21 , that why i asked this question about diffrent modes, but when i shut all other programs and live only esentials like APE7 :) i see less problems

P.S: Its good to see that authoity like Barry Green thinks that my question is interesting :) - thanks again - peter

[ullanta]

I shoot almost exclusively in HA (17mbps) with the shutter at 1/30. This yields excellent picture quality, and pretty much appears to me to be progressive... never any apparent interlacing, just nice progressive-ish motion blur. I haven't done a formal comparison, but the HMC seems able to encode this "pseudo-progressive" more efficiently (read: with fewer artifacts in, say, pans) than 60i.

For anyone shooting only for video I highly recommend this "pseudo-progressive" mode for a beautiful filmlike look. I haven't tried this much with lower bitrates, since the 2+ hours per 16GB card suits me fine; but I ewxpect that HG should provide pretty good results, and HE should certainly be acceptable when locked down.

As someone mentioned above, I stay in non-PH modes because Apple software still seems to have some issues with PH mode, especially at 30p. But I don't seem to be losing anything... and I like the higher record-times!

[Willie57]

Barry,

I bought my Panasonic HMC40 in April and I'm shooting motocross race videos and generally in full sun. I have been playing with different settings on my camera, PH1080/60i, HG1080/60i etc,. I am still looking for the best setting for recording fast action without washed out colors. I am editing on a MacBook Pro with iMovie and Final Cut, any advice?

Thanks,
Willie

[85mk7]

hi,

i shot in 720p50 with highest quality mode to achieve the best results for editing... the more information you get the better it will be... this is what i think :)

i edit natively without transcoding on a Phenom X4 965BE using edius 5.5 - i got no problems and everything runs very smooth.

[Barry_Green]

I'd definitely shoot high action in PH 720/60p. Full sun is a bit of a stretch for the camera's ND filter, so either you should consider upping the shutter speed (if you like the look of the choppy motion) or get an external ND filter, maybe like a two-stop ND. That should keep the camera in its sweet spot.

TO avoid washed out colors, you can use the B.Press or HD NORM gamma, and boost the Chroma Level a few notches.

[Willie57]

Thanks 85mk7 & Barry,

I will try that next time and see what happens.

Willie

[Vincent Del Vecchio]

I plan to edit AVCHD from my new HMC40 with a Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6700 @ 3.0Ghz (but I can overclock it stable as high as 3.8Ghz), 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX285 w/ 1GB RAM, and 2x HD Velociraptor 10,000rpm HDD in RAID-0.

DO you think this is powerful enough to not cause any problems?