GH2 20 Megabytes a second patch!

HKO

HKO

Well-known member
:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

I think you guys are gonna love this.

http://www.henryolonga.net/Blog/?p=1893

Sorry but on the road for a few days so may be slow to respond. All the detail is on my blog. Dunno how to upload file here so if someone wants to download it and add it that would be great. In summary.................


Folks,

Once in a while a revolution occurs that sets up the little guys for success. For sooooo long it has impossible to get a combination of an affordable large sensor camera that is; good in low light, that has minimal aliasing, that has a great codec, that has interchangeable lenses, that is convenient enough to put in your pocket, that is small enough to shoot without attracting attention etc. That is until the GH2 came along. But oh the codec – what a disappointment. Although it was 24 Mb/sec AVCHD those of us who were used to HDMI capture were never satisfied. Mud, compression artifacts and poor colour grading potential. UNTIL NOW!!!!!

A well known hacker in the GH2 community called Vitaliy permitted me to be part of the HDMI beta testing team but it became clear that in camera recording was so much more convenient and recquired fewer tricks. So……….. I tweaked and tweaked until I came up with a patch that gives all wanna be indie movie makers quality that they only dreamed of months ago IMHO. This patch will in most cases give you sustained 20 megabytes a second data. That is close to Cineform data rates. In fact conversion to Cineform has a similiar data rate. Stock up on SD cards and batteries – your gonna love it!!!!! I have 6 now as the average data rate will be about 1,2 Gigabytes a minute. If the files do not span that means an average take of 3 and a bit minutes. You need the Class 10 Sandisk extreme 30 MB/sec cards HD Video. Avoid UHS1 cards for now. No real issues as far as stability goes as long as you follow the simple rules. Use manual lenses or use your Panansonic micro four thirds lenses in Manual mode and focus prior to shooting.

If you are interested in colour grading with Cineform looks check out my post here and I have included some free looks.

Thank you Vitaliy. YOU ROCK!!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen. I Present to you the Holy Grail of independent movie making…………….. the Henry Olonga Holy Grail patch for the GH2

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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Bad.
They are over-saturated and gamma value is to high for my taste.
Did you check colour in vectorscope?
 
Isaac_Brody said:
This is unnecessarily negative. No need to bring the hate into this thread. Please keep these kind of opinions to yourself.
Click to expand...

Didn't want to bring the hate into conversation, it was negative critic of content from his blog/post... Nothing personal...
Henry, sorry if I offended you in any way... And thanks for the patch !
 
Hey, no worries. I too think the LUT's are too oversaturated, but it's simple just don't use them. Someone else might find them perfect for their taste.
 
Can't wait to try your patch. Did you at least test it against the "death charts," to see if it was stable? If it's 20MB/s that mean it should be hitting 160mb/s, which is great. When you color correct, do you transcode to cineform still? And, one more question, did you tweak the 1080i or 720p settings any and if you're shooting NTSC or PAL?
 
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Hey guys.

Sorry but I haven't done exhaustive stress tests with a chart but filmed most of yesterday and it was great. It appears some are having issues as it is pushing the limits. It is a hack so stability may be an issue, perhaps try turning AQ to 3 or lowering bit rate.

I never meant that the cards should be avoided as fact, just suggested avoid for now. The jury is out and we know that the older 30 mb/sec card is recommended and works well. I have both and feel there is merit to that. Your mileage may vary. I shot for two hours yesterday without a single hiccup with the old fast card. Today folks are saying this hack is giving write errors so I don't know but if they have the old card then perhaps it is the patch needs tweaking which I will do when I get home. Maybe I am lucky but if I avoid, auto focus, high isos and any other cpu burdening processes, it seems stable.

I do a normal transcode to Cineform to colour grade and the footage is almost as good as my Cineform HDMI captures. Size is almost the same but no transcode means no Firstlight. But I have observed a couple of issues. There is a bit of macro blocking in the green channel and even some funky colour shift thing going on. The noise is also captured better which means it comes out with the luts. But boy it is a dream to grade. It truly is a massive improvement especially when making subtle changes but it doesnt fall apart even at extremes.


For the record concerning the luts, I have stated that my luts work well with footage shot with low contrast and the luts are biased and callibrated towards that. I made 300 and some are punchy and others are subtle but have only given away 10 of the exotic ones. Place a lut on Red or Alexa footage and it will all make sense. Place it on your crushed harsh rec 709 dslr footage and . . . .well , you know. View the online gallery of Marcie to see what they look like on a cineon file for best objectivity. The most useful Luts are the film emulation luts. Very hard to find anywhere mind you. Trust me I have searched. I made a tutorial explaining my colour grading approach which includes lowering contrast and if you view it will make sense. First light also has dials to turn down contrast, saturation, gain, exposure and much more. It is powerful when you use all the tools at your disposal. If you think there is too much of something you turn it down.If its so bad it hurts your eyes well, dunno what to say...walk on by?

Cheers everyone from sunny Wales for the moment.Not!!
 
I"m going to apologize and edit my previous post. I actually do not have a UHS1 card. I thought I did as it's the Sandisk cards with the "HD Video" label. So I actually can't contest they are suitable for these kinds of patches.

But the death charts only take a second. Pop up one of their files onto a monitor and hit record. If you get over a minute of footage then they should be stable enoughf or real world situations. I'll test it against the charts I have at home.
 
No worries. I have shot for another hour today and no dropouts at all. Updated my blog post as well with pros and cons. Footage is really great. Will edit tomorrow
 
I have yet to try Henry's patch, but I'm sure under controlled conditions, which I believe he mentioned it's great.

I must admit, I'm not one to "live on the edge", especially if it's a $$ gig.

I feel better when I create the highest demand on a setting by having it pass framing Stray's new extreme dense color death chart at ISO3200, with 1/16000 S.S, and motion.
Pappas deaath chart is good too, but Stray's will create even more of a demand.
 
Yeah, i agree, it's probably going to be okay under "controlled" settings, but I hate to take that chance. Imagine running an intense scene everything is going perfect and then "write error" pops up. I don't want one of my actors to get all Christian Bale on the crew. So I believe it's just best to have a patch that can handle anything you throw at it and not take the risk. And I don't even push it to ISO3200 or that high of a shutter speed, only 800 and a shutter of 240 as it's going to be the only settings I'll ever use that high.
 
I've experimented with some of the latest GH2 patches. Most of the patches worked out great in an indoor control environment, which I have zero issue to date. However, filming outdoor with detailed scene and changing light source seem to stretch the hack and you might risk recording bad images. I have experienced it with some of the conservative 'safe' settings posted on the forum.

It's quite difficult to pinpoint which GH2 patch is the safest as everybody'd shooting environment varies. The GH2 patch that works for others might still fail you on a particular scene. As it is, it is still inconsistent, so using it for a professional paid job is still a risk imho. Every time I pressed the record button, I've the utmost confidence that the images will look good with the higher bitrate hack but at the same time I worry about the possibilities of glitches in the footage. Even though the GH2 will record the scene successfully without any write error, there's no guarantee that the recorded image in the camera is perfect. My own experience tells me that only upon playing it back on the laptop with AVCCAM Viewer or ingesting into your NLE, then you can be 100% sure that it's recorded without any glitches.

I'm still shooting with the GH2 hack for higher image quality but I also make a habit of bringing my laptop with me for viewing and another unhack GH2 just incase :)
 
I'm a little confused.... how does 20mbyte a second provide much use if it's still avchd? The colors are still 4:2:0 right? Isn't this overkill?
I have been following the GH2 patches and waiting to make the jump over but still using my GH13s for now.
 
Went out yesterday and shot a couple of short tests

@blackout. Yes - still 4.2.0 but better sharpness and detail IMHO. Again like I said on personalview, this patch pushes the limits but is all about detail and slightly better grading. Other patches exist with different objectives

Download the originals to get a feel for the benefits


 
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It's not really AVCHD anymore (at least not by any of the AVCHD standards). Watch some of his clips...you'll clearly see the advantage over stock footage. I don't think it's necessarily overkill at those high bit rates. I believe the lower one goes with GOP settings the higher the bitrate needs to be (at least I've read that recently). If you look into the shadows you'll see that it's doing things that's impossible for the GH-1 to do (according to LPowell).

Blackout said:
I'm a little confused.... how does 20mbyte a second provide much use if it's still avchd? The colors are still 4:2:0 right? Isn't this overkill?
I have been following the GH2 patches and waiting to make the jump over but still using my GH13s for now.
Click to expand...
 
henryolonga said:
Went out yesterday and shot a couple of short tests

@blackout. Yes - still 4.2.0 but better sharpness and detail IMHO. Again like I said on personalview, this patch pushes the limits but is all about detail and slightly better grading. Other patches exist with different objectives

Download the originals to get a feel for the benefits


Click to expand...

Yes I downloaded them all - to me, I don't see improvement in the original .mts files once you go past about 80mbit. I am currently doing 55mbit 24p on the very final Blackout patch I did on the GH13 and lpowel made it more stable. I can see it might improve detail a tad, but I can't see how the higher bit rate would improve grading at all as it is not adding any data to the color information no matter how high of a bit rate you go. For instance.. compare all the noise and artifacts in your
"everyone love vitali" video http://vimeo.com/27358548

I see lots of artifacts and blocks and issues compared to these:

http://vimeo.com/20238440 (50 mbit original 20mbit avc sony vegas mp4 from native avchd)
http://vimeo.com/18320760 (42 mbit original avchd gh13 sony vegas mp4 20mbit)


http://vimeo.com/20228949 (raw native avchd file)



See what I'm saying? So I am wondering why you, if using the GH2 and you started with 80mbit or higher and compressed to a 25mbit mp4 have so much more artifacts than what I got? What is your workflow?

Thanks. The native 200mbit of your face does look amazing, but I see that sort of amazingness at 55mbit with a slight increase possible at 100mbit but I don't know the point in avchd in going higher... and I don't see how it would effect grading.... just wondering as I get my toes ready to buy some gh2 bodies.

- Blackout

PS all work is very nice but what bitrate was the vitali love master and what did you use to encode the mp4 and did you go through any intermediate codec? That would help me understand better.
 
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