Am I too stupid or is there a bug in the codec?

It just depends on your shooting style. If you're more of a "24", "ER", "Bourne" style shooter, the 1080P mode is going to be troublesome. If you tend to shoot static shots, then 1080 on GH1 should be no problem. I'm still hoping for a 720-24P mode added to the GH1, regardless if they fix the 1080 mode. That would be perfect for me. If it had it already, I wouldn't have canceled my pre-order.

In the meantime, I'm still waiting for someone to post some video of a shot that would turn to 'mud' in 1080P mode, shot in 720P mode then converted to 24P. Everyone says that's the workaround, yet I haven't seen any proof. The only successful conversions I've see so far are shots that probably wouldn't be 'mud' shots in the first place. Anyone have any examples they can post? Anyone? Bueller... Bueller...

I want to believe... I really do! :)
 
How many clips from how many shooters have shown the skipping frames? 2, 3, 4 all of them. The "mud" was reported in many different cameras. This too?

If you tend to shoot static shots, then 1080 on GH1 should be no problem.
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Not only static shots. Crane shots, tracking shots sideways, forward or back and many other camera moves that don't require a sideways panning movement. Take a look at a few movies and series, they are all there with the exceptions of the ones mention in which those movements were on purpose.
 
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Yeah, sorry 'static' was a poor choice of words. Obviously one can move the camera in 1080P mode, just not too quickly.

I've been hearing about this skipping frames thing too. In fact, I remember seeing some weird frame anomolies in some of the very first clips posted (remember the notorious 'trees from a train' shots?). At the time I thought my computer was freaking out when displaying the footage, but it sounds like that's a problem in the camera instead. Man, Panasonic has some work ahead of them.
 
with ntsc cameras having to do the pulldown thing, I bet there are so many "in between" factors that can cause errors, that panasonic is quite relaxed about those "problems"

already the transcoding which I have to go through in pal world here, is liable to cause errors if the software coder had a bad day...

once we got free transcoders and a choice of apps to pick from to turn our avchd files into something useful, we can really point the finger.

Until then I avoid bee hives and try to keep the camera still ;-)
 
John Caballero said:
Not only static shots. Crane shots, tracking shots sideways, forward or back and many other camera moves that don't require a sideways panning movement.
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I feel that to be speculation at the moment, because nobody has used the GH1 for such shots and proved that 'mud' never occurs.

For the record, I have had mud on zooms too. Granted, again it isn't pro film making 101 stuff. But it's not just there on smooth medium speed fluid head tripod pans or handheld pans and whip pans.
 
Martii, downloaded your stuff and liked them both. Movement looked fine to me. Thank you for sharing. Even though I don't have a cam yet there is no doubt in my mind that crane shots, dolly shots and such will work fine. In the last two days I watched about 8 different T.V. series, which is where my shooting interest lies for the near future, and not once they panned straight sideways for any shots. Tracking shots, crane shots, brief MS pans, short tilts, stabilizer shots and the like was always used. The only ones using all kinds of wacky pans were Southland and 24. And of course there wasn't a single zoom shot. The series were Stargate, NCIS, The Listener, Monk, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight and Legend of The Seeker. Based on Martii's footage and many others in Vimeo and You Tube I can forsee the GH1 on 1080p working very well for most moving camera work.

This mjpeg footage looks pretty nice too:

http://vimeo.com/groups/gh1/videos/5130468
 
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Yes, it's been talked over quite a bit, and looking through the GH1 threads nothing has changed much for a few weeks now; there are no great breakthroughs yet. The consensus seems to be: 720 has a satisfying image quality for most people, 1080 satisfies a lessor number of people on ultimate image quality but has a reassuring frame size. But these are early days; most people have not yet got their cameras. There may be a discovery or fix for the 1080 codec/processing issue in the future, but perhaps not in time for people who want to shoot a project this summer. For optimum image quality (and who doesn't want optimum image quality?), this puts some of us in the difficult position of having the courage to shoot 720 with a camera capable of 1080. Though remember, the best cider tastes better than the worst champagne. Like most other cameras, the video DSLRs (Nikon D90, Panasonic GH1, Canon 5DII) all have limitations of some sort or another. But with the GH1 in 720 mode, the only “problem” is that it's 720! Is 720 really a big problem as such? The 5DII might have a VistaVison-size sensor, but Panasonic have effectively produced a pocket super-16mm camera. Well, with the kit lens it's not exactly a pocket camera, but certainly a low impact HD camera capable of serious work in 720. Let's try and stay positive and enjoy its strengths for this summer's projects, and maybe there will be an improvement for 1080 later in the year to further extend the life of this useful camera. Technology moves so fast these days that I tend to end up getting a new camera for each project, and I'm happy to make this summer my GH1 summer. For the price, I couldn't see any alternative. Cheers...
 
I agree. I've seen stunning HD footage in 720p - for instance the BBC Galapagos series was mostly shot 720p.

Companies like BBC and Discovery will accept 720P as part of their gold standard for HD - as long as the bitrate is high enough.

I also love the option to shoot slomo, so I'm planning to almost always be shooting 720P, even if the 1080 issues are fixed.
 
Same here. Even the 1080P stuff I shoot will be brought down to 720P. It's just easier to deal with in every way.
 
Had my first experience with the camera dropping frames today. I've shot quite a bit with the camera with no problems. I have a tested workflow - using Edius 5 and AVCHD2HQ converter and I'm using a PAL camera - so no pulldown issues.

One clip - a long take - has several moments upfront where it drops frames.

I shot for several hours - using a card I have used many times before.

Playback in camera confirms the problem - there in the original footage.

Could be an issue.....
 
TrueIndigo said:
Yes, it's been talked over quite a bit, and looking through the GH1 threads nothing has changed much for a few weeks now; there are no great breakthroughs yet. The consensus seems to be: 720 has a satisfying image quality for most people, 1080 satisfies a lessor number of people on ultimate image quality but has a reassuring frame size. But these are early days; most people have not yet got their cameras. There may be a discovery or fix for the 1080 codec/processing issue in the future, but perhaps not in time for people who want to shoot a project this summer. For optimum image quality (and who doesn't want optimum image quality?), this puts some of us in the difficult position of having the courage to shoot 720 with a camera capable of 1080. Though remember, the best cider tastes better than the worst champagne. Like most other cameras, the video DSLRs (Nikon D90, Panasonic GH1, Canon 5DII) all have limitations of some sort or another. But with the GH1 in 720 mode, the only “problem” is that it's 720! Is 720 really a big problem as such? The 5DII might have a VistaVison-size sensor, but Panasonic have effectively produced a pocket super-16mm camera. Well, with the kit lens it's not exactly a pocket camera, but certainly a low impact HD camera capable of serious work in 720. Let's try and stay positive and enjoy its strengths for this summer's projects, and maybe there will be an improvement for 1080 later in the year to further extend the life of this useful camera. Technology moves so fast these days that I tend to end up getting a new camera for each project, and I'm happy to make this summer my GH1 summer. For the price, I couldn't see any alternative. Cheers...
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Good thoughts here. I'm at that awful stage of deciding whether 1080 or 720 for my project starting up. My thoughts at the moment are 1080 for everything except scenes that have extreme motion then it's 720 and work it all out in post. If anybody knows if this is a bad idea I'm all ears. I just want to do the best I can with what I've got.

For what it's worth I haven't noticed the dropped frame issue yet. @jshaw300 how early in the clip did this take place and how long had you been using the camera before you noticed the problem?
 
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Nighthawk - Shot about 40 clips over 4 hours. Have 2 clips with definite skipped frames and then sound sync issues. One is from about halfway through the shoot- the next is towards the end. The sound sync is basically because the sound continued to record fine - so each time the frames skipped, the sound goes further out of sync.

I was shooting with the stock lens and I have worked out that both corrupt clips have a crash zoom in about 7-8 seconds after the skipped frames.

If there is a delay in writing to the card - then I could believe that the zoom caused the skipped frames as the camera becomes temporarily overloaded.

Another reason to skip the stock lens perhaps?
 
I've heard from other threads of definite delays writing to the card but nothing on the measure of 7-8 seconds. If it's a Transcend card I've heard they're not holding up so well. I'd recommend a different card and do what you did before including the 'crash zoom' just to see if the same thing happens.

I am definitely keeping clear of the stock lens unless I absolutely have to. There seems to be too many little problems popping up when it comes to it's use.
 
I think the card is a factor. I've never really looked at it because it came with the camera. Now I realise that Panasonic didn't include it with the camera - the vendor did. Which means I don't trust it. It says it's a class 4 Toshiba.

I'll get some decent cards in and re-test.
 
I always re-format the card after having copied it's content to my harddrives instead of just deleting the clips. This way it starts fresh again. A lesson learned the hard way with a Nikon camera, lost a whole day's worth of stills some year ago due to file & directory corruption on a SD card. Card was fine again after re-formatting (and still is).
 
jshaw300 said:
Had my first experience with the camera dropping frames today. I've shot quite a bit with the camera with no problems. I have a tested workflow - using Edius 5 and AVCHD2HQ converter and I'm using a PAL camera - so no pulldown issues.

One clip - a long take - has several moments upfront where it drops frames.

I shot for several hours - using a card I have used many times before.

Playback in camera confirms the problem - there in the original footage.

Could be an issue.....
Click to expand...

Another one here in UK that this happens to.

I get one shot on my Kingston card approx every shoot that drops frames. And it's on playback from camera.
 
Excellent tool. Thank you to the creator of that.

I've got some Sandisk Extreme III's coming - so I'll test them out.

And FWIW I had three clips that had missing frames. One clip - a long take - had four sections of missing frames ranging from 2-25 frames missing...
 
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