GH3 Anyone using an iPad as monitor for GH3?
- Thread starter sigamy
- Start date
Fresno Bob
Well-known member
I know this sounds bitchy, but can new GH3 owners do a search first?
This has been covered multiple times.
Sorry - just frustrating having new threads taking up space with the same subjects.
This has been covered multiple times.
Sorry - just frustrating having new threads taking up space with the same subjects.
That's nothing - what about the frustration of a function that has so much potential, essentially being crippled into uselessness on the GH3... the promise of this function was one of the main reasons for getting this cam for many people; imagine the disappointment frustration and rage when they discovered the pathetic state this function is in the GH3.
dustylense
Veteran
works great for stills mode. For video, it's good for start/stop recording on a jib or steadicam.
FrameFarmMedia
Veteran
Did people really believe it would be a good system for live monitoring wireless without massive lag? I mean one of the cheapest decent systems the Arrow costs more than the GH3 alone.
I think people have become so spoiled by new tech that they forget to apply logic to any assumption of hope. I mean people were complaining that the GH3 (and other new DSLRs) werent 4:2:2 50mbit even though nothing large sensore sub $10K has it.
diegocervo
Well-known member
actually it's just for start recording....no stop since the interface of the app stays gray once you push the record button on your iPhone/ipad.
As I already mentioned in a thread I started about this thing, this could be an amazing feature for people using the gh3 on a steadicam and letting the focus puller do his job through an ipad. I hope there will be a firmware fix in the next release.
Why woudln't this work? I can stream 720p or 1080p movies to my Apple TV over the internet. Why is it fantasy land to stream video from cam to iPad that is 4 feet away? Maybe it is, but I'm one of those spoiled folks who doesn't see why...
FrameFarmMedia
Veteran
Your streaming 50mb/s or above 1080p on the internet?
Panasonic would have to use more processing power to compress the footage and transport it over the wifi restrictions. Not going to happen in a DSLR form factor and definitely not for $1,300.
Just look at the Paralinx Arrow system. It costs the same as a GH3 or more an even then there is slight lag with dedicated hardware.
People need to be realistic. I'm more interested in wifi for remote camera control than anything and I'm sure we will see more of this on revisions when the software matures.
keylight
Veteran
I would have expected the ability to send a stop recording signal to the camera. As it is now, it's as if the camera isn't able to "listen" (or "talk") while recording. I'm thinking they had to shut off wifi connectivity in order to minimize the load.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
If the camera has ordinary 802.11 type 'wireless'... aka WIFI... it is clear there has been a gross misunderstanding about what 802.11 is capable of, and in particular capable of 'streaming'. The 802.11bg
band is loaded and often given to radio interferance and hence dropouts. On looking at some of the more expensive RF devices that tout SDI transport, while I didn't find much in the way of detailed specs, I conjecture that all of them use custom signaling, frequently use non-2.4 RF bands, and one that did have a few details was using the 5.8 GHz band which has less consumer 'noise' as it is not as well trodden... yet.If the GH-3 is capable of a sustained 50 Mbs stream, that would put a strain on many WIFI (2.4 20 MHz bandwidths) situations, where one never really achieves the stated max bps rates... one can do some 'ticks' in the 5.8 GHz band, with multiple transmitters operating in separate bands to yield a much higher effective bit rate.
For a similar situation, look to the audio world and RF used for audio microphones, and there the 'audio' information is on the order of up to about 20KHz... If those people have problems with dropouts... what does one think that a 'video' stream would have for problems.
For the 'human' observer, dropouts may or may not impact the viewer, but for lossless data transport additional coding is required.
The net conjecture is that for a consumer device priced at around $1K buck, with Wireless connectivity not being the 'primary mission', 'you aint going to get there'.
What most of the higher prices video RF link devices sound like to me, is encoding the video bitstream with error correction, these are then modulated to the RF frequency used, spewed (a technical term) to a receiver, which undoes the RF signal, error correcting the stream, to produce the resultant bit stream. The big difference would be that such a scheme would not use a signalling method such as 802.11 since that method requires that the transmitter stop at some point, reacquire the 'radio' medium, transmit, and then relinquish the medium again.
And of course with all this the battery is usually bigger than the electronics...
keylight
Veteran
Not an area I know anything about really, so I'm curious.... How much bandwidth is actually needed? The GH3 and my tablet (the TF700) both have 802.11n, which gives up to a 600 Mbit/s data rate. And they connect directly to each other. Seems like the camera should be capable of streaming while recording.
Then again, streaming would mean the camera needs to process a 2nd "streams" of video, one to the SD card, the other (low quality) over wifi. Seems like the bottleneck might be in the processing of that 2nd stream, not the communications.
Thoughts?
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
I setup a test between my 802.11n AP and my iPhone 4S, with 802.11n, both (obviously...) working at 2.4 GHz (the iPhone 5 can apparently work at 5 GHz...), and I got about 20 Mbs performance at about 3-4 feet from the AP.
20 Mbs is required for compressed 'broadcast' quality HD delivered to the 'home'. Since I have not setup to check 'jitter' and dropouts, but just TCP transport, which may include retries to reliably deliver the packets, this does not mean it would be 'good' for streaming.
In 'spew' mode, that is no retansmits, I believe I got 39 Mbs speed... but a 37% packet loss... not good for 'quality video'... or even bad video...
In any case under the 50-70 Mbs data rate... if that's what the camera can do...
I didn't find what the TF700 could realistically do, but I did find a few reference that suggest that 600 Mbs is 'way over the top'... more like under 100 Mbs on a good day.
The use of 'n' to achieve the high performance requires more antennas, and a few parameter changes, and last but not least, operating with a 40 Mhz channel width rather than the 802.11 20 MHz channel width. For the 20 Mhz bandwith the max bit rate per 802.11n antenna is 72 Mbs. For for antennas the theoretical max is 4x72 => 288 Mbs. For the 40 Mhz channel, 150 Mbs per antenna, yielding the 600 Mbs max.
Needless to say, getting 40 Mhz of 'clean' spectrum in the 2.4 band where there are only 3 disjooint 20 Mhz channels... is well... the stuff of Marketing specs...
At the 5 Ghz band, supported by some 802.11n devices (like the iPhone 5 apparently... and iPads (I've never tested this...)), there is wider spacings and less contention in general. But both devices have to operate in that band...
So, while I don't have a Gh-3, I suspect that Panasonic just put enough 802.11n to work, but not achieve high throughput.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
Well, sure. a 480x270 "1/4" subsampled image could be used for framing alignment, and the like, but probably not for focus. With the LCD as it is on my GH-1, I definitely have to go in to 'zoom' mode. As for whether such a signal would be good for correctly interpreting 'monitor' features such as waveform indicators... I don't know. I've not had a setup for 'realtime' monitors via Firewire and the Adobe OnLocation program, since I stopped using the DVX100...
Even then wireless is not a 'guaranteed delivery system in a 'timely' fashion'...
That said, I do like the idea of remote control, and at least a 'frame snap' capability...
Thomas Smet
Veteran
The Apple TV along with many other forms of streaming media have what are called buffers sometimes in the neighborhood of 15 to 30 seconds. Apple HTTPS live streaming uses the same type of buffer for online live video streaming.
People this is not easy and if you want it in realtime it just isn't going to happen. I built a live online video streaming platform and know just about everything there is to know live video streaming and what some of you want just is not possible on a camera hardware.
The feature is already amazing for the fact that it actually sort of works. Just deal with the limitations. We get clients all the time who think a live video stream should be as clear as a HD broadcast on DirectTV and few people realize there is only so much that can happen over wifi or a network in general. Even if it did work you would have to deal with one heck of a buffer lag to make it almost useless. The less buffer you have the more errors and drops you will have. Want a solid video then you need a big buffer and even then it isn't going to fix a bad signal. Eventually even a 30 second buffer gets chewed up.
By the way movies on a AppleTV may be 5mbits not 50mbits which is another reason why it works better.
People this is not easy and if you want it in realtime it just isn't going to happen. I built a live online video streaming platform and know just about everything there is to know live video streaming and what some of you want just is not possible on a camera hardware.
The feature is already amazing for the fact that it actually sort of works. Just deal with the limitations. We get clients all the time who think a live video stream should be as clear as a HD broadcast on DirectTV and few people realize there is only so much that can happen over wifi or a network in general. Even if it did work you would have to deal with one heck of a buffer lag to make it almost useless. The less buffer you have the more errors and drops you will have. Want a solid video then you need a big buffer and even then it isn't going to fix a bad signal. Eventually even a 30 second buffer gets chewed up.
By the way movies on a AppleTV may be 5mbits not 50mbits which is another reason why it works better.
keylight
Veteran
I am able to stream my Windows desktop at 1920 x 1080 to my TF700 tablet using the Splashtop app over my network. Oh, and I can play Skyrim this way. So it has nothing to do with buffers or latency or anything like that. I really think it's that the camera itself can't create two streams of video, one to the card, one to wifi.
I mean, I can play games that stream from my desktop just like this:
I mean, I can play games that stream from my desktop just like this:
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
I've been watching some set of movies via Netflix and the Wife has gotten hooked on this stupid ABC show "Once Upon a Time..."... so we've been 'streaming' more of late..
We have a 6 Mbs DSL downlink pipe, thence via WIFI to the TV room. Most of the time its pretty good, but probably at least 'once' during any of the ABC shows, the image degrades to 'blownup SD' quality... that is crappy... similar to macro blocking of satellite TV... but it usually clears up eventually... I tend to watch film via Netflix in 'episodic' manner that is watch 20-30 minutes as I have time. So I don't notice the stream dropping out that much.
The equipment for analyzing this sort of stuff is expensive, so I've only used my own 'tools' to monitor Mpeg TS streams and noted dropouts over wifi links when testing.
Thomas Smet
Veteran
Streaming from a beefy computer or a tablet with a heck of a lot better electronics for wifi handling is totally different then from a tiny DSLR. This video is also only encoded once, for the actual act of streaming your gaming content. A camera which is already chugging away at encoding top quality video doesn't have as much processing power built in. While the processors in cameras are darn impressive for what they do, especially with Panasonic they are nowhere as good as the processor or even wifi components of even a tablet.
Thomas Smet
Veteran
That drop in quality is a drop. That is called adaptive streaming where the software will detect a reduced bandwidth and drop the quality down to a lower level to fit the new bandwidth speed. Netflix is very good at adaptive streaming. They also use a huge buffer to help compensate.