AVCHD high bitrate tests- MUD FREE footage

From my testing, a lot of these high settings fail when shooting SH 720p mode when fast panning and/or high detailed scenes. But the good thing is we can have 'C' setting for FHD/SH, 'B' setting to H mode, 'A' setting to L mode. And these settings at H and L modes work great even with class 4 cards I have.

are you guys testing 720p?
 
Good point - my testing has shown that the 720 (SH) mode fails more frequently than the 1080 mode under AVCHD also.

Chris
 
I am shooting 'C' setting with 24p enabled. It has not failed me yet. I test-shot children playing in the pool surrounded by trees and grass at f8, 24p with shutter speed 400 and it did not fail.

If you have set Native 24p that's not surprising. Have you?

Chris
 
Well, you've been lucky then. Or maybe the children are in focus but the trees and grass aren't. Get enough in-focus, static detail and you'll probably get some errors.

The 720 setting will produce errors faster because it produces more data. 60 FPS at 720 produces more unique data than 1080 at 24 FPS, even when it is in a 60i wrapper (some of the frames are redundant because of the pull-up).

Chris
 
What exact settings would you like tested? it might be faster to ask people to test specific things than ask them what they've tested.
 
When one person can get consistent failures with certain settings and a certain card, there isn't really much reason for too many other people to test the same setup. All that means is that their subject has less detail, or something else like that. We've already established that the failure occurs.

I'm going to start testing out different buffer ratios. I've noticed that nearly everybody is testing buffer parameters at similar ratios. What happens if you go with 50,52,70, for example, instead of 50,52,60? Who knows, I might discover a thing or two.

It seems to me if person does the exact same test as somebody else - who has already found a failure - the subsequent test is meaningless. It makes sense to test something that is thought to work, but once a failure has been proven it's time to move on.

It's not my call, though - Vitaliy is the boss.

Chris
 
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Maybe a good place to start is by trying to break the setups in the "Stable MJPEG and AVCHD Settings" sticky. Don't change any of the settings; just use them in different shooting situations.

One surprise that came up during earlier testing is that static scenes stress the CODEC more than ones with lots of motion - this seemed counterintuitive at first (at least to me). Another was that fast shutter speeds break some settings. In retrospect it's not hard to figure out why, but we would have never thought to drill such things down without some random testing.

Another thing to test is different class 10 cards - because they can have disturbingly different performance. We already know that Transcend cards are slower than some SanDisks, but still perform well for some settings. What about the other brands? I assume that there are probably 50 different card manufacturers, but only a few different flash part types in them. Which cards are similar, and how do they perform?

There's a lot of stuff that needs to be tested and plenty for everybody to contribute, no matter their level of expertise.

Chris
 
The reality is that everyone is a volunteer and the make their individual efforts for their own individual reasons.

While my inclination is to be helpful, that typically is secondary to trying to resolve some immediate problem or answer some question that I'm personally concerned about. If what I learn is helpful for others, then so much the better. And if I can make some modification to what I'm doing to help someone or the group out, I'll often try to do that if I can. But it isn't likely that I'm going to apply myself in some systematic way to addressing all the problems.

That said, on thing that might be useful would be for the testing group to make a list of specific tests that they'd like to see made. The more that they can avoid being cryptic in the descriptions, the better. I can see myself tackling small fairly well-defined tasks just for kicks.
 
That's a good point. The best way I see to achieve the sort of goal orientated testing you are talking about is for people to take "ownership" of a particular issue. For example, I've been testing settings using Transcend class 6 and class 10 cards. These are the second tier type of cards that I suspect most people have. I know these cards pretty well and the parameter settings they are "well behaved" with. Lots of other cards, like AData for example, are probably very similar. It would make sense for me, or somebody else, to take ownership of testing for these cards.

Sometimes we forget that the greatest potential beneficiaries of our efforts aren't as geeky as we are. In other words, the audience for our testing results ultimately shouldn't be just us. Most people just want to get the best results with what they have and not have to read 1000 posts to get there.

I for one would be willing to moderate a thread for "What's the best you can do with good, but not necessarily the ultimate, versions of class 6 and class 10 cards" - no way that fits in the subject line, though. It may seem silly but I think it describes something that would be of value to many people. It sort of turns the testing upside down - instead of finding the ultimate everything, you determine what people can do reliably with what they have.

It might be a good idea to set up a sub-forum for people who just want to know how to improve their results, without having to plow through all the posts here. I've seen many comments along the lines of "you shouldn't be just asking for the best settings, you should be willing to deal with all this complexity". Why? It seems perfectly reasonable to me for somebody to request "Just tell me the best settings for me".

Chris
 
Well with the thread with the stable settings most people should have improved video quality without much reading. The thing is (at least in my opinion) a lot of people aren't taking the time to actually learn what they are doing and enter here with many questions that have been answered. This is expected but I think the community of testers can/should only worry about them later. There is a lot of great information to be had from reading just the stickies and first posts of the big threads and reading the Ptool's recommendation.

With what's going on right now with the hack, it's still quite in the early stages where settings are still being found for everyones set up. It's hard to make blanket statements for everyone. It takes some work on their end to know what they are working with to adjust the patch to work well with their gear.

But another thread can't hurt I guess but I feel there will always be people looking for the quick fix and who won't be willing to put in any time to learn what they are doing. My little rant is over now. Move along...
 
The thing is (at least in my opinion) a lot of people aren't taking the time to actually learn what they are doing and enter here with many questions that have been answered.


I agree. There is not enough initiative to self educate oneself through existing threads. It becomes quite distracting and repetitive. Tollerance for being helpful gets eaten away slowly.
 
Am testing with the AVCHD (b) settings and results are promising with a class 6 card.
Will test the over 30 min later. So far the image quality already seems improved.

And yes I jumped right in and had to open an extra thread and do a lot of reading to fix my user error about the increments in FW, sorry for the bandwidth.

Many thanks to Vitaliy and co, you did an incredible job!
 
The settings that we've all had built into the camera. AVCHD can shoot at FHD, SH, H and L. The latter three are all 720p but with lesser quality as you go from SH to L. This way you can set the three at different bitrates so you can set out different levels without having to reflash the firmware.
 
The settings that we've all had built into the camera. AVCHD can shoot at FHD, SH, H and L. The latter three are all 720p but with lesser quality as you go from SH to L. This way you can set the three at different bitrates so you can set out different levels without having to reflash the firmware.

Duh, I'm an idiot. I'll have to play around with that tomorrow. You don't seem to have as much control over those settings tho since there is only one setting for each.
 
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