Be careful using tripods. The GH1's ( and GH13's) Achilles heel!
- Thread starter reggietelly
- Start date
reggietelly
Active member
So is there a way to overcome this? Lpowell you of all people must be up for the challenge! Or are we doomed forever to have to deal with this unfortunate short coming. Is there not a way to set the bias a more evenly across the frame, rather than the codec choosing underexposed areas to fry into mud.
I just did a test with a Vari ND and you could see the blurry grass coming in as the exposure dropped whilst I turned the filter. This is a bit disappointing really but it is good to know for future reference. I honestly don't think ISO enhance would make much difference. I have switched it on and off and it doesn't make a difference to me anyway.
May I ask what settings you prefer in terms of the film mode settings.
all the best
richard
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Shawn Storm
Active member
Thank you for the clarity. One of these days I am going to upgrade to FCP and I look forward to switching to the ProRes format, but in the meantime I am guessing AIC is probably fine for me.
However, I seem to recall there being other transcoders out there (such as NeoScene and Voltaic?) which can transcode GH1 footage. Do you think it would be worth trying some of these other programs, or should I just stick with FCE's AIC for now and eventually upgrade to FCP/ProRes?
-Shawn-
reggietelly
Active member
Neoscene is good but it softens the image somewhat. I have to admit being rather smitten by 5DtoRGB but I think it requires ProRes to be there.
My approach is to make best use of the camera's strong points in each situation. For nighttime and highly detailed shots, I use my 60Mbps MJPEG 422-color patch. For lengthy, one-take event documentaries, I use my 50Mbps AVCHD 3-Frame GOP patch in 720p SH mode. I rarely shoot 1920x1080 video as I hate the look of 24p telecined into 60i broadcast video, not to mention the headaches of dealing with interlacing.
For daylight, I use Smooth Film Mode with -2 Contrast and Noise Reduction, and 0 Sharpness and Saturation. For incandescent lighting, I like the warmer tone of Nostalgic Film Mode with -2 Contrast and Saturation, and +2 Sharpness and Noise Reduction. Some folks prefer lower levels of Sharpness, but I think the camera does a better job sharpening the 12-bit Bayer Filter output than you can do in post with the 8-bit color depth of MJPEG and AVCHD.
Is that included in your ptool settings patch I downloaded a few weeks ago?
I haven't explored the MJPEG video aspect in anger yet, just your high reliability AVCHD.
reggietelly
Active member
Cheers. Interesting you would choose not to shoot full HD. It does show up some of the faults and 1280x720 looks fine upscaled in my opinion. Sure 24p to 60i I am sure is ropey. For me 25p which is what I get in Pal land is perfect, for broadcast. I'd love to shoot solely MJPEG 4.2.2 but I am in 25p land and MJPEG is locked at 30p. I do use it and conform to 25p. You don't really notice the slight slow down and I am not shooting with audio so that's not an issue. Still it would be nice to be able shoot native 25p MJPEG.
Thanks for your insights into shooting settings. It's really helpful having a pro share these as it gives us squirts a huge leg up.
And thanks again for your tireless work championing the hack. Your threads have always told it straight and are clear and concise
all the best
rich
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I don't use Voltaic or Neoscene so I can't comment. It's my understanding that these programs are for folks wanting advanced pulldown for 24p, so since I'm shooting 30p with a GF13, this sort of thing isn't on my radar.
AIC gets a bad rap from overcaffeinated shut-ins. It's capable of very high quality, lossy codec or not. Of course, when you eventually upgrade to FCP and get ProRes, there's no need to use AIC unless you want to archive your "raw" footage in smaller chunks -- AIC files are big but ProRes files are nutty big.
I think you're better of focusing on other aspects of shooting and editing than what codec you import with. Apple's got your back. It's a non-issue till you're up for the same jobs as Bloom and Hurlbut.
AIC gets a bad rap from overcaffeinated shut-ins. It's capable of very high quality, lossy codec or not. Of course, when you eventually upgrade to FCP and get ProRes, there's no need to use AIC unless you want to archive your "raw" footage in smaller chunks -- AIC files are big but ProRes files are nutty big.
I think you're better of focusing on other aspects of shooting and editing than what codec you import with. Apple's got your back. It's a non-issue till you're up for the same jobs as Bloom and Hurlbut.
reggietelly
Active member
I am beginning to think I have been a little harsh on my little GH1. Borrowed a friends 7D and although I didn't quite have it long enough to fully check it out, I was surprised at how soft it was. It was set to 1920x1080 but it looked like 1280x720 blown up.
Maybe I didn't have it setup right but I was pretty shocked at what I saw.
I am very happy with the GH1's sharpness in comparison and some of the artefacts I have noticed are really nit picking when it comes down to it. It is really capable of producing stunning HD images with the hack. You just have to be aware of the areas it isn't so good at and work around them accordingly.
One thing that impressed me with the 7D was it's robustness in comparison to the GH1. Because the GH1 is so light and small I think it tends to suffer from vibration much more than the heavier Canon. As such the vision can have that jelly effect if not stabilised enough. Also the lens on the 7d was a beast and just gorgeous.
all the best
Richard
Maybe I didn't have it setup right but I was pretty shocked at what I saw.
I am very happy with the GH1's sharpness in comparison and some of the artefacts I have noticed are really nit picking when it comes down to it. It is really capable of producing stunning HD images with the hack. You just have to be aware of the areas it isn't so good at and work around them accordingly.
One thing that impressed me with the 7D was it's robustness in comparison to the GH1. Because the GH1 is so light and small I think it tends to suffer from vibration much more than the heavier Canon. As such the vision can have that jelly effect if not stabilised enough. Also the lens on the 7d was a beast and just gorgeous.
all the best
Richard
Re: GOP lengths. I've been trying a couple hundred variations of Lpowell's great fast gop patch to get it working with Native 24 and 25p and won't bore you with them here. But I am shooting some amazing footage and personally could care less about 60p mode, because it won't allow me to have true 24p native mode. If you're willing to live without the 60p then check both avchd fps settings in Lpowell's fast 3 gop patch. When using native 24p with those settings checked my most stable 1080p gop rates have been 5 for 25p and 4 for 24p. This gets you absolutely amazing footage without the artifacting you're describing. You will get occasional write errors but I'm zeroing on some pretty stable 24p data rates (within reason - if I'm shooting static grass or the star chart I get write errors). If I had to be stuck with 15/30 gop lengths on this camera I would throw it in the trash can in a heartbeat. Lpowell's Fast 3 gop settings turned me on to this. AVCHD is pure 's**t for professional video imho if you're stuck editing these massively long gop lengths. Let's face it, AVCHD is a streaming format. That's all it was designed for. Hacking AVCHD to get lower GOP lengths with AVCHD is a bandaid, but it's the only bandaid we got. Most all the GH-1/13 footage I see on Vimeo including Bloom's looks great but it's not panning and there's rarely any action. Any time there is the footage stutters and looks like crap. The lower GOP settings will remedy this. Thanks again, Lpowell.
Shawn Storm
Active member
Thanks for the advice. I have thought about it and I agree that sticking with AIC in FCE makes sense for the time being. It keeps my post-processing flow easy and it sounds like the quality is fine for what I am doing. I am definitely going to upgrade to FCP at some point and I will check out the differences between AIC and ProRes at that point.
-Shawn-
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