Finally saw GH2 footage first hand.. I am not upgrading. Staying with GH1.3

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Isaac_Brody said:
Yes, but when all I see are tests of people shooting dark corners of rooms, or waving the camera back and forth like a madman, things that still give my GH13 issues I hold my judgment for stuff shot by doers and not obsessive compulsive pixel peepers. :) Just saying, people need to keep a level head about this stuff. Not sure who said this was the second coming, that's just exaggeration.

I know I've hit that point where I pretty universally don't care about or love any cameras, I'm just concerned if it does what I need it to do under my normal shooting conditions. What people do in the privacy of their dark unlit rooms is not my concern. :)
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Again though it seems pretty clear he isnt denying te GH2 is worse than the GH1...hes saying that the GH2 comes off worse than a hacked GH1 when hacked correctly.

This is not a suprise...I wouldnt think Panasonic would go above board just because of a hack in a dated camera.

Im not a pixel peeper...I think its mad when people crop 200x on video or compare chart shots...but I can see without staring too closely some issues with GH2's video (The hack has spoiled us!)...maybe people are shooting wrong, using IA,whatever...so I reserve judgement....but even the competant videos look a bit meh....but then theres plenty of meh videos of hacked GH1 also.

I agree people do need to keep a level head...I think blackout kept a level head by making observations before commiting to a purchase and posted his views here...others on the other hand immediately sold off their GH13's for the GH2 (ive read someone selling off 2 hackable gh1s for one GH2!) before even trying/ seeing footage first hand with the hope that a hack may come (which may not,nothing is certain)....hence my second coming comment.
that dont seem like level headed to me. :2vrolijk_08:

Someone stated it'll be best to wait and see how it plays out...seems like the best approach!
 
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Isaac_Brody said:
Yes, but when all I see are tests of people shooting dark corners of rooms, or waving the camera back and forth like a madman, things that still give my GH13 issues I hold my judgment for stuff shot by doers and not obsessive compulsive pixel peepers. :) Just saying, people need to keep a level head about this stuff. Not sure who said this was the second coming, that's just exaggeration.

I know I've hit that point where I pretty universally don't care about or love any cameras, I'm just concerned if it does what I need it to do under my normal shooting conditions. What people do in the privacy of their dark unlit rooms is not my concern. :)
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Isaac - I was not able to post my footage but I did do a/b tests and the GH2 even in cine mode did not hold up to a hacked Gh1.3 on many things there were codec problems.
I did provide some very nice high end GH1.3 clips that I shot that I am pretty sure would have some serious issues if shot with a GH2 according to what I saw while I had it. Also, the clips that are posted (raw .mts) files show the issues I describe. basically codec breakup and mud in high detail and shadow areas. I as well am not attached to any one camera I simply reported I saw no value in upgrading to the GH2 from GH1.3 at the current time, it would actually be a step down in my opinion.

Here are some native hacked GH1.3 clips:

http://blackout.com/gh13hack/00028-blackout-gh13-freaktimeb-roll.MTS (might take a while) lots of high face detail and complex wall... pretty much no breakup or mud.. the slightest little issues is some shadow areas which all GH cameras do, but still much better than how the GH2 handled them, nothing major and I would cut to only the best usable parts anyway like the opening walking sequence and the girl ancing with the empire state building in the background.

http://blackout.com/clients/top-of-ghostbusters-building.MTS (top of Ghostbusters building in NYC.. very high detail... very little aliasing, incredible image stability and hold up of detail in both the wide city shot and the bushes and complex brick wall behind me)

I shot similar stuff like this on the GH2 and there were issues.. in the 2nd clip, the detail in the brick wall would have caused breakup from a handheld shot such as this.
 
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I don't think anybody doubts you Blackout. I just think it's too early to tell what the GH2 will really be capable of. Since Panny seems to be pushing the release out further and further, I can only guess they are probably trying to fix up last minute issues. Hopefully one of those will be this codec issue.

That being said, I still think their implementation of the AVCHD codec is lacking something in the GH2 if you see codec breakup with B frames. Their pro AVC codec (which is very similar to the Bframe GH2 one) doesn't show anything like this. This breakup is not a bitrate thing at all, it's a compression efficiency thing, most likely set in firmware. On the GH1 we were lucky enough to be able to increase the bitrate to overcome *some* of the problems of the lack of B frames and the lack of overall compression efficiency. On the AF100 stuff, we are limited to the same bitrate but something in the firmware is different and obviously makes a huge difference in codec robustness.

Either way, Panny did listen to us and gave us native 24p and an enhanced codec with B frames but something else is still lacking. Maybe they will make this right before the full launch or maybe they'll improve it with firmware updates. Either way, I'd love to get a GH2 (or 2) if they get this straightened out but I'm going to be holding back until I see what their endgame is going to be. Until then, I'm reading everybody's opinions but I'm not taking anything to heart because I know it can and will probably change before it's really available.
 
The first hand account is appreciated. My point is that first hand account plus footage is always better. It will be interesting if someone actually gets around to posting GH2 plus nano footage, not sure why that hasn't been done. Perhaps it's just too early. If it's clean then that would be a huge reason to pickup a GH2 along with the monitoring capability.
 
So if the black magic does allow us to record the native 1080p @ 24 FPS uncompressed stream, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to actually record and store the uncompressed stream as it is? Won’t that mean HUGE files? Even bigger than the 100+ Mb/sec MJPEG files?

Or are you going to encode directly to a very high bit rate NLE?

Just curious to see how far you guys are going in search of the perfect encoding.
 
Most likely true... things change... but I thnk these cameras are made already I doubt there is going to be a codec change before shipping... but we'll see. Again for now my strategy is to keep the hacked GH1.3s (jobless D 52mbit settings) and go for a AF-100 if I like it when it comes out, with some sort of box to encode it from the uncompressed sdi or hdmi out. Panasonic has a nice avc-intra box but it's like $5000. A little ridiculous.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=603399&Q=&is=REG&A=details

So with the AF-100 and that box or something similar... you will be at the highest possible quality I think one could get for digital cinema at 1080p... it's still $10,000 for the cam and that box... which is $20,000 cheaper than a red setup.... but a red is 4K..... but I think it can keep it's 4K I think I would rather have the $20,000 right now for my movies budget... should I hit with something or win some festival then we'll see.

Plus, I probably won't buy that hpg20.. that's just too ridiculous of a price... I'll probably go with something like the atomos ninja setup... but hopefully something comes out that is more window 7 64 bit friendly. I am not a mac or final cut fan in general.

Interesting note aside - I just toyed with the new Edius 6 and it handles native hacked GH1.3 avchd footage like butter, as if you had transferred to cineform.
 
Blackout, Does the new Edius 6 correctly reverse telecine the GH1 files? Or does it still have that pulsing you noticed on your footage?
 
noirist said:
Blackout, Does the new Edius 6 correctly reverse telecine the GH1 files? Or does it still have that pulsing you noticed on your footage?
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Well it doesn't NEED to reverse telecine. I am shooting with a hacked GH1.3 native 24p checked!
 
I guess I would buy the gH2 if the ugly stair stepping disappeared and I could use my 20mm as several zoom lenses with the pixel thingy. I would look at it as buying a set of lenses, actually.
But if the stair stepping has not been improved I would have to pass. At least until the big sale :)
 
Blackout said:
Well it doesn't NEED to reverse telecine. I am shooting with a hacked GH1.3 native 24p checked!
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Wow! I heard so many problems with 24p at high bit rates that I never tried it. Can you please post your exact settings so that I can try them? Thank you!
 
Like I said I have about a 99% reliability rate using transcend class 10 cards and 100% with sandisk extreme but that cards just too expensive for me I can deal with a write error every thousands takes or so. What do you want me to actual post the 133 hacked file?
 
mojo43 said:
Is that why? It just looked like the bitrate was at 12mbps for a scene that was high detailed. Mud...
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Just imagine if it had been true 1080p @ 60 FPS with 17 mb/sec. Then you would really be seeing mud. Be careful what you ask for.

One thing I don't understand though is how TV shows can do a complex water scene like this at 18 mb/sec or less MPG2? My over the air actually doesn't look half bad. I would hope that the GH2 could do much better with H.264 instead of MPG2.
 
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