Gh1 NTSC vs PAL issue

A

Appleman

Member
I'm an aussie and have bought a GH1 from the web. Everything is fine except that the photofunstudio software doesn't recognise my video or .mts files. It says it from a wrong country. I gather it's because the US camera would have been in NTSC and in aussie land here we are PAL.

I understand that when it comes to high definition there are no differences between PAL and NTSC - am i right? unlike standard definition where the PAL video has more resolution.

Is there a way around for me to use Photofun Studion still - how can i get around this? I want to be able to edit and join my numerous .mts files.
 
Screen refresh rate is still different between NTSC and PAL (29.97 vs 25 and 59.94 vs 50). Luckily you can switch between PAL and NTSC with our beloved firmware hack.
 
Yes the hacked GH-1 has the option of converting an NTSC camera to PAL and vice-versa and the PAL one shoots 25fps 1080p and 50fps 720p. You can remove the 30 minute recording restriction that PAL cameras have as well and use OEM batteries.
You just have to get a new camera loaded with 1.2 firmware...and that's not easy now that Panasonic have 'taken umbridge' at Vitaliy's hack. That must have affected their sales in a very noticable way I suspect.
 
Bad news - for me. My newly acquired GH1 cannot be hacked. It's got the newer serial number. any other suggesions please?
 
Luckily i can still play the files -one by one - by the media player Popcorn through my panasonic plasma. of course i want to join them up to make it one file to play once. and also to also edit too.
 
are you on pc or mac?

just use an editing program like vegas, premiere pro cs4 or cs5 to edit your clips. I they work with mts files fine , well i know premiere does if your computer is adequate enough. otherwise you might just have to transcode them to another workable format. I haven't even touched the cd and whatever software that came with the camera =)
 
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You will need to buy a stand alone video editor i think.

No bad thing as the supplied panasonic one is sh#te.

If you dont want a complicated one - I love power director. If you are a wannabee pro then vegas / pinnacle / avid etc.

EDIT: Sorry Mr Fanny didn't see your post.
 
I've tried vegas, and power director. They all transcode or make some changes to the files and also re-render the files to a lower quality. What i want is to be able to edit the original .mts files without a single drop of quality and then join them. I'm not interested in putting them to a dvd so i don't want them to be rerendered. With my HFS10 files - i use the software provided to edit or elecard HD editor. Both these software will edit the software without affecting the quality. I then use the canon software to join the numerous files into one file for playback on the plasma through the media player.

With the GH1's case i would love to be able to use it with the Photofun Studio software cause i think it could be easier to cut and join with that software for the GH1.
 
premiere pro cs4 works for me and alot of others editing with original mts files and exporting to whatever format be it low or high. I don't output to dvd either and I don't think many here do either for playback.

even on the mac you generally have to transcode the original footage to work with in on final cut because it does not like mts. alot of mac users use this method and no one has raised concerns about quality loss.

I guess your editing needs aren't as great so you may not need these types of editing softwares. A quick google search lists some mts editing programs, how well they perform is another story =)
 
Postfade said:
Yes the hacked GH-1 has the option of converting an NTSC camera to PAL and vice-versa and the PAL one shoots 25fps 1080p and 50fps 720p. You can remove the 30 minute recording restriction that PAL cameras have as well and use OEM batteries.
You just have to get a new camera loaded with 1.2 firmware...and that's not easy now that Panasonic have 'taken umbridge' at Vitaliy's hack. That must have affected their sales in a very noticable way I suspect.
Click to expand...

The restriction is only for Europe, my New Zealand PAL GH1 has no such restriction.
 
I've changed my computer time/date location to be in Arizona. But photofunstudio still reports that i'm in the wrong country for using the software. This truly sucks. What if i'm an american and travelled to Australia or a PAL country and can't use the software for the GH1? There is no warning about that anywhere. I'll be up the creek.
 
Eureka !! i've solved it. I removed the software and installed it again - this time it asked for which country and i've put down US - it works great now. Thanks guys for staying and helping out. I knew it did not make any sense that it didn't work - after all i was using the software provided together with the camera. I guess when i first installed it i had pointed to it that i was in Australia - so it probably then assume (correctly ) that a NTSC file cannot be used in a PAL country.

A lot of software still doesn't work properly with AVCHD - i'm just trying to do simple cut/edits and join the .mts files together without a single drop of quality, many software would then render the files together which does lower the original .mts files' quality.
 
Hmmm think you are overstating things a bit. The output in power director (using the appropriate codec) is as far as i am concerned indestinguishable from the original. Don't confuse how the files look in the editing pane with how they look in the final produced product.

You get what you pay for - using the free software will severely limit what you can do so i still don't see why you are so keen on it!

Still - great you got it sorted out to your satisfaction - :happy:
 
you know whats funny alot of the time my footage looks good originally but when i post it with good colour correction it looks fantastic so its an improvement if that makes sense. so much so that the finish product/look makes the original look so so even though it was great to start off with..ha.

I think your belief that exported files from any editing program will suffer quality loss is abit misguided. you may be using the wrong product or just not exporting correctly.
 
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When i had my Canon HFS10 which shoots to a SD card on AVCHD - i did a comparison. I used Ulead, Vegas and when i did a simple join - while the output may be a .mts file when i looked closer i could tell its not the same quality anymore. I could only get original quality in a join in elecard and the canon software. Tsmuxer (1.10.6) was flaky. Maybe there are other combinations of settings in these software which have eluded me but i swore i tried nearly all the reasonable settings.

Now that PhotofunStudio is working - i realised it can only edit/cut a file. There doesn't seem to be any functionality to join the numerous .mts files together - am i right?
 
You are right. As soon as you break the i-frame - p-frame cadence chain in a interframe codec the editor has to recreate new i-frames and subsequent p-frames which effectively means re-rendering. Guess it's something that doesn't bother the majority of members here, including me, as we anyway want to post-process our footage to perfection. Which we do by transcoding to a intraframe codec of much higher quality than the original .mts files and then from a final colour corrected / post-processed master makes new interframe files for viewing and online distribution.

Here's a quick primer in video compression:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression
 
interesting.

would this affect appleman in his basic editing in photofunstudio because will break the i frame p frame candence chain when he exports? I guess what i am trying to ask is re-rendering inevitable once you start cutting and joining mts files as per applemans objective.
 
You can tell when a render happens - it takes a long time to output a file. When its a simple join like what the canon and elecard does - it's quite quick, definitely doesn't feel like a render then.

We're talking about a 5-15% drop in quality when a render happens - that can be accceptable to some but not to me because my requirements are simple - cut/trim and join without utterly any quality hit.
 
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