GH13 LPowell's Reliable Hack (but WITH NATIVE TICKED) Experiences & Disasters

Lucas Adamson

Lucas Adamson

Well-known member
I have been using LPowell's Reliability hack since I got my camera, as I figure that gets me closer to quality without risking disaster and the total unprofessionality of losing footage.

Recently though (last 2 shoots) I have been using it with the 25p native switched on, and can report NO REAL WORLD lockups or failures, even though I could get a lock-up when tripod mounted, pointing at grass with deep focus.

I am wondering if anybody else uses this hack with native active, and what their experiences with it are.

Personally I certainly like the knowledge that the AVCHD is more efficient in native mode, and so the bitrate doesn't need to be so high, hence we won't get mud with this setting. I also like it for editing, as it is less strain on my system in native mode.

But what are your experiences of it? Safe to use? Worth the risk? Pissing into the wind?
 
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In low contrast situations - like a living room and not too much motion no problems with the native ticket.

But when using it to film outdoors, bright conditions and much action the recording usually stops after a minute or two.
 
It's still just grass for me. I'm a touch nervous, because I have a gig coming up that requires me to leave a camera rolling whilst I man another, and I'm a bit concerned about getting a lock-up in that situation, but like I say, I've tried and tried to get a lockup, and it's just static grass on a tripod or steady hand held that gets me locked up.

Anybody else?
 
If you're getting recording failures only in scenes with dense, high-contrast edge details, you may want to try using a mild diffusion filter in front of the lens. I suspect these high-bitrate lockups are provoked not by the actual details in the image, but by sharp-edged aliasing artifacts generated by the sensor. Aliasing can artificially enhance the apparent sharpness of an image and it's often difficult to distinguish from genuine image details.

Make a test video of a slow pan across a sharply-focused, high-detail background and examine it at precisely 100% magnification. Any flickering you may see in the scrolling background details is likely due to aliasing artifacts. The aliasing creates spurious details that move slightly in the opposite direction to the panning motion between frames. If you pause the video on any single frame, it will look fine - the flicker is caused by minute discrepancies between frames.

With a diffusion filter, you can mute most of the extreme details that generate aliases before they reach the image sensor. You can't do this filtering in post-processing the video without blunting the genuine details as well. I've gotten good results with a Tiffen Black Diffusion FX3 filter in daylight, and a Tiffen Soft FX3 filter in incandescent light, though I suspect an FX2 or even FX1 may be nearly as effective. In general, I've found that any motion in a video looks smoother and more natural when shot with a deliberate reduction in sharpness.
 
OK thanks for the advice.

I'm unlikely to buy diffusion filters for that purpose, however, as there's still so much equipment I need. I am yet to buy a Vari-ND for example! I do always shoot with digital sharpenning dialled all the way down, if that helps.

Indoors, I can't get it to lock up at all, so I think I'll be OK for this hour long show I'm filming.

Personally I suspect these lock-ups to be something to do with an I-frame being identical to the previous I-frame and high bitrate, that causes it to lock up - that would explain why it seems to need deep focus, high detail and super-steady, unchanging frame to cause a lock-up. I can shoot grass with deep focus all day, so long as I keep the camera moving, or there's a breeze running through the grass. That has to tell you something!
 
Lucas Adamson said:
I do always shoot with digital sharpenning dialled all the way down, if that helps.
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Sorry to say, the Sharpening setting won't help, the aliasing is generated at the image sensor itself. Turning down sharpening may help conceal alias artifacts, but it cannot prevent them from occurring.

Indoors, I can't get it to lock up at all, so I think I'll be OK for this hour long show I'm filming.
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Good to hear!
 
Old Canon FD's are another option to shoot softer, also don't forget you can record in hacked motion jpeg mode, especially good for indoors as long as the clip length limitation is acceptable..
 
I find that with my FDs (I have 24/2, 35/2, 50/1.4, 85/1.8) they are actually very sharp (in spite of what people say) but the short dof when wide open creates a softness in the background, which helps prevent lock-up of course.

However, I'm going to start shouting it:

"FDs ARE NOT SOFT, POOR-RESOLVING LENSES AT ALL - THEY ARE LOW CONTRAST LENSES, WHICH IS A GOOD THING FOR FILM-MAKING ON A VIDEO CAMERA AS IT INCREASES THE POTENTIAL DYNAMIC RANGE OF THE COLOUR/ CONTRAST CORRECTED FOOTAGE!!!"

If stopped down to f4 and shooting at grass on a tripod, I get lock-up every time withing 3 or 4 seconds, with any FD lens or Lumix lens or Zeiss lens I have.
 
My experiences are like yours, I can pretty much shoot anything with LPowell's reliable patch with 24p checked. Outdoors, landscape, etc. But I will consistently get lockups when I point at grass or the bed of rocks in my front yard.

I can get about 20 seconds or so pointed at grass, and about a minute on the rocks or bushes.
 
I used lpowell's settings with max 64* and was not able to crash it even with the swirlygig, but I have not tried "just grass" There's also a thread somewhere about no empty frames if max is over a zillion, but I haven't tried that either. The 24p looks really amazing, IMHO.
 
Once I upgraded to a class 10 card, I haven't had any problems. Before that, I could consistently cause a lockup by mounting the camera on a tripod and shooting a highly detailed, but static image. When shooting by hand, the only problem I ran into was shooting a rock hill with a tremendous amount of detail or a grass field. This same shots work fine with the new class 10 card. So, knocking on wood, I'm very happy with this hack including the 24p patch.
 
It is really the weirdest phenomenon. Static is the key thing that causes the lock-up, in my experience. That and high contrast/ detail.
 
Here's some weirdness for you. I used the patch with a Sandisk class 10 32g. I shot a school variety show. Performers with a spotlight and a black backdrop. Used 1080 24p checked. Everything looked great in my lcd screen, proper framing and color. When I copied the footage in Log & Transfer in FCP6, the footage seems to be only the upper left hand of what I saw on the lcd. In other words, looks like if you took a 1280x720 portion out of the upper left quadrant of the 1920x1080 file. Faces were cut off and framing just off. Luckily it was just the dress rehearsal that I shot. I switched to 720p60 for the show. I haven't even heard of anything like this yet?
 
Geno said:
Used 1080 24p checked...the footage seems to be only the upper left hand of what I saw on the lcd.
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This will occur in FHD mode if you inadvertantly enable PTool's "AVCHD Size" patch. This patch is dysfunctional and should never be used.
 
Really, who shoots static patches of grass or rocks in a real-world shoot? I think people WAY over analyze this stuff. If it works in your production use it. If it don't then modify the scene / script to make it work with your (your equipment) capabilities. Maybe I'm old-school like that...
 
muckman said:
Really, who shoots static patches of grass or rocks in a real-world shoot? I think people WAY over analyze this stuff. If it works in your production use it. If it don't then modify the scene / script to make it work with your (your equipment) capabilities. Maybe I'm old-school like that...
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I get what you're saying. I don't shoot static grass ever, obviously, but I wanted other's experiences, as I also need to be able to leave my b-roll camera on a static tripod for an hour, when shooting theatre shows, and know for a fact that when I come back to it I won't have a locked-up camera and no shot recorded at all, as that would be more than a little embarrassing. Explaining that my GH1 hack really is as good as Canon cameras might be a tough sell after that! Getting paid might be tough too. So, I thought I'd ask if anybody had had any "real world" disasters.
 
Lucas Adamson said:
I get what you're saying. I don't shoot static grass ever, obviously, but I wanted other's experiences, as I also need to be able to leave my b-roll camera on a static tripod for an hour, when shooting theatre shows, and know for a fact that when I come back to it I won't have a locked-up camera and no shot recorded at all, as that would be more than a little embarrassing. Explaining that my GH1 hack really is as good as Canon cameras might be a tough sell after that! Getting paid might be tough too. So, I thought I'd ask if anybody had had any "real world" disasters.
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I hear you bro. In that case I'd just use the most reliable settings (thanks lpowell!) and make the most of it in post, especially if it's just b-roll. I try to treat my GH1 exactly like a 16mm film camera, cinematography wise. Use it the best way you can within it's limitations or use a different tool for the job if it comes to that. I don't shoot a lot in 24pN for the known reliability reasons, but when I have I've never locked up. Then again I'm not shooting test patterns, just short narrative-style clips with appropriate lighting, action, movement etc.
 
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