GH2 - Best Video Settings for Birds

E

ekimzulad

New member
I'm pretty new to the video word and am therefore a bit confused as to which settings to use on the GH2 for taking videos of birds. I've done a quick test comparing 720p, 1080i & 1080p (24fps), and here's my findings:

1) On both my 24" 1080p Dell monitor & my 50" 1080p LCD TV, I can see a difference. 1080p (24fps) looks the sharpest, and 1080i looks a bit sharper than 720p.

2) When using ETC mode, then I see a bigger difference between 1080i and 720p, causing me to conclude that I will only use ETC mode on 720p when I absolutely need either the 60fps or the larger crop.

3) While 1080p (24fps) certainly looks the best, I notice that the birds movements are not as "smooth" as the other two settings. I can probably get away with using this on a perched bird that isn't moving much, when I want the absolute best quality.

My questions are as follows:

A) Some have recommended using 720p over 1080i saying they look the same. But I've noticed on both my TV & monitor that 1080i looks a bit better. Am I missing something here?

B) I'd like to slow down some of the videos like you see on the Planet Earth/Life series to really appreciate the movements of the bird (or mammal). Can I do this with 1080i video or would I have to use 720p because it's 60fps?

C) What PC video editing software would you recommend for beginners, where I can do slomo and other basic editing?

D) Would you change the Sharpness/Contrast/Saturation/Noise settings or would you use any of the presets (Nature/Vivid/Smooth/etc?)? I've read that the Smooth setting will give me the cleanest slate for video editing, but actually I'm not sure I really want to do much video editing.

E) It also seems that when you change these settings for pics that they are also changed for videos, is there a way around that?

Sorry for the long post. If you can shed any insight on any of the above questions that would be greatly appreciated.
 
A) 1080i will have better resolution, whereas 720p will have better temporal resolution (ie for movement) Both are the same bitrate (unlike 1080p24 which is superior)

B) 720p

D) It's really your preference, what sort of look you like with what sort of birds. Remember you can also play around with White Balance settings to achieve the colour you want.

E) Yes use the custom set memory (C1, C2, C3), all the settings which are saved while in that setting hold even things like film modes and white balance.
 
I don't have a GH2 yet, but I've been using my GH1 and 7D for bird photography and videos.

Regardless of 720p vs 1080p, make sure to keep your shutter speeds at only 2x the fps, so that's 1/50 in 24p and 1/120 in 60p. I'll also go as high as 1/200 in 60p. If you let your shutter speeds get higher, you'll end up with a "sharper" image, but the video will stutter and be hard to watch.
 
I used GH1 Gh13 and now GH2 for bird videography. On GH1 the 720p mjpeg was my favored format as the 720p AVC would brake at some occasions.
With the GH13 things have changed and I used 1080p for shooting and switched to 720p for slowmo - all with high bit rates.
Your observations on the gh2 resolution are correct .
1080p24 has high resolution also with etc, 720p has much less resolution and will brake on some occasions (like GH1) and with etc turned on will look like SD! After trying this mode for a while I decided to avoid it.

You have to routs to choose from :
1) 1080p or 1080p80% (no sound) for general purpose and 720p for the slow motion clips. Here you will need a strong machine and a good editing software to handle your footage.
2) Go with MJEPG 720p for general purpose and switch to 720p AVC for slow motion. MJPEG looks great and is very easy to render on almost any machine.

http://vimeo.com/15769634

As for settings, You need only a starting point. I personally would recommend SMOOTH with -1 for sharpness and contrast.
 
my findings are that 720P and 50/60i are indentical in sharpness i have done many tests,but i prefer 720P i dont like interlaced and the problems it gives ie jaggies etc .
 
This was my response to your same question on dpreview.

It really depends on how you are displaying 1080i vs. 720p. If you are outputting 1080i directly to the TV then 1080i will look better because it will interlace and then deinterlace 720p. Make sure you are outputting 720p for 720p. Also your TV probably has a good deinterlacer in it so you won't have any issues with 1080i there.

The problem is that not every display is created the same. 1080i might look great on one TV and then look terrible on a computer. It completely depends on the display and the deinterlacer. In reality 1080i will never have more vertical resolution than 720p when both are properly displayed. However, 1080i can have slightly more horizontal resolution when properly displayed. That difference is very slight though.
Here are two 1:1 files you can download to scientifically compare the two.

720p
http://vimeo.com/17980452

1080i
http://vimeo.com/17980314

Pretty much all of the shows on discovery channel are 1080p @ 24 FPS embedded in 1080i for transmission. That is the format that the GH1 shoots. However, the GH2's 1080p @ 24 FPS is essentially the same thing. If they can shoot animals like that then it can be done.

You just have to get the right shutter speed. 2x the frame rate is a good rule of thumb. However, there are times when you can do faster shutter speeds for things like slow motion shots.

Play with the 1080p 80% slow motion mode as well. You can speed it back up by 20% and get really nice 1080p @ 30 FPS and the full bit rate. It doesn't have sound. However, you are probably so far from the birds that it won't matter anyway.

Otherwise 720p is definitely the best mode for birds because it gives you the longest extended teleconversion feature. You just have to make sure you have enough light. If your ISO gets above 640 you will not be happy with the results. The ETC mode really magnifies noise. However, it does it the same for all modes because each one of the modes is 1:1 pixel mapping.

The issue is that when you display 720p ETC video on a 1080p display you are blowing that noise up even more. If you shoot 1080p ETC and display it on 1080p it will look the same as 720p ETC on a 720p display minus the differences in field of view.

I tried to shoot some birds while we were in India. I found that I was zooming in too much and that was making it too hard to follow the bird. Try shooting 1080p 80% slow motion and zoom out slightly. That will probably give you the smoothest high resolution video. I wish I had tried that while I was there but I didn't realize how good the slow motion mode was at that time.

Birds in India
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdplj1sHXaI&t=15m28s
 
sasi_yaad said:
1080p24 has high resolution also with etc, 720p has much less resolution and will brake on some occasions (like GH1) and with etc turned on will look like SD! After trying this mode for a while I decided to avoid it.

You have to routs to choose from :
1) 1080p or 1080p80% (no sound) for general purpose and 720p for the slow motion clips. Here you will need a strong machine and a good editing software to handle your footage.
2) Go with MJEPG 720p for general purpose and switch to 720p AVC for slow motion. MJPEG looks great and is very easy to render on almost any machine.

http://vimeo.com/15769634

As for settings, You need only a starting point. I personally would recommend SMOOTH with -1 for sharpness and contrast.
Click to expand...

The ETC mode is a 1:1 pixel mode. Technically 720p and 1080p will have the exact same resolution in both modes because there is no scaling when it records the image. The 1080p will just have a larger field of view with the same detail level.

The issue comes in when you display the 1080p vs. 720p mode. If you scale the 720p video up to 1080p then it will appear to have less resolution. If you display them both at their native resolutions with the same field of view then they will have the same detail levels.

You should never use the MJPEG mode on a GH2. The 720p AVC mode is a true 60 FPS instead of the 30 FPS on MJPEG. Both bit rates are the same but the AVC mode has higher quality audio.

Nature mode offers the best dynamic range with good color. Whatever you do turn Noise Reduction down to -2. The NR setting will produce some very bad distortions at higher ISOs. Also turn sharpness up to +1 or even +2 but turn Intelligent resolution all the way off. The sharpness setting will give the appearance of more defined lines with minimal aliasing and moiré. The intelligent resolution feature will just introduce too much aliasing.
 
You can get distortion like the following picture from using the in camera noise reduction. It even applies the noise reduction directly to the RAW image. It almost looks like the image is blurry from camera shake. However, the pictures below were all taken with the camera on a tripod and I used the timer to make sure that the camera did not move at all.

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/4222674355/albums/silkypix-noise-reduction-issue

Both of the pictures were taken with identical settings except for noise reduction. They were both on a tripod a few seconds apart and both were processed with the same settings from the RAW files. Which one do you prefer?

With Noise Reduction

399225BB09154335A362232854C44384.jpg

Without Noise reduction
D3CA8B41DD694E47A32FBC2662EBE31F.jpg


I have found that the noise in the movies with ETC turned on will be unacceptable over ISO 640 without doing some noise reduction in post processing. There is actually the exact same noise in the ETC videos as there is in a still image. However, the video shows the noise as it changes from one instant to the next. That changing or flickering of the noise gets distracting above ISO 640 with ETC.
 
Last edited:
Thank you. I am putting that in my gh2 notebook. You are nice.
mpgxsvcd said:
You can get distortion like the following picture from using the in camera noise reduction. It even applies the noise reduction directly to the RAW image. It almost looks like the image is blurry from camera shake. However, the pictures below were all taken with the camera on a tripod and I used the timer to make sure that the camera did not move at all.

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/4222674355/albums/silkypix-noise-reduction-issue


View attachment 31264

I have found that the noise in the movies with ETC turned on will be unacceptable over ISO 640 without doing some noise reduction in post processing. There is actually the exact same noise in the ETC videos as there is in a still image. However, the video shows the noise as it changes from one instant to the next. That changing or flickering of the noise gets distracting above ISO 640 with ETC.
Click to expand...
 
A) Some have recommended using 720p over 1080i saying they look the same. But I've noticed on both my TV & monitor that 1080i looks a bit better. Am I missing something here?
- since it is interlaced it can cause some problems most people want to avoid. you can de-interlace it but this will either change it into a 1920x520p or 1080p30 (1080p25 on pal).

B) I'd like to slow down some of the videos like you see on the Planet Earth/Life series to really appreciate the movements of the bird (or mammal). Can I do this with 1080i video or would I have to use 720p because it's 60fps?
- I think 1080i will give problems while slowing down, I haven't tested it yet though. 720p is your best bet.
also you might want to check out software like twixtor, or in the new Final Cut there is a option similar to twixtor.

C) What PC video editing software would you recommend for beginners, where I can do slomo and other basic editing?
- I'll try to give some pro's of some of the editing softwares out there:
Final Cut: many effects and presets. so you will get good looking videos.
Premiere: many effects and presets, and it links with other adobe programs.
Sony Vegas: very quick workflow but the effects arent as good looking (in combination with After Effects etc). It originates as a audio editing software so it has allot of options here.


D) Would you change the Sharpness/Contrast/Saturation/Noise settings or would you use any of the presets (Nature/Vivid/Smooth/etc?)? I've read that the Smooth setting will give me the cleanest slate for video editing, but actually I'm not sure I really want to do much video editing.
If you want to change stuff in post you'd want to go with the 'flattest' image. many claim the flattest is smooth with everything set to -2. Always leave noise reduction to -2 there many other (better) options in post. If you dont want to do post processing shoot some footage in all modes and look it at your tv and choose whatever you think is best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top