GH2 Layman's observations of 24p / 1080i / 720p

R

rackley

Member
From a "filming the family + dog" perspective, I made a few short clips and reviewed them to compare. Here is what I'm seeing:

24p = Best detail BY FAR, but when panning everything seems to go to hell in a hand basket. The codec just doesn't seem to deal very well with full-frame motion. Maybe it's just the 24 frames per second limit?

720p = The detail suffers, but motion and panning look FAR better than 24p and 1080i.

1080i = Straight off the camera, the interlacing makes it look like crap, especially when panning. Deinterlacing is basically required, which takes time and manual effort. After deinterlacing it looks about the same quality as 720p but doesn't deal with motion as well. Overall = Fail. I doubt I will ever use it after running these tests.

Is there some trick or setting for 24p to get motion to look better? It's definitely recording at 22Mbps / 24H rec quality, and I'm using smooth film mode with -2/-2/0/0. Or is this just the nature of the 24p beast?

Thanks,
Ray
 
Some people have had issues with the codec breaking up in a similar fashion to the gh1 pre-hack.

I personally haven't had any issues yet though.
 
rackley said:
24p = Best detail BY FAR, but when panning everything seems to go to hell in a hand basket. The codec just doesn't seem to deal very well with full-frame motion. Maybe it's just the 24 frames per second limit?
Click to expand...

Are you seeing the limitations in "filming" at 24p. Movies are shot in 24p (25p - PAL lands) and the DP's and Directors know the limitations.
Try different panning speeds until you learn where it "breaks up". This would true even filming with 35MM film or even a RED.
I pretty much stay with 1080 24p. I use 720 60p if I want something in slo-mo. I have not shot interlaced in years.
 
Ray, if you're watching the footage on a typical HDTV flat panel display, 1080i should give you buttery smooth motion and it should look anything but 'crap'. On my Pioneer Kuro, 1080i looks gorgeous and very detailed.

I really avoid watching on a computer monitor and always do critical viewing on a large screen plasma. Deinterlacing should be handled very nicely by any decent flat panel HDTV. When viewed in this manner, I don't see much difference in detail between 24p and 1080i. The biggest difference is the 1080i frame rate allows for buttery smooth motion without the stutter of 24p. You should be seeing much more detail in 1080i than 720p.
 
I assumed the OP meant codec break up, but maybe they were just observing judder from panning too fast.
 
I assumed the OP meant codec break up, but maybe they were just observing judder from panning too fast.

I was whipping all day following kids in a giant indoor amusement park for kids with mesh netting and all sort of detail and the codec didn't throw up on me once, but some people continue to claim detail drops significantly. I'm still trying to see it for myself.
 
So here is the 24p test video I'm speaking of (yes, I know the exposure is off): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTz-_jAhrdw

Notice that when the camera is steady the detail is awesome, but when I start panning everything blurs (more or less) and is actually a bit painful for to watch (for me at least). This is totally different from the 720p shot.

It definitely loses something on YouTube, but the 720p panning is clearer, probably due to the higher frame rate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrGOJ9OymGg
 
rackley said:
So here is the 24p test video I'm speaking of (yes, I know the exposure is off): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTz-_jAhrdw

Notice that when the camera is steady the detail is awesome, but when I start panning everything blurs (more or less) and is actually a bit painful for to watch (for me at least). This is totally different from the 720p shot.

It definitely loses something on YouTube, but the 720p panning is clearer, probably due to the higher frame rate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrGOJ9OymGg
Click to expand...

You would never want to pan that fast in a real production. You only see panning like that in home movies.
 
Understood.. But with home movies you can't really set up the shots. The dogs / kids run quickly and you have to pan accordingly if you're already close to them. So for home stuff with lots of panning/motion it sounds like 720p may be the way to go...
 
One caveat for panning in 24p is to have a motivation for the pan. That is, you pan because you're following a moving object, not just scanning a stationary landscape - that's usually when panning becomes hard on the eyes. If you have to pan a landscape in 24p, do so at a very slow speed so that details don't get loss in a blur.
 
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