GH2 Gh2 "vibrant" profile = less noise?

B

berylium

Well-known member
Testing the "vibrant" color profle on the Gh2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tec9WZ8fA

Apparently the color mode gives less noise, according to Drew at the Drewnetwork.

After doing some tests, I'm inclined to think so. The colors might be a bit on the bright side, but I figure I can dial them down in post.

Any thoughts on using Vibrant instead of the Smooth everyone (I think) is using?
 
berylium said:
Testing the "vibrant" color profle on the Gh2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tec9WZ8fA

Apparently the color mode gives less noise, according to Drew at the Drewnetwork.

After doing some tests, I'm inclined to think so. The colors might be a bit on the bright side, but I figure I can dial them down in post.

Any thoughts on using Vibrant instead of the Smooth everyone (I think) is using?
Click to expand...

I'll echo that I also find it very clean. More so than standard and smooth at least. I think it might just be the increased contrast and crushed dark areas that's giving the perception of noise free, though.
 
I also use it on a number of projects where I just want a quick, clean image with good color and contrast baked in.
 
+1 for the increased contrast. Darker areas are hidden more, so compared to say, Nostalgic, you don't see nearly as much of the noise that's actually there. The image is closer to a "finalized" state straight from the camera than Nostalgic would be. With adjusting, they'd probably look very similar in the end.

I've actually thought about using Vibrant, because, uh, the colors are so vibrant. ;) I find Nostalgic and Smooth to be a bit pale, even with +2 saturation. I'm always cranking up the saturation in post to compensate. I do like the wider dynamic range of Nostalgic, though, and as long as I don't go insane on the ISO, I can easily get rid of the extra chroma noise from the added saturation.
 
You could try aswell to run the GH2 with just the official firmware 1.1 and without any hack. This should give you the least amount of noise, reading that hacked GH2 produce more of it in general.
 
moxrox said:
You could try aswell to run the GH2 with just the official firmware 1.1 and without any hack. This should give you the least amount of noise, reading that hacked GH2 produce more of it in general.
Click to expand...

This is kind of true, but kind of not :). Natively, there should be some noise to the image. But because in the unhacked GH2 there isn't enough bandwidth, some of that noise gets clumped together in macroblocks... which is worse? When you hack the GH2, you're seeing closer to the native image before 24mps AVCHD compression dumbs it down.

Personally, I'd much rather have some nice noise (which you can run through a denoiser with great results) rather than unfixable (to my knowledge) macroblocks that show up with a vengeance when you're color grading.
 
It is actually quite simple. Smooth and Nostalgic artificially boost the dynamic range by increasing the shadow exposure in the color profiles. That gives the appearance of more dynamic range. However, it is just a software trick that you could do in post processing.

The Vibrant and Dynamic modes don’t boost the signal at all and they increase contrast which can mask some noise.

The only reason I use Smooth is because all of the other modes have turned the contrast too high. Since that is destructive I can’t undo that in post. The smooth setting has more noise but it matches most closely to what I would do in post processing anyway.

Why won’t Panasonic just create a color profile that is as close to the RAW image as possible? Don’t boost anything. Just leave it be and we will fix it in post processing.
 
mpgxsvcd said:
It is actually quite simple. Smooth and Nostalgic artificially boost the dynamic range by increasing the shadow exposure in the color profiles. That gives the appearance of more dynamic range. However, it is just a software trick that you could do in post processing.

The Vibrant and Dynamic modes don’t boost the signal at all and they increase contrast which can mask some noise.

The only reason I use Smooth is because all of the other modes have turned the contrast too high. Since that is destructive I can’t undo that in post. The smooth setting has more noise but it matches most closely to what I would do in post processing anyway.

Why won’t Panasonic just create a color profile that is as close to the RAW image as possible? Don’t boost anything. Just leave it be and we will fix it in post processing.
Click to expand...

Aw, dang! Higher contrast is what I didn't want... may consider moving back to smooth mode.

The main reason I switched to Vibrant is the claim that the "chroma channels" is slightly blurred, to give a 4.2.2 effect, thus reducing noise.

So far, I've not seen any independent confirmation for that claim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YKRKBrkKlc&feature=relmfu
 
Smooth mode !just the V 1.1 and no noise at all in normal lighting with mine,strange ,vimeo and you tube are no places to look for noise in the first place.
 
I have settled on Vibrant but I am more on the video side, not film side. I do a rather large low-mid lift in post as the footage straight from the camera is too contrasty for my tastes. I do plan on testing some different modes in the next week. I am also upgrading to the latest version of Edius which now processes all footage in 10-bit. I expect to be able to lift the low end even more gracefully after the update. This mode really benefits from the increased bitrates offered by the hack imho.
 
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