GH2 GH3 w/ HDMI External Recorder

Just got my Gh3 this week and shot a bit of 24p 50 mov. It really looks good. I have a HyperDeck Shuttle that I use with my AF100 (though I almost never shoot uncompressed -- too pricey in terms of HD space and with no visible advantage over DNxHD -- at least not to my untrained eye), and the 24p 50 mov looks every bit as good as the better codec coming out of my AF. I wouldn't even think of bothering with an external recorder.
 
JordanService said:
Hmmm wow this is really interesting. I always assumed that raw was the equivalent of 4:4:4 but obviously not. Which actually makes a lot of sense. Recently I was keying some RED footage and I was surprised at how poorly it keyed.

@Thomas Smet mind sharing your technique to get 4:4:4 using filters out 4:2:0 that seems kinda like magic to me. So yeah, I don't believe you, but I hope to god you are right. I will have to say I have gotten similar results to keying SLR footage than from poorly handled red footage. (ie RED footage transcoded to prores 422 1080)
Click to expand...

Well the Adobe CS6 software up converts 4:2:0 AVCHD material to a sort of 4:4:4 all on it's own. No magic there at all. Is it a perfect up conversion to 4:4:4? Of course not but it is better then leaving it at 4:2:0. Basically what you end up with is a 4:4:4 with slightly softer chroma. Think of blurring an image but in this case the luma pixels are not blurred. It really helps.

The software 5DtoRGB does the same thing as well. http://rarevision.com/5dtorgb/

There are other filters out there as well. I used to do this in Apple Shake where I created my own filter that would slightly upscale and blur only the two chroma channels. It could even work miracles with DV footage. Just do a search for chroma up sampling and you will find lots of information out there on the process. Not magic at all and very simple really. Chroma up sampling is not really all that different then what single bayer sensors (RED) have to do to fill in the blanks of color information. They have a slight advantage due to the arrangement of those color pixels but still a destructive process making color pixels that didn't exist before.

Now I should remind you that it isn't as perfect as true 4:4:4 but good luck finding true 4:4:4. The only true raw 4:4:4 I have ever seen was from a 3D rendering program where I rendered on green instead of an alpha channel to prove a point to somebody who didn't believe me.
 
This is an old thread but the OP's question seems to remain unanswered, and now I'm curious too. Has anyone with a GH3 and an external recorder tried capturing the uncompressed HDMI output, and if so then was it worth it?
 
Yes, I've captured the GH3's HDMI output with a Blackmagic Intensity card. Is an external recorder worth it? In a word, no. There is no gain in chroma resolution. It is identical to the in-camera recording. Panasonic said the GH3's HDMI output is 4.2.0. Based on my tests, that is accurate. As for the rest of the picture, the in-camera codecs are so good that there is nothing to gain by recording externally.
 
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