GH2 gonna try the hack finally...
- Thread starter roei z
- Start date
Lucas Adamson
Well-known member
In my experience, the GOP1 hacks are not worth the extra disk space. Others will say they are, but I can't tell the difference, or at least, improvements over the 44Mb standard GOP hack is so subtle (perhaps 1-3% improvement), yet uses 4x the memory, so for me, I'd recommend a less macho approach for a practical camera operator.
GrahamH
Well-known member
I agree with this, for my needs at least.
Sage
Well-known member
Ok, time to share my own experience. I settled on 3gop and reasoned for a long time that getting rid of gop entirely was an absolute loss of codec efficiency, it that would require a doubling of the bitrate just to keep up. Recently, w/ the latest settings that were supposed to be reasonable intras that could span and do 80%, I was compelled to try out Aquamotion v2. But I accidentally tried Seaquake....
After this, I realized I could not go back. What shocked me was that seaquake appeared to have lower quantization, even though it was AQ3 (what I was using). I took for granted the fact that I frames are allowed superior quant values that p and b frames are not. This means superior color gradations per pixel, and you can feel it. On another note, the noise print became radically more organic and defined, in a pleasing way (most like grain).
And of course, while the hdd bandwidth must be sufficient (make sure not to edit from OS drive!), intra allows the nle to access any frame at random, which is the classic editor's dream. The space draw is sizable (though a vacation from redcode), and even though seaquake spanning and reasonable slo mo bursts are reliably possible w/ a certain 95MB/s card, I can see the draw of 44 12gop for event shooters. But if you are a narrative shooter, you are doing yourself a disservice by not going with seaquake. Try both 44 and seaquake side by side, same everything, and you will be able to comfortably decide (shoot multiple situations, low light iso 800, and iso 160 lens flares, motion shots*, the whole lot).
After this, I realized I could not go back. What shocked me was that seaquake appeared to have lower quantization, even though it was AQ3 (what I was using). I took for granted the fact that I frames are allowed superior quant values that p and b frames are not. This means superior color gradations per pixel, and you can feel it. On another note, the noise print became radically more organic and defined, in a pleasing way (most like grain).
And of course, while the hdd bandwidth must be sufficient (make sure not to edit from OS drive!), intra allows the nle to access any frame at random, which is the classic editor's dream. The space draw is sizable (though a vacation from redcode), and even though seaquake spanning and reasonable slo mo bursts are reliably possible w/ a certain 95MB/s card, I can see the draw of 44 12gop for event shooters. But if you are a narrative shooter, you are doing yourself a disservice by not going with seaquake. Try both 44 and seaquake side by side, same everything, and you will be able to comfortably decide (shoot multiple situations, low light iso 800, and iso 160 lens flares, motion shots*, the whole lot).
Sage
Well-known member
Absolutely blown away by seaquake.
I strongly recommend this card:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/824149-REG/SanDisk_SDSDXPA_064G_A75_Extreme_Pro_64GB_SDHC_SDXC.html
-57 minutes, and it lets you span seaquake for all of it.
Also, that card lets you do slow motion burst (highest quality slo mo possible):
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?267666-Seaquake-Slow-Motion-Burst-Patch-for-95MB-s-SDXC
This is the old standard, no spanning:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/757925-REG/SanDisk_SDSDRX3_032G_A21_Extreme_SDHC_Class_10.html
roei z
Veteran
wow... promising, but i don't "carry" that kind of cash for cards
how slow you can burst the motion?
and how stable is the seaquake?
*btw- did you upload any sample? or a vimeo one?
Sage
Well-known member
The slo mo is 60 fps, with higher bitrate to allow for cleaner twixtor plates, and superior color gradation of AQ3. Seaquake is stable, but if not on one of those 95MB/s cards, you will be limited to less than 4 minute takes (no spanning). And you will be stuck with the normal slow mo hack, burst times will be impractical.
You should see it in motion, here are pngs:
http://sagepictures.com/1sea.png
http://sagepictures.com/2sea.png
http://sagepictures.com/3sea.png
Consider this, 14 mins:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/824139-REG/SanDisk_SDSDXPA_016G_A75_Extreme_Pro_16_GB.html
You should see it in motion, here are pngs:
http://sagepictures.com/1sea.png
http://sagepictures.com/2sea.png
http://sagepictures.com/3sea.png
Consider this, 14 mins:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/824139-REG/SanDisk_SDSDXPA_016G_A75_Extreme_Pro_16_GB.html
Last edited:
Sage
Well-known member
The way I think of it: the gh2 already cost $1k - the card is only $200, and it is like investing in an all new camera. Really a very small expense when a short time ago I was looking at putting down for this:
http://www.red.com/store/media/product/red-mag-64gb
As to video... its coming, but not for a bit.
Isn't it amazing, honestly... that this little $800 camera with a $200 sd card is somehow very much a competitor to the most bleeding edge hd cinema camera around? To think that someone like yourself or even me, who have contemplated putting down well within the 10-25k for a Red, can "settle" for an entire setup that comes out to less than a 64gb "redmag", and the end result would be negligible... just crazy. Times are a-changin'
roei z
Veteran
Yea of course i know the long run meaning of this but i'm really short on cash, and i CAN invest in the extreme III, so how will i experiment?I didn't even hack it yet.Btw- where can i read about spanning? Didn't get it at all...
roei z
Veteran
All true except for the horrible 8-bit banding which gets more visible as the bitrate goes up .. Any solutions?
there's also TerrAQuake patch which is pretty much equal to Seaquake in terms of quality, but because I frames are slightly smaller, it doesn't need top notch cards. Thanks to it I can utilize some of my older non sandisk cl10 cards, retaining almost the maximum bitrate and quality (e. g. white toshiba cl 10, transcend cl 10 is not good enough). You can also try using Driftwoods 132mb GOP3 patch, which excellent as well and works with pretty much all cl10 cards.
btw, how's the movie of yours doing? did you manage to get a distribution deal?
btw, how's the movie of yours doing? did you manage to get a distribution deal?
roei z
Veteran
Please don't remind me about the film...It had a bad script from my need to do things quickly.Now i feel like i suffered a trauma and cannot even think about it.
Pietro Impagliazzo
Well-known member
Been using the 88Mbps patch that you posted and the images it puts out are great. When I embedded them some people even thought they were stills:
Using a Tamron 17-50.
I also had to buy a couple of 16GB cards to use it properly.
Ryan Farnes
Well-known member
Whenever I've watched typical Canon DSLR footage, then seen RED or Alexa footage, its pretty clear which is which due to clarity. With these hacked GH2s, I feel like that clarity is there. At 1080p, it is really going to take a close look to determine which camera. I'm guessing the 8-bit characteristics of some of the GH2 image would be the giveaway, but the cost/performance ratio is amazing.
http://vimeo.com/30232392
When I saw that flower sample I felt like the frames without much motion blur (it was shot handheld) looked good enough to almost fool me as a still image at 1920x1080.
Same thing with the opening shot from this: http://vimeo.com/32520456
Sure, they're not really as good as still images, but they look so much better than the Canon DSLR stuff I've been shooting the last couple of years.
Last edited: