GH5 How GH5’s motion cadence compares to others in its price range?

gumonstro

gumonstro

Well-known member
today I was loooking at some old red scarlet footage i shot around 5 years ago. that motion cadence is sooo much better than my actual GH5s. what a nostalgia. that made me start thinking about what’s the best sub-3500-4000k camera considering only the motion cadence aspect. I feel panasonic is better than sony (more specifically a6500), but miles away from a red. what do you think? best.
 
To my eye, the Blackmagic cameras look better in this regard. Especially the ones with a global shutter (BMPC, Ursa, Ursa Mini 4K).

Just picked up a BMPC for this very reason.
 
gumonstro said:
today I was loooking at some old red scarlet footage i shot around 5 years ago. that motion cadence is sooo much better than my actual GH5s. what a nostalgia. that made me start thinking about what’s the best sub-3500-4000k camera considering only the motion cadence aspect. I feel panasonic is better than sony (more specifically a6500), but miles away from a red. what do you think? best.
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I believe the rolling shutter of the two is quite similar (13ms GH5/14ms Scarlet)

I know you shoot All-I, this is key here. Also, OLPF smoothness and lack of sharpening play a vital role. Be sure to use my OLPF settings

Last, focal length, and camera/subject movement are key perceptual elements (separate from camera)
 
If motion cadence is referred to being rolling shutter then it is what Sage said, quite similar.
Otherwise, it is pseudo-scientific nonsense, including shooting all-intra as opposed to long GOP.
 
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Cary Knoop said:
If motion cadence is referred to being rolling shutter then it is what Sage said, quite similar.
Otherwise, it is pseudo-scientific nonsense, including shooting all-intra as opposed to long GOP.
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Cary, I appreciate your rigor. Motion cadence is very real. Yes, it is very difficult to quantify - that does not mean it does not exist*

In my own qualitative experience shooting video, motion cadence is indeed important, and it is impacted by both codec compression and sharpening (in addition to rolling shutter)
 
Sage said:
Motion cadence is very real.
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As I said before if it means rolling shutter I would agree, with anything else, except for frame rate, I disagree.

If there is one thing I really dislike it is all this "filmic", "cinematic", cadence and other "magic" attributions to cameras and all this magic-secret LUT industry for post-production. If anything, it indicates incompetency to me.

Obviously, one needs a good quality camera but the camera is just about the least important element in making a good looking movie, but for some people, it seems that it is the prime, if not the sole, factor. A camera records the scene, just like an audio recorder records the music. The "magic" comes from the performance, the light, the makeup, the camera movements, lenses, zoom, the sound effects, etc not from the camera itself!

Perhaps camera suppliers should after manufacturing dip their sensors first in the morning dew from Mount Lee, then dry them and process them using the C-41 method, obviously carefully supervised by selected colorists wearing secret filmic ropes, and finally have them being ritually blessed (super-pro editions are doubly blessed) by top film Directors.

Certainly the result will be stunning, surely hard to quantify, but nevertheless, hordes will rush in buying this camera! And those who disagree and call it out? Well, they just don't really know and spoil everything, and should get a downvote on a post being helpfull.
 
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"Cadence" is mostly impacted by frame rate and shutter speed. The shutter type probably has the most impact after that (though very small) and then, way far behind is the codec. Interframe codecs are likely to "strobe" from time to time, messing up the cadence. Anything else is mostly likely ephemeral BS.
 
Cary Knoop said:
If there is one thing I really dislike it is all this "filmic", "cinematic", magic-secret LUT industry, cadence and other "magic" attributions to cameras and post-production.
If anything it indicates incompetency to me.
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Likewise, I feel that everything worthwhile is quantifiable ('magic' as a play to emotion, rather than reason). If it is real, then motion cadence should be quantifiable (beyond rolling shutter)
 
Sage said:
I believe the rolling shutter of the two is quite similar (13ms GH5/14ms Scarlet)

I know you shoot All-I, this is key here. Also, OLPF smoothness and lack of sharpening play a vital role. Be sure to use my OLPF settings

Last, focal length, and camera/subject movement are key perceptual elements (separate from camera)
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sage, long gop mode in GH5/S is more cinematic than All-i? BTW, I always thought about how can I play with this OLPF smoothness you talk about. Is it some kind of parameter that comes with your LUT? sorry for the noob question.
 
gumonstro said:
sage, long gop mode in GH5/S is more cinematic than All-i? BTW, I always thought about how can I play with this OLPF smoothness you talk about. Is it some kind of parameter that comes with your LUT? sorry for the noob question.
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Oh, I love All-I! Per my own run-through, the motion was decidedly smoother, the codec more robust, and the NLE performance much smoother.

The OLPF setting is very simple; the info in the Pdf is dated. In Premiere, put an adjustment layer over the video, and add a Gaussian blur. Set it between 5.4 and 6.8 (more for more diffusion). Last, change the Opacity of the layer to 20%.
This inverses the native sharpening of the GH5, and the more diffuse boundaries help to perceptually 'glue' the frames together (object persistence)
 
This topic always gets people so worked up. It's like they are being personally attacked. I honestly believe that some people can see differences in motion cadence, and have a preference, and others can't. Kind of like how women are supposed to be able to see more colors than men, or some projectors can make a small percentage of the population feel nauseous.

For me, a lot of footage shot at 24 frames on the GH5 takes on a quality that ends up looking like it was shot at 30 frames. Sometimes it's more apparent than others. That camera and the GH5s have so much going for them, but this alone has been the biggest reason I've stayed away from the series since the GH2, which looked better to me in this regard.

If you can't see it, or find that it's something that doesn't bother you, then you're probably saving yourself a lot of hand wringing when it comes to selecting cameras for your shoots. But just because you can't see something doesn't mean that no one else can either.
 
Sage said:
Oh, I love All-I! Per my own run-through, the motion was decidedly smoother, the codec more robust, and the NLE performance much smoother.
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No-one is going to argue against all-intra benig more robust and better for editing purposes, it is also not relevant to the question.

With respect to all-intra being more cinematic, I venture no single human being can detect any difference between an all-intra and long GOP video at normal speed assuming decent bitrates. All this is reminding me of the high end audio cable madness, where a $500 digital cable sounds decidedly different than a $1000 cable.

I know, the problems is mine, one has to have a cinematic and filmic eye to see those beautiful emperor's new clothes,


All-intra being more cinematic? It gets absurder by the minute.
Let me anticipate the next level, ProRes is more cinematic than DNxHx.

Please feel free to point me to footage where you see one is decidedly smoother than the other.
 
Sage said:
The OLPF setting is very simple; the info in the Pdf is dated. In Premiere, put an adjustment layer over the video, and add a Gaussian blur. Set it between 5.4 and 6.8 (more for more diffusion). Last, change the Opacity of the layer to 20%.
This inverses the native sharpening of the GH5, and the more diffuse boundaries help to perceptually 'glue' the frames together (object persistence)
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It won't, that's like a two wrongs make one right argument.
 
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thanks, sage! i'm running a test right now.

>For me, a lot of footage shot at 24 frames on the GH5 takes on a quality that ends up looking like it was shot at 30 frames.

totally agree. i was shooting some material. on the 20th day shoot i decided to turn on my sony a6500 for inserts and close shots i would maybe never use. i couldn't accept i was running 1/50 shutter 24p with that strobo motion cadence with my eyes calibrated for the panasonic. i turned off the camera to see if there was something wrong. maybe sony's motion cadence on this alpha series is worst than panasonic because it has a strobo-like quality, but panasonic, on the other hand, definitely looks a lot like 30p for me. when I took the camera out of the box and made my first test watching on a TV, I had to check if I didn't shoot 30p by mistake.

never shot blackmagic myself, but I watched some stuff from some people I know and that is way better in this aspect. my list, from best to worst motion cadence, for under $3500-4000:

1- blackmagic
2- canon
3- panasonic/sony
 
about the smoothness with that technique, well, i think the results i just watched matched what i think makes a C300 mkI 1920x1080 much more pleasing than the 4k coming from the ultra sharp sony a6500. i worked with both at the same time on a project and was more into c300 smoothness. the sage's technique doesn't turn GH5s into a C300 regarding smoothness, but the result is very interesting.
 
Cary Knoop said:
With respect to all-intra being more cinematic
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Given our previous discussion, I should note that I did not describe Intra as more cinematic (along the lines of magic, etc.)
My own informal test of the codecs involved me waving in a mirror (being very silly), while swaying the camera back and forth; I think a rigorous test could be done by simultaneously recording to ProRes externally and IPB in camera, and isolating difference (via Opacity) between them, and identifying patterns (if any) to the difference between when the shot is still and when it is moving (i.e. is there an evolution to the variance). This ideally would be paired with a double blind test in which participants rated perceived smoothness of a variety of clips (to isolate psychological factors)
 
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Cary Knoop said:
It won't, that like a two wrongs make one right argument.
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Try it! Its not an exact inverse, but the mechanism is the same (decreasing micro-contrast at edge boundaries). One could, with knowledge of the exact sharpening algorithm, completely and precisely inverse it
 
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