GH5 Inferno vs SmallHD focus + v90 cards - What's better?

T

Taurai M

New member
My next purchase is an external monitor, eyeing up the SmallHD Focus for it's bang for your buck and compact size.

However, as I want to get the most out of my GH5 quality wise, I intend on shooting in 400Mbps most of the time which means I'll need these new v90 cards (My lexar 128gb 1000x has gone 20mins at 400Mbps but I wouldn't feel comfortable using that on a paid gig.)

Some quick maths;

(These are current prices on 11/10/2017)

The Inferno can be had for £1050 + £250 1tb hdd = £1300.

SmallHD Focus panasonic bundle £600 + 2x ADATA 256gb for £173 = £946

That £354 difference is 4k10bit60p, bigger + better screen and double the storage space (anything else?).

Realistically, how low do we expect the v90 cards to come down in price with time?

Can anyone already running the inferno set up give me some advice/tips/things to be wary of?

Thanks.
 
Hi
Ask yourself if you 'really' need an ext moitor/recorder? One of the big advantages of the GH5 is that it's internal codec is very good and so are the EFV and screen so you don't 'need' to deal with the hassle of an external recorder. When I was shooting with my A7s and A7r2 I always thought I was making a big compromise by not using my Shogun or PIX-E 5H as the 8bit 4.2.0 codec was pretty weak compared to the Prores I got from the ext but everytime I hooked one of these up I hated the extra bulk and faff of using it. If you need 60p then yes the inferno is the way to go.
 
Taurai M said:
Realistically, how low do we expect the v90 cards to come down in price with time?
Click to expand...

I expect the ADATA V90 SD card price to hold for the next couple of years, especially when Panasonic's V90 cards are DOUBLE the price, and we have yet to see V90 anything from Kingston, SanDisk, or Sony.
 
I am using Inferno since its release. It is great piece of kit, but it has its own "Atomos features". I am using it with fs700 and a7s. Footage quality is awesome but as I said Inferno is not ideal. It is too heavy for mirrorless, extra power hungry, fan is noisy and it is getting hot a lot. I also think that screen is not bright enough for sun. Everybody says it is alright but for critical focus not (in my opinion). Focus is only 800nits so it must be even worse, but I have never tried it. I would recommend to rent both of them and try what is the best for you.
 
If your video is ending up online then the 400mbps codec is a wash. Even the 150mbps "10 bit" is a wash compared to the 100mbps 8 bit. 150mbps isn't enough mbps to show the extra color. If your eyes can't see it then it doesn't matter. That being said, I can afford the Shogun, but I decided to wait until a smaller/lighter/quieter version comes out. I went with the SmallHD focus and I really dig it. All it's tools are top notch. 800 nits isn't really that bright though. In bright sin you'll see your own reflection mostly. I with they included a matte finish screen protector. Anyway, I'm not shooting outside most of the time, and I love the compactness of the Focus, as well as it's mounting bracket. My GH5 is still small enough for handheld use. In conclusion, the Small HD is great for what it is, but it's brightness doesn't live up to the hype. Still, it's a good monitor that hasn't left my GH5 since I got it.
 
Chadfish said:
If your video is ending up online then the 400mbps codec is a wash.
Click to expand...

I haven't tested it yet, but I expect 400 Mbps to improve GH5 panning because sometimes you see panning judder with the IPB formats.

Chadfish said:
Even the 150mbps "10 bit" is a wash compared to the 100mbps 8 bit.
Click to expand...

I would disagree when it comes to color correction, grading, or shooting V-LOG L footage. 8-bit footage can fall apart pretty fast when you're making corrections to your image.
 
Here's a comparison with the ner 400mbps codec. It seems that the 400mbps is good for smoother editing, but it doesn't look like you can see a difference. Can you?
 
TheDingo said:
I expect the ADATA V90 SD card price to hold for the next couple of years
Click to expand...

I think so too. The ADATA 256gb is actually not that bad of a price in terms of cost/storage space ratio. It's slightly slower than the 128gb version, but as long as it records without hiccuping, it's not a factor.
 
KrocanX said:
IIt is too heavy for mirrorless, extra power hungry, fan is noisy and it is getting hot a lot. I also think that screen is not bright enough for sun. Everybody says it is alright but for critical focus not (in my opinion). Focus is only 800nits.
Click to expand...

This is the info I was looking for. The Inferno sounds like a lot of hassle. I've seen the SmallHD Focus in action during a wedding shoot and it looked great, much better than the GH5 screen and I was more than satisfied with the brightness. I live in England. Shooting in sunlight isn't much of an issue around here.

I think you're right in that i'll have to test both and see for myself. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
 
Chadfish said:
Here's a video that explains the bit depth thing on the GH% much better than I could.
Click to expand...

I completely disagree with WolfCrow on his 8-bit vs 10-bit presentation because he is presenting everything theoretically and uses NO empirical examples. To me his videos are mostly BS because of this.

My first project with my brand new GH5 was a shoot that took place in a hospital procedure room that was entirely lit by fluorescent lights. I have shot under these type of conditions many times in the past and struggled to get good quality skin-tones in post. As my first GH5 10-bit shoot, I was absolutely floored with how much better the skin-tones were in my GH5 10-bit footage. Over the course of the next 3 weeks I had a few more shoots at hospitals and universities where I had to shoot with crappy fluorescent lights, and again I was amazed at how much better my GH5 10-bit footage was when color-correcting for good skin-tones under horrible fluorescent light. It was at this point I stopped shooting with my GH4 camera because I knew I would NEVER want to go back to shooting 8-bit footage. Any camera I buy in the future must shoot 10-bit or I won't consider it.

From my own first-hand experience I know that there is a HUGE difference between 8-bit and 10-bit footage when color-correcting, grading, or shooting V-LOG L footage.
 
TheDingo said:
I completely disagree with WolfCrow on his 8-bit vs 10-bit presentation because he is presenting everything theoretically and uses NO empirical examples. To me his videos are mostly BS because of this.

My first project with my brand new GH5 was a shoot that took place in a hospital procedure room that was entirely lit by fluorescent lights. I have shot under these type of conditions many times in the past and struggled to get good quality skin-tones in post. As my first GH5 10-bit shoot, I was absolutely floored with how much better the skin-tones were in my GH5 10-bit footage. Over the course of the next 3 weeks I had a few more shoots at hospitals and universities where I had to shoot with crappy fluorescent lights, and again I was amazed at how much better my GH5 10-bit footage was when color-correcting for good skin-tones under horrible fluorescent light. It was at this point I stopped shooting with my GH4 camera because I knew I would NEVER want to go back to shooting 8-bit footage. Any camera I buy in the future must shoot 10-bit or I won't consider it.

From my own first-hand experience I know that there is a HUGE difference between 8-bit and 10-bit footage when color-correcting, grading, or shooting V-LOG L footage.
Click to expand...

I called him out in his Youtube comments on this and he doesn't want to admit he is wrong. There is so much misinformation out there from people who have a platform to spread the lies as fact. He didn't seem to understand how 32bit float works and assumed since the 32bit float kept producing decent in between samples that both 8bit and 10bit were the same. LOL
 
Chadfish said:
Here's a comparison with the ner 400mbps codec. It seems that the 400mbps is good for smoother editing, but it doesn't look like you can see a difference. Can you?
Click to expand...

The Colin Ross 400 Mbps ALL-I video is garbage because he is NOT comparing shots with any kind of movement in them. When this was pointed out to him in the comments of his video, here is Colin Ross's reply: "This is true i didn't know this and need to address this in another video!"

The same thing happens with the StudioLab24 video. They are not shooting anything with fast or complex motion, so their 400 Mbps ALL-I test is also garbage.
 
Taurai M said:
This is the info I was looking for. The Inferno sounds like a lot of hassle. I've seen the SmallHD Focus in action during a wedding shoot and it looked great, much better than the GH5 screen and I was more than satisfied with the brightness. I live in England. Shooting in sunlight isn't much of an issue around here.

I think you're right in that i'll have to test both and see for myself. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Click to expand...

Why not just get the Focus and not think if it as an "Either / or" situation. The Focus is a nice little monitor that can be used on most cameras, and will always be useful. I used it on my SONY FS5 too, and it's much nicer than the built in LCD. Then there may be times when a recorder/monitor would be appropriate. Get the little guy then see if you still want the big boy later.
 
Chadfish said:
Why not just get the Focus and not think if it as an "Either / or" situation.
Click to expand...


I can have a great monitor/recorder all in one or an okay monitor + expensive v90 cards for essentially the same price. It's two similar set ups (That's why it's an either or) and I'm trying to figure out which one will suit me best in terms of performance vs cost.
 
Chadfish said:
Here's a video that explains the bit depth thing on the GH% much better than I could.
Click to expand...
10 bit 4:2:2 indeed uses 1.675 times as much information as 8 bit 4:2:0.

To maintain the same information per pixel we have 1.675 * 100 Mbps = 168 Mbps.
169 Mbps is indeed slightly larger than 150 Mbps but it is not, as the article suggest, 280 Mbps.

However the fact is that 10 bit sources compress better than 8 bit sources.
Also, but this is minor, overall compression tends to be more efficient without exclusive sub-sampling requirements, 4:2:2 is in that respect less restrictive than 4:2:0.

Empirically he is totally wrong, the 10 bit 4:2:2 150Mbps is vastly superior to the 8 bit 4:2:0 100 Mbps this is especially true when using log footage.
It takes five minutes behind Resolve to immediately see that.
 
Cary Knoop said:
To maintain the same information per pixel we have 1.675 * 100 Mbps = 168 Mbps.
169 Mbps is indeed slightly larger than 150 Mbps but it is not, as the article suggest, 280 Mbps.
Click to expand...

When you open a GH5 150 Mbps video in the free Sony Catalyst Browser app, it reads the meta-data and reports that the file has a MAXIMUM bit-rate of 180 Mbps. So it would not surprise me if Panasonic has already accounted for the 168 Mbps data-rate requirement.
 
Cary Knoop said:
10 bit 4:2:2 indeed uses 1.675 times as much information as 8 bit 4:2:0.

To maintain the same information per pixel we have 1.675 * 100 Mbps = 168 Mbps.
169 Mbps is indeed slightly larger than 150 Mbps but it is not, as the article suggest, 280 Mbps.

However the fact is that 10 bit sources compress better than 8 bit sources.
Also, but this is minor, overall compression tends to be more efficient without exclusive sub-sampling requirements, 4:2:2 is in that respect less restrictive than 4:2:0.

Empirically he is totally wrong, the 10 bit 4:2:2 150Mbps is vastly superior to the 8 bit 4:2:0 100 Mbps this is especially true when using log footage.
It takes five minutes behind Resolve to immediately see that.
Click to expand...

I mentioned that if your destination is online video like youtube the differences are invisible. Maybe I just haven't seen the youtube video that displays the difference. Can anybody show me one? I want to believe.
 
Chadfish said:
I mentioned that if your destination is online video like youtube the differences are invisible. Maybe I just haven't seen the youtube video that displays the difference. Can anybody show me one? I want to believe.
Click to expand...

Where you will likely see it is with YouTube HDR videos ( YouTube supports several HDR formats ), and this will include the "instant HDR" HLG formats that the GH5 now supports. You will need a HDR display to view these videos properly. The big-box stores have already started to shift consumer TV sales towards HDR sets, and I would expect HDR TVs to be the norm when buying a new TV within 3 years.
 
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