GH2 INTRA GOP1 176M Hack = superb

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nick_driftwood

New member
For those who don't know you should check out the new Driftwood patched / Vitaliy hack which brings AVCHD INTRA 176M - this is getting better everyday and shows you just how good the GH2 really is. Try it. Find it on www.personal-view.com in the Low GOP thread 2.
 
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You guys are amazing. I've got a feature planned using the GH2 (can you tell, zero budget :)), so I'm very interested in what you guys are doing. A little nervous hacking the GH2 (never done it before), but if the results justify, I'll all over it. Special requirements for my feature: the best low light footage I can get - action happening in tight spaces at night (yes, I'll have to shell out for the f. 0.95 25mm). So that's what I'll be looking for in patches. I don't care as much about rapid movement - my #1 concern is low light performance and what I can pull out of the shadows.
 
wow. gotta try it. it's unbelievable you guys are getting over 200 Mbps out of this little cam. please please post footage.

edit: saw some footage on person-view.com
 
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This is a point of confusion for me. If I record at 176Mb with this patch do I also need to output at 176Mb from the editing software I use to retain the quality? What if I am going to output the video to blu-ray or vimeo? Won't I lose the quality I gained in the high quality original?
 
You will, but you always will. By having a better original file you give more information to your editing program to make color adjustments or whatever else. With a decent bitrate Blu-ray you will not notice much of a quality loss anyway. Quality in = quality out. Crappy in = more crappy out.
 
very darn interesting. they got it to push the limits of SD card speeds :)

now if they will only apply the same skills to the af100!
 
imdjay said:
now if they will only apply the same skills to the af100!
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Yeah that's true.
I always wondered, What is the encoding specks of the af100 compared to those hacked settings? Is the af100 still above?
I am not trying to troll, I am only asking about the encoding quality. I know the af100 has many other advantages.



Also, thank you @nick_driftwood to share your progress with us on this forum. I always have such a hard time following Personal-view.com It goes too fast for me. :(
 
As the gap between the GH2's potential and what Panasonic has allowed it to do continues to grow, so does my deep contempt for Panasonic.

The biggest question is: if the $900 camera is capable of THIS, what could the $5000 camera do?!

The lack of ethics is stunning.
 
Lee Saxon said:
As the gap between the GH2's potential and what Panasonic has allowed it to do continues to grow, so does my deep contempt for Panasonic.

The biggest question is: if the $900 camera is capable of THIS, what could the $5000 camera do?!

The lack of ethics is stunning.
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I think the reality is that the $5000 camera may not be able to do much more, or possibly less, in terms of pure image quality. However, the $5000 camera is also going to have a lot of other features you won't find on this $900 camera. The intentional hindering of the GH line makes it's image quality fit more cleanly in with the rest of it's "prosumer" features.
 
INTRA GOP1 176M
AVCHD INTRA 176

I'm familiar with AVC-INTRA but not so much AVCHD INTRA. Presumably this is intra frame compression - compression entirely within one frame? I think I'm starting to clue in as I write this. GOP1 would refer to a "Group of 1 Picture" so there is no reference to other frames. Making these frames something like a MJPG frame but with better, more efficient compression.

176M would refer to 176 Mb/s ? (Why 176 of all numbers?)

So how can NLEs like FCP and PPro deal with these non-standard compressions? Is such formatting simply irrelevant to an NLE ingest? You'd think they would be looking for some kind of expected standardized video that their algorithms can worth with.

And while I'm at it: Amazing hack, of course. But should we lament or be concerned by the fact that this video is "only" 4:2:0 & not 4:2:2? I've asked elsewhere: what would "we" rather have for everyday shooting, 4:2:0 super-mega bit encoded video or regular vanilla 4:2:2 video given pick one. Not trying to make any point here, just trying to sort that out.

RBG
 
Lee Saxon said:
As the gap between the GH2's potential and what Panasonic has allowed it to do continues to grow, so does my deep contempt for Panasonic.

The biggest question is: if the $900 camera is capable of THIS, what could the $5000 camera do?!

The lack of ethics is stunning.
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I think it would have been nice of Panasonic to allow a camera like the GH2 to be quasi-hacked in a relatively easy manner to allow advanced users to get the most out of it.

But I can also understand the decision to ship with the settings as are. The quality from the unhacked 24p isn't bad in most situations and the file size is manageable. I imagine that there would be a lot of confused and unhappy recreational users if they started to record their kid's dance recital and the 8 gb card they were using ran out of space as the teacher finished the introductions. And then found that their computer choked on even that chunk of video. The super high quality hack settings probably aren't of use for 97% of GH2 buyers, so Panasonic doesn't want to make their experience worse by accident. It would just be nice if they made it less work for the last 3% to maximize the camera.
 
nick_driftwood said:
For those who don't know you should check out the new Driftwood patched / Vitaliy hack which brings AVCHD INTRA 176M - this is getting better everyday and shows you just how good the GH2 really is. Try it. Find it on www.personal-view.com in the Low GOP thread 2.
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driftwood can you post all your 3 patches here for our MACs thanks

1: 132mbit GOP3
2: 176mnit GOP1 V3
3: 244mbit GOP1
 
chauncythedog said:
This is a point of confusion for me. If I record at 176Mb with this patch do I also need to output at 176Mb from the editing software I use to retain the quality? What if I am going to output the video to blu-ray or vimeo? Won't I lose the quality I gained in the high quality original?

I've been asking the same thing, new thread at may help
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/...lease-thoughts-for-huge-bitrate-avchd#Item_11
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Of course you lose quality when you bounce your video DOWN to those 2 formats.
ANYTHING on the web is going to be super-low quality compared to the original - but the better your original looks, the better the horrid web-video will look.
DVD and BLU-RAY are STILL a step down. -When you render anything to a BLU-RAY you will need to balance your highest bit-rate against the total capacity of the disk. Getting long features on a disk -even a Hollywood movie- still requires quality juggling AND manufacturing double-density disks when possible.

There is still a technology learning curve involved in getting a good looking render.

The place where the high-quality shines is on film transfers or high-end projection. Aside from the obvious that the higher-quality your original data- the better looking any post manipulation will look.

~Hope that helps at all.
 
Lee Saxon said:
As the gap between the GH2's potential and what Panasonic has allowed it to do continues to grow, so does my deep contempt for Panasonic.

The lack of ethics is stunning.
Click to expand...

AVCHD 24mbps is amazing for the consumer.... great quality, small size, no issues with the vast majority of SD cards... there is no conspiracy here, just pure and simple common sense.
 
I tend to think the same. 24mbps AVCHD in a consumer camera is quite a large step. 24mbps in the HMC-150 has been fine for professional work. Just because we can hack the numbers on the bitrate side does not make the underlying camera any better or worse.
 
Panasonic didn't come up with the AVCHD specifications. They made a consumer device (GH2) that follows a very common AVCHD spec, which ensures a wide range of compatibility with consumer products. There's no conspiracy.
 
awelgraven said:
Panasonic didn't come up with the AVCHD specifications. They made a consumer device (GH2) that follows a very common AVCHD spec, which ensures a wide range of compatibility with consumer products. There's no conspiracy.
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Very valid point. AVCHD is a standard, villianizing Panny for not exceeding the specs seems rather silly. Instead I will praise the hard work done by Vitaliy, driftwood, and all the others who have contributed their expertise to make the camera produce remarkable images. Dom Perignon taste on Miller Lite budget!

crest-liquor-champagne-dom-perignon.jpg


miller_lite-3130.jpg
 
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