EVA1: New firmware install tutorial & 2.02 version test footage

[thefilmaddict]

I made a step-by-step video showing how I installed the new version 2.02 firmware on the Panasonic AU-EVA1. I also shot some quick test footage. It looks quite good in my opinion (4K 10bit 4:2:2 Intra 400Mbp) -- very clean and should be easy to push around in post. It does eat up a lot of storage, but I think it's worth it. My test footage is straight out of the camera. Here's the link if you are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-PYjBqp7Uk&feature=youtu.be

Also looking forward to trying out the raw.

 

[Seanik]

Thanks for this. Always nice to have visual walk-through in case Panasonic's instructions aren't clear enough

A couple of questions for you: Did you observe the Intra codec to be "cleaner"/less noisy than the L-GOP? Panasonic's White Paper says it shouldn't be perceptible, but I'm curious what you experienced. Did you do a side-by-side comp?

And: Was it noticeably smoother/easier to work with in post (despite needing 2.7x the throughput of L-GOP)? Playback? (Basic) grading/effects?

Also: What SD card(s) did you use? ...a heavily inquired about topic on this board, for sure.

And least importantly (I hope): At 05:13, one of the test shots has almost jello-like distortion (though, without camera movement), almost as if shot over a source of heat that was radiating waves. I hope that was the case, or some YT compression goofiness. I don't mean to nit-pick... just curious if there was an external factor at work or if there might be some odd behavior of the codec, itself .

 

[thefilmaddict]

I did not do a side by side test, but the first thing I said to myself when I looked at the footage was: damn, that's a clean and detailed image. It did seem to be better than the L-GOP footage I have shot in the past, but that's not a scientific observation. It's kind of hard to do a true comparison without having 2 identical cameras shooting the same subject, one with the old firmware and 1 with the new firmware. My test was more to make sure the camera was working after upgrading the firmware.

I did not grade this footage at all. When I shoot my next video, I can see how the footage holds up in edit after applying color correction and effects. Other than that, premiere had no problem handling these clips (although they were big).

I used the Panasonic SDXC II V90 128 GB card. It had no problems recording the data, although I never recorded anything longer than a minute or two.

The clip at 5:13 looks really good playing straight off of my edit system. It must be youtube or media encoder compression?

 

[Noel Evans]

Did you observe the Intra codec to be "cleaner"/less noisy than the L-GOP? Panasonic's White Paper says it shouldn't be perceptible, but I'm curious what you experienced. Did you do a side-by-side comp?

Noise is similar. Pixel peeping a 4K image at 2-300% with direct comparison between the two, I have found ALL I seems to retain a little more fine detail. I shot a wide shot across water and there's some barriers that are probably 500m from where I shot it. On the ALL I they are still clearly defined even though they are tiny in the overall image. Something else I found by chance, in LONG gop smaller details in an image, for example a bird on a high contrast background halos a little and loses some detail, in all I no halo and all detail retained. Thats all I've really noticed on the number of images I've shot.

And: Was it noticeably smoother/easier to work with in post (despite needing 2.7x the throughput of L-GOP)? Playback? (Basic) grading/effects?

ALL I is more drive intensive whilst Long GOP is more GPU intensive. That said, most people's systems today have drives capable of reading multiple ALL i streams, whilst LONG gop is always slow on pretty much any GPU. For me, ALL I is much better to work with.

Also: What SD card(s) did you use? ...a heavily inquired about topic on this board, for sure.

Panasonic V60 cards. 0 issues.

 

[thefilmaddict]

Great info, Noel.