Optimum Action Sports patch

G

Graeme Meiklejohn

Member
Hey,

I just finished another ski season shooting on my GH1. I'v been too scared to try out the hack during the season cause I can't afford to have my only camera not operational, but since It's over I have seen the amazing improvements developed by everyone in this community.

I have been reading around the site on different patches for various reliability and bit rates. The problem is I do not understand the majority of talk of I and P frames. So my question is, for someone that is primarily shooting action sports (skiing and mountain biking) which is the patch settings that would optimize my image quality without
A.) Removing the 60p frame rate
B.) Gives me highest bitrate/ best image quality without losing high shutter speeds.

Cheers,
Graeme Meiklejohn
 
While I haven't tested the Peak Performance Patch with the Panasonic Class 6 SD card, I have successfully used it with Transcend Class 6 cards as well as SanDisk Extreme Class 10 cards. There's no harm in trying it out on any SD card, the worst that can happen is that high-detail shots may fail to record properly if the card is too slow to handle the data rate.

If 1280x720 SH mode video at 30fps would be useful, I'd recommend my 50Mbps AVCHD Fast Action 3-Frame GOP Patch. This patch records ten key frames per second at high data rates, making it very adept at capturing rapid action shots. It's also highly reliable for long, single-take event shots of greater than 12 minutes duration.
 
Hi

I use the hacked 1280x720 50p mode for fast action sport: I chose the C settings (up to 44Mbps) in order to solve the mud issue that can be seen on footage of the original GH1, specially when fast panning the camera or filming fast moving subject.

Last year I did a video of a mountain bike downhill race using the original 1280x720 17Mbps mode of the GH1. This year I filmed the 2011 version of this MTB Downhill race using the same camera but hacked with the 44Mbps mode.

You can compare how the hack improved the image quality here:
First the 2010 video using the GH1:
[video]http://www.zapiks.fr/dh-mont-brouilly-2010-1.html[/video]
The video website decreased the original image quality because of an additional compression but the mud issue is visible. See e.g. at 56s, the bike cross the screen very quickly and there is like a "residual" mud shortly behind the bike.

then the 2011 video using the hacked GH1:
[video]http://www.zapiks.fr/16ieme-descente-du-mont-brou.html[/video]
It's the same video website, the same additional compression, the same race and similar footage but I see no mud issue from the camera... see at 49s a similar situation than above but now without any mud.

It's better to compare the image quality on vimeo where I uploaded these 2 videos too, but the vimeo website seems very slow at this time.

I am very happy with the improved image quality but I am just dreaming about having a hack for a mode at 1920x1080 50p and 40Mbps.
 
I'v got the 75mbps peak performance patch on there right now, completely glitch free so far, files play back in camera.
I'm using a class 10 sandisk extreme III.
I'll be shooting this week in whistler and I'll post footage and data rates!
Huge thanks to lpowell and everyone else involved in all of these advancements.
 
lpowell said:
If 1280x720 SH mode video at 30fps would be useful, I'd recommend my 50Mbps AVCHD Fast Action 3-Frame GOP Patch. This patch records ten key frames per second at high data rates, making it very adept at capturing rapid action shots. It's also highly reliable for long, single-take event shots of greater than 12 minutes duration.
Click to expand...

Of all the patches, I find this one to work best when shooting fast action video with high detail. It has never failed me.

The Peak Performance Patch was problematic for me in AVCHD 720p 60 fps so I modified the patch using the 50Mbps AVCHD Fast Action 3-Frame GOP Patch settings for SH and adjusted video bitrate FHD/SH to 52,000 with an overall bitrate of 72,000 This has given me what I feel is the optimum settings for the type of video I like to shoot.

The peak performance settings for MJPEG video are also wonderful for fast action.
 
Thanks everyone for your input!
Footage from my day in Whistler is looking much improved over the original, looks just gorgeous. However I'm wondering how you guys are dealing with the work flow for the mjpeg? I just ingested through iphoto and it makes a clean .mov file but i can't put it into my FCP timeline? I get a general error whenever i try to render it.
 
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