Panning 'mud', reasons why and firmware update
- Thread starter commanderspike
- Start date
John Caballero
Veteran
BTW: Whatever happened to commanderspike? he dissapeared in the firestorm!
squig
Veteran
he talks a lot for a noob. I think he'll fit right in. I've put it on my to watch list, now I get to see if Kholi knows what he's talking about.
slimjimmed
Well-known member
I also heart Primer.
PappasArts
Veteran
I couldn't agree more. HDV is the VHS of HD.
However, I wonder if we took a HV30 and a GH1 and attached them to a horizontal tripod rod and locked them on the same FOV then panned them; which codec would be the least distorted or exhibit break up?
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Oh my gosh, not even a question. Canon's HDV codec is rock solid compared to the GH1. It is stunningly sharp and even fast panning doesn't break noticeably.
squig
Veteran
then that would suggest that the processor is too slow to encode cleanly would it not? Doesn't sound promising for a 24Mbps AVCHD firmware update. But they might be able to do 24p mjpeg with a higher bit-rate.
Caruth was an engineer that found a topic he liked, wrote a script with what would be considered WAY too much dialog in it, and shot that piece with as much money as he could get: 7K and some favors.
Check the win record for it.
The movie is very hard to understand, demands several watches, but is quite amazing to me.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Yes, and sub $200 pocket cams have tiny little fixed-focus lenses and everything else that goes with it. Stuff costs money. Processors cost money. Speed costs money. they spent money on the sensor which is, at rough calculation, sixty times bigger than the sensor in the pocketcam. It has a physical shutter and a flash and automatic face recognition and face tracking and hundreds, if not thousands, of things that the pocket cam doesn't have.
So yeah, at the price point, something had to be cut. Unfortunately for us, it looks like it's the 1080/24p codec processing.
OF COURSE they could do it. Could they do it at $1500? With everything else that's in there? Probably not. So what would you give up? I'll tell you what, you can give up the interchangeable lenses, the 14-140 zoom lens, the still photo mode, the large sensor, and everything else, and they could probably give you the better pocketcam codec because -- hey, at that point, it'd BE the pocketcam.
Look -- they don't have any interest whatsoever in "protecting their professional video lineup by crippling this camera". That attitude is the thing here that's asinine. Panasonic Consumer HAS NO professional video lineup! And Panasonic consumer will probably sell 100x more, if not 1000x more, GH1s than the entire Panasonic Broadcast lineup will sell COMBINED. They are separate companies. PBTSC (Panasonic Broadcast and Television Services Company) has no direct overlap with Panasonic Consumer Electronics. And frankly, I seriously doubt anyone at Panasonic Consumer gives a flying crap about how their products will or won't impact PBTSC. At all.
It is obviously a problem. And they're probably not going to fix it. If you want to go ahead and start a petition over on the petition group or whatever, go ahead. But for the rest of us who are going to try to work with this thing, and for the some of us who have figured out that it's not so bad and CAN be worked with, well, we're gonna continue trying to make it work.
So do I. But I seriously don't have time, bandwidth, or inclination to go tilting at windmills. So my strategy is to instead hassle, beg, and finagle the Broadcast division (the people who will actually care about ultimate codec performance) into bringing out their own version of this product. If that happens, you can pretty much count on getting everything you want. I don't know anyone at Consumer, and I doubt they care what we here think all that much. But Broadcast is a whole different ballpark... those are the people who understand codecs and they know what quality means, they're the folks whose entire marketing campaign is based on reliability and "when it counts". THOSE are the guys who can do what you're asking.
But I can guarantee you, sure as the sun shines, that if they do "fix" it and upgrade it to broadcast standards, it won't be $1500. I'm hoping they can do it and keep it at $1995, but right now there's no commitment from them that they're even looking at pursuing it.
Barry_Green
Moderator
You think that's equivalent to what Squig's talking about? He's talking about a situation where that's all the camera he can get. Soderbergh had Julia Roberts in "Full Frontal". He didn't have to use a Canon XL1. He chose to, to thumb his nose at the hollywood system. And the result was his most dismal, horribly-reviewed box office disaster. And everyone, even the biggest XL1 fans, have to admit that the film looked horrible.
Boyle shot 28 Days Later on video for his own reasons, and budget most certainly wasn't one of them. He wanted the video aesthetic. And again, that has absolutely no relevance to what Squig's talking about.
If you were Mike Figgis and you could shoot "Leaving Las Vegas" on 16mm, well, good for you. But nobody else does. NOBODY. Nobody uses 16mm in Hollywood. Why? Because it's a hideous pain in the butt, as compared to 35mm. And nobody in Hollywood (except the two aforementioned) use consumer video cameras when they have the budget to do otherwise. Unless it's an extreme exception, such as "Crank 2" where they wanted to do something totally new and creative and use 15 cameras at a time all the time.
Precisely the point.
So -- yes, I agree and disagree. I disagree with the notion that those folks chose those products because of their budget, which is what Squig is saying he'd be doing. I agree that they could have chosen anything else to shoot on and chose the Canon for a specific aesthetic. However, that doesn't mean that they were successful with what they were trying to do. Here's how DVD Verdict summed up the look of "Full Frontal":
I'm trying to help no-budget folks figure out a way to work with this thing. I think it can be done. So does Illya, and Hunter, and Kholi, and probably lots more folks. Those who don't think it can be done, their time can probably better be spent trying to figure out how to convert 30p to 24p so they can use their "crippled" EOS 5D Mark II, or trying to figure out how to overcome the jello-licious compression-crunch that is the "crippled" D90. Or whatever else is out there.
The GH1 is close. It's not perfect. Let's see what it can do, instead of getting obsessed over what it can't.
Barry_Green
Moderator
It is. Long-GoP sucks. Better implementations can suck less, worse implementations suck more. MJPG is intra-frame. Now, MJPG is a fairly lousy codec in and of itself, but it will never be subjected to "mud". That's a long-GoP issue that doesn't manifest itself in intraframe codecs.
Barry_Green
Moderator
I don't know. But I could try to get ahold of an HD100 or an FX1, I know where to lay my hands on those. I couldn't do the *exact same* shot, since I had to send the GH1 back, but I could try to do a roughly similar shot.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Clarification time: the footage can be MADE to suck in 1080. It can also look fantastic. It depends on how you use it and whether the codec gets overtaxed.
To blanketly say it sucks is to do it a huge disservice. It can look beautiful. And the argument some of us are making is: the restrictions placed on you for making it look beautiful, are pretty much the same restrictions put on film -- stable and controlled pan rates, etc. So if you shoot in a deliberate film style, you'll be in the best position to avoid doing the things that make the footage fall apart.
But yes, you can make the footage fall apart worse on this camera than on any I've ever used. So -- either don't do that, or if you must shoot that way, that's when you need to look at using a different camera.
Please see the section of my first comment where I said "don't go freaking out about the pocketcam not having a huge sensor and lowlight performance etc etc." I'm only talking about the codec.
That's honestly awesome to hear- I hoped that wasn't the case, but it's good to hear it.
I know, and I know they have talked internally about doing a pro version. I talked to them at NAB and they told me as much. I also know some of them watch these forums.
Wow, for $2000 I would buy two. I'm not even joking. I don't expect it to cost the same as the GH1- they could position it very nicely between the GH1 and a functional scarlet setup and it would be a steal.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Haven't seen that clip, but some clarification is in order here: the pan speed you can get away with is entirely dependent on the relative magnification of the image.
So at the very widest angle, you *might* be able to get away with 5 seconds. But if you're halfway through the zoom range, then *no way* can you get away with only 5 seconds, you'll instead have to take something on the order of 30 seconds for that pan.
There's a table published in the ASC manual that lists the proper strobe-free pan speeds for 24fps film. It lists the rate (in seconds or even minutes) for several different focal lengths (shorter focal length = quicker pan, longer focal length = longer pan). If you pan at those rates (or slower) you'll avoid strobing. If you exceed those pan rates, the footage will strobe. It's my contention that if you stick with the ASC panning rates, I am pretty sure you'll avoid "mud" too.
The grass is messed up in my shots before even starting the pan. The tree leaves have lots of detail, but the grass is fuzzed out.
Barry_Green
Moderator
But you can't do that. You have to look at the whole thing as a package. Everything costs money. The only way you could compare fairly would be to have everything else equal between them. And in your chosen example, *nothing* else is the same. Therefore they can't be compared.
That's exactly the argument I've been making to them. I think it would be huge. I simply don't understand why any professional videographer wouldn't buy at least one, it'd be the no-brainer must-have accessory.
I don't think I'd try shooting a $100,000 movie on a GH-1. But a professional version? With a pro codec? Maybe. We'll see. However, I don't think I'd have any problem recommending to the "weekend warrior" that he could make his $3,000 movie on a GH1. But it's gonna take some research and some learning to avoid the pitfalls and make sure that you can pull together a solid effort and get the best that the camera can deliver.