Panning 'mud', reasons why and firmware update

You didn't remove the pulldown on that clip. So the "mud" looks even worse. I can't tell it its mud or just improper pulldown removal on your clip. I mean if I go frame by frame I can see it, but in regular motion with proper pulldown removal I'm not bothered by that.
 
stephenvv said:
Finally, an actually clip...

And that's what this 659 post thread is all about? First of all, there's no pulldown removal and that's the most obvious thing about the clip. Second, yeah, it's an accident jerk. That's footage that no sane person would ever use.

I've always suspected from the stills and from the footage I've scene that this is much ado about nothing and clearly it is.

I'm not even sure this qualifies as major bug if that's what you are complaining about. Compared to D90 jello, 5D Mkii aliasing, EX 1/3 IR Red filteriing issues, the HD100 Split-frame issue etc., this is pretty minor because I've yet to see it occur and be a visual problem in any footage that would be used.
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It happens on nearly all high detail medium to fast pans.

Can you guarantee your shoots will never have this kind of movement?

In that sense it is a problem.

And yes, bit of a rushed clip I uploaded. Will do a better example later. Give me a chance - trying to juggle lots of testing but putting my main effort into actually using the camera creatively and getting some enjoyment out of it.

I shot some footage of a kite above a large grassy field too, and the grass is more like green mud half the time. It's distracting and unprofessional looking.

Yes the GH1 is great... but this needs sorting.
 
commanderspike said:
Okay, here is an example of 'mud' affecting some footage I shot at the weekend.

I have just uploaded it to Vimeo here: http://www.vimeo.com/5058633

It occurred in this case when I moved my tripod too fast accidentally, but you sure as hell don't get this kind of break up on any other camera I know of.

This is why I'm annoyed at Panasonic - the camera is so damned good in so many respects, only to be hobbled by a major bug which crops up many many times.

Fast frame rate, full HD, brightly lit detailed scene with a lot of FINE detail - don't even go there.

Use 720p MJPEG for that.

That's the lesson over... rant is sure to continue. :)
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Wow if that is really the kind of mud issue everyone has been talking about then people have definitely blown this out of proportion. Besides there slight little strobe effect you get (might be because of pulldown) the footage looks fine to me. Maybe you could give us a better example of the mud effect because this does not seem bad at all.
 
If you're a wedding videopgrapher or want to use the cam for Eng work or to shoot extreme improv in natural light - then working all the time in MJPEG (to be able to fling the camera about impromptu) is a restriction.

If you're a narrative filmmaker working with any kind of blocking or 2nd takes, then switching to MJPEG for a couple of shots isn't really a restriction to me.
 
you cannot switch to MPJEG if you want 24p, panasonic did a good job crippling the camera, even the PAL GH1 has 30p MJPEG, and 30p cannot be converted to 24p smoothly.
 
I was under the impression that the 'mud' was due to the camera since commanderspike had posted a 'mud issue' picture of the same thing when viewing through the GH1's LCD.
 
raymondluo said:
I was under the impression that the 'mud' was due to the camera since commanderspike had posted a 'mud issue' picture of the same thing when viewing through the GH1's LCD.
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gh1bad.jpg
 
raymondluo said:
I was under the impression that the 'mud' was due to the camera since commanderspike had posted a 'mud issue' picture of the same thing when viewing through the GH1's LCD.
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Yep. No one is disputing that. The codec breaks up in 1080 24p with extreme movement. In the last frame of his vimeo clip thought the people are overlapped / doubled once the camera has stopped moving so much - which maybe suggests some other problem which is making the mud worse in that example, like incorrect pulldown or who knows what.
 
commanderspike, thanks a lot for all your efforts. Lots of people around this forum really appreciate every possible hint of how bad the mud problem is. Specially the likes of me that will not be able to even get close to a GH1 and have to order it from overseas based on the feedback from people like you.
I downloaded the clip, removed pulldown in AE, and saw it like a 100 times before posting my conclusions.

1. The problem is obviously there. You can see it with or without pulldown. You don't need to see the video frame by frame, you can see it in realtime playback without making a concious effort (in fact I was trying no to see it, because I want this camera so bad!!)

2. IMHO what makes the mud more apparent is that the codec breaks down giving the image a "vertical smear" even as the image is moving in an horizontal position, which makes it more obvious because it doesn't disguise itself as motion blur. In fact I'm starting to realize that probably most of the stills I've seen in this thread came from fast pans, and I had thought them to come from fast tilts.

3. This problem is worse than any other codec breakup I've seen from HDV.

4. In this example you posted, the pan speed was still faster that most of us would use in footage that we would keep (even when shooting documentary or event stuff. we would probably keep it for family stuff, but in that case the mud wouldn't matter that much unless your wife is a pixel-peeper like us). Another important thing that we don't know is the shutter speed you used for that footage, using shutters faster than 1/50 might make the mud problem worse, due to the lack of motion blur that might make the image softer and easier to encode.


I'm still wating to see a slow film-like pan shooting high-detail folliage with the shutter set to 1/50 (and all the other settings that have been found to reduce the problem as ISO, noise reduction, sharpness or whatever) to be able to decide how bad the mud problem is for me.
 
Commanderspike, I hope you don't mind, but I took your video, stripped out the pulldown and uploaded it to Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/5062764

To me this isn't some wicked crazy pan, but a medium fast pan that I could see being used in nearly any movie. To MY eyes the mud is painfully obvious. YMMV

A couple more thoughts. You have to admit that this is more than just a minor problem. Minor problems do not generate nearly 700 posts in a thread - not to mention the multiple petitions and email campaign by one of the mods here. I suspect the amount of complaints will grow as more and more people get their hands on the camera. The sad thing is, if Panny had a rep on this board they could have nipped this in the bud early on with a simple "we're aware of the problem and looking into it" type post.

In the meantime I continue to wait and watch what's happening. Sooner or later someone will get it right. :)
 
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DrBlaz said:
you cannot switch to MPJEG if you want 24p, panasonic did a good job crippling the camera, even the PAL GH1 has 30p MJPEG, and 30p cannot be converted to 24p smoothly.
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Just tell that to the 5D folks. That hasn't stopped them from converting 30P to 24P. :)

As for mud, it's more helpful to post original MTS files. Half the time there's problems that are pulldown related that only add to the mud problem. Original footage lets the rest of us know where you're coming from. Really, some things that bug one person are not a big deal at all to another person's eyes. Anyway, not worth getting worked up over. Now, back to workarounds.
 
So we've long established the problem, what would the solution be? Is it the 17M/b bitrate that's too little or is it the loose implementation of AVCHD?

If it's the former, maybe it's a matter of a firmware update. What about the latter?
 
These cameras at this point require a lot of careful handling due to rolling shutter, jello and codec problems. From my experience with the D90 by example you need to handle it in a certain way and restrict certain movements to avoid jello. Now with the GH1 we will have to pan a certain way to avoid this "mud effect". Maybe using a crane and pan movement by example might be better, or worse who knows. You might do track and shots maybe. The fact is that in order to make that part of your film (panning) work is going to require a lot of technical and artistic savy. Something essential to any good DP. Another thing is that we have to explore more how other elements of the settings might be affecting or helping exacerbate the "mud". This camera has way too many color, noise, etc., etc. settings that we have to know as much as posible about them and how they affect the moving image. This "mud" is not going to be a problem at all in creating great looking stuff. You just have to be a little more creative and technically savy.
 
Isaac_Brody said:
Just tell that to the 5D folks. That hasn't stopped them from converting 30P to 24P. :)

As for mud, it's more helpful to post original MTS files. Half the time there's problems that are pulldown related that only add to the mud problem. Original footage lets the rest of us know where you're coming from. Really, some things that bug one person are not a big deal at all to another person's eyes. Anyway, not worth getting worked up over. Now, back to workarounds.
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haha sure, they convert to 24p but usually the results are... worse than mud!


I spent/waste the weekend around the problem, and it seems to be just panasonic crippling the camera, so I will NOT expect a firmware realease... at least till the sales go down.
 
DrBlaz said:
you cannot switch to MPJEG if you want 24p, panasonic did a good job crippling the camera, even the PAL GH1 has 30p MJPEG, and 30p cannot be converted to 24p smoothly.
Click to expand...

Without 24fps that is completely usable like the Mjpeg 720 mode; the GH1 is just a 30P tv video camera. As much as I like the 5D; and it produces a beautiful 30fps, it will need to have 24fps in camera. Can you imagine if the original DVX100 was only 30FPS, it would have never become the legend it did.

However This is most frustrating with Panasonic; they built a very good camera, only to cripple it with a bad codec setting. Panasonic really needs to fix this. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of Panasonic doing such a firmware update like that in the past. They'll just make people wait it out for the next model to be release da year or more form now.

Canon shocked me with the FW update for the 5D; that was sooooooo out of character, however the 5d has had pressure from the press core to film/television people and industrial/wedding video shooters coming at them from all angles with petitions and letters. That was a large wave I haven't seen before in this area.

The Panasonic most likely will not get this backlash and such a strong magnitude's from so many different working professional circles; so a rectified FW is more likely not going to happen..... :-(

It's just not right that "Pentax" has a more detailed and cleaner 720P than the GH1, That's not right. It's Pentax for god sakes. However it too is plagued in having a video 30P only.



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Well, Ive said it before....that these issues are by design. Whether one wants to believe it or not these manufacturers know exactly what they are doing. I like everything about this cam except the final picture....and that is what's most important to me. it does not really matter HOW I get there but that the image looks the best that it possibly could. Unfortunately I might have to purchase the 5D in a few weeks myself. The newer contenders look good and all but I really want 1080p. I can live with the converted 24p from 30p for a while. At least we know that even if canon does not implement 24p we still have a hacker working on the issue. These manufacteres should be ashamed of themselves.
 
PappasArts said:
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of Panasonic doing such a firmware update like that in the past. They'll just make people wait it out for the next model to be release da year or more form now.
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Actually, the G1 has had several firmware updates in the past year. Seeing as it's the same division it wouldn't be unheard of to get a firmware update for the GH1.

http://fourthirds-user.com/2009/02/lumix_g1_firmware_update_v12.php

We're lucky that they have a history of releasing firmware updates for the previous model. The petition is an attempt to let them know what we need and if they want to add MJPEG 24P in a firmware update then they'll be selling a lot more cameras in the next six months. If not, someone else will come along and get it right.
 
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