GH2 PTool v3.62D Released

after messing with settings all day yesterday and the day before, ive settles on and am going to stick with 66mb, GOP3, and AQ3. occasionally i have to turn the camera off and back on to play a clip back, other then that its completely stable with silicon power class 10 and transcend class 6 cards.

heres some stuff i shot with the settings yesterday.
 
Hi ben, do you have the settings, I have been searching for a 66/88 mbs 3 gop setting. The problem on the personalview low gop thread is that they test only 100+ bitrate, a bit heavy for my use.
 
all i changed was the bit rate, gop, and aq settings, i left everything else alone and im having no problems besides the occasional play back issue.
 

http://vimeo.com/28500691

Lately, some guys mentioned that the sky-banding issue of the gh2 is almost gone with the hack. That would be really great. But frankly, I was pretty sceptical if this could really work. So, I gave it a go and put it through its paces this morning. And I have to admit, surprise-surprise, the banding is still there but really less (even much less at the originals), but at the expense of much more noise - and to be honest, that cluster of noise isn´t my thing. But what is the reason for that less amount of sky-banding? Is it the much increased noise, maybe the slight foggy weather or simply the higher bitrate? No doubt, I will repeat this test in the near future.....

For comparison purposes 2 examples with an unhacked GH2:
vimeo.com/​22225257
vimeo.com/​21771310

Iso 800
Kit Lens 14-140
Various exposures
(partly 1-2 stops underexposed)
1080p24 - untouched
Hack: Vitaliy Kiselev Ptool 3.62d
Patch: Chris Brandin 66mbps, GOP 12, Q2
 
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Actually here we are seeing the vimeo compressed video which adds banding 90% of the times.
We/you should check the original mts files

Best
 
For what it's worth, I shot some interviews with the 66mbit, 3GOP, AQ3 setting this past weekend and the detail was nothing less than stunning with no moire.
 
I've got a noob question (i'm a noob). what bitrate do you render your output files at? For posting vids on Vimeo, I've read it takes only 5mbit/second. If you're sharing a video by DVD, what rate do you use for that?
 
I think the consensus is that the noise is washed away with the native codec which makes the banding worse since the natural dithering of noise is blobbed together. The patch allows the codec to reproduce the origional noise which some like, some don't.

iso800 is much noisier than lower iSO's, maybe you could do a lower ISO test to see how the noise/gradient behavior is with and without the patch.
 
Uwe Lansing said:

http://vimeo.com/28500691

Lately, some guys mentioned that the sky-banding issue of the gh2 is almost gone with the hack. That would be really great. But frankly, I was pretty sceptical if this could really work. So, I gave it a go and put it through its paces this morning. And I have to admit, surprise-surprise, the banding is still there but really less (even much less at the originals), but at the expense of much more noise - and to be honest, that cluster of noise isn´t my thing. But what is the reason for that less amount of sky-banding? Is it the much increased noise, maybe the slight foggy weather or simply the higher bitrate? No doubt, I will repeat this test in the near future.....



FWIW, I can scarcely believe that the the whole banding saga is still on-going.

First the GH1, then the early GH2's now (according to various reports) some of the later GH2's are exhibiting the same problem.

Surely, it's time to say, 'Enough, already!'

Panasonic may fix it in the GH3, or they may not - but the simple fact is that, in 2011, we shouldn't have to deal with it.

The Nex5n & Nex 7 video tests have yet to come - but, if they offer 'bandless' video, and the same degree of control as the 'G' series, is there *really* any reason to stay with Panasonic any longer?

If I could bring myself to cope without an EVF I think I'd already have ordered a 5n - as it is, I'm pretty sure that I'll swallow hard, dig deep, and buy a Nex 7 - and Panasonic and their imperfect M4/3 sensor can then do what the £"$$%&* they like.
Click to expand...
 
I agree - I find the color banding to be nearly a "deal breaker".
But I wonder - it is a Panasonic issue or an AVCHD issue?

Does Hack + MJPEG also exhibit the same degree of banding?

BUT: One does have to be very careful in judgement because VIMEO and YouTube encoding seems to make banding worse in almost every instance. And when VIMEO down-converts to small-file MP4 it's trash.
 
DPStewart said:
I agree - I find the color banding to be nearly a "deal breaker".
But I wonder - it is a Panasonic issue or an AVCHD issue?

Does Hack + MJPEG also exhibit the same degree of banding?

BUT: One does have to be very careful in judgement because VIMEO and YouTube encoding seems to make banding worse in almost every instance. And when VIMEO down-converts to small-file MP4 it's trash.
Click to expand...



I'm not technically competent to judge - all I know is that my Canon AVCHD camcorder never had banding issues.

Accepted about video sites playing havoc with files - but the banding seems very apparent to those who post the examples.

Not that I care very much- I refrained from buying the GH2 until the banding was sorted, I now have two GH1 bodies (which don't band) three Panasonic lenses, a flash, and some bits & bobs - all of which are saleable,

I'm too weary to carry on waiting for Panasonic to sort themselves out - take 25p, they deliberately ignored a massive customer base (don't ask me why!) then, when Sony release nex models with 25p, we get some garbled second-hand rumours that 25p is on the way for the GH2.

Vitaly says it's coming - but I haven't been able to find one single attributed quote from Panasonic to substantiate it.

Perhaps it it *is* coming - but, for myself, I no longer care. I have an alternative (hopefully) that offers realities and not speculative pipe dreams.

And even if 25p does come - so what?, the sensor is stil inferior to APS-C (subject to some serious tests, of course) and, imo, the 'hack' and it's ridiculous bit-rates are just esoteric tinkering with a fundementally flawed format.

The phrase, 'polishing a turd', springs to mind.
 
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Uwe Lansing said:
http://vimeo.com/28500691

Lately, some guys mentioned that the sky-banding issue of the gh2 is almost gone with the hack. That would be really great. But frankly, I was pretty sceptical if this could really work. So, I gave it a go and put it through its paces this morning. And I have to admit, surprise-surprise, the banding is still there but really less, but at the expense of much more noise...

For comparison purposes 2 examples with an unhacked GH2:
vimeo.com/​22225257
vimeo.com/​21771310
Click to expand...
Thanks for taking the time to do these tests, but unfortunately, they really cannot be evaluated properly without access to the original MTS files. By its nature, color gradient banding is extremely sensitive to subtle details of color depth in AVCHD macroblock encoding. Any type of transcoding or recompression of the original files will inevitably obscure the evidence that I'd want to examine. If you're unable to supply the original MTS files for download via Vimeo, then your conclusions cannot be confirmed.
 
I thought at it's essence that banding was an 8-bit issue and that all cameras in this class exhibit it?
 
I think the consensus is that the noise is washed away with the native codec which makes the banding worse since the natural dithering of noise is blobbed together. The patch allows the codec to reproduce the origional noise which some like, some don't.
Click to expand...

Good explanation, and I personally don´t like noise. If I want some filmic grain I´ll do it in post.

iso800 is much noisier than lower iSO's, maybe you could do a lower ISO test to see how the noise/gradient behavior is with and without the patch.
Click to expand...

I did a test with the lpowell mjpeg-patch with the exact same iso value of 800. And the native footage looks a lot cleaner than that what I´ve got with the avchd patch: http://www.vimeo.com/27043259 Could it be that the avchd codec produces more noise with high bitrate patches? I haven´t the faintest idea how the patches work in detail...

Does Hack + MJPEG also exhibit the same degree of banding?
Click to expand...

No, I don´t think so. EdiT: Sorry, I was still sleeping :-). I thought we are talking about noise. Yes, I´m pretty sure, that the mjpeg shows the same amount of banding

all I know is that my Canon AVCHD camcorder never had banding issues.
Click to expand...

I´ve worked with the Canon 7D and 550D(t2i) and have never seen such an amount of sky-banding.

unfortunately, they really cannot be evaluated properly without access to the original MTS files
Click to expand...

Please tell me, which scene you would like to have as a downloadable 1080p version.

I thought at it's essence that banding was an 8-bit issue and that all cameras in this class exhibit it?
Click to expand...

I thought that too but to me it looks like that the banding is much worse with the gh2 than with a Canon dslr for example.
 
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I would suspect the bit depth is the main culprit here, 8 bits is not a lot. I'm a stills shooter and I can see a massive tonality difference between the 14bit of the 5DMKII and the 16bit of my Hassy, especially in graduated areas, like backdrops and skies, the Canon can band like crazy whereas the Hassy would have zero banding on the same image. You get what you pay for I'm afraid.
 
Hello. I want to use 720 50p and 1080 50i mode! What settings should I use?

*PS What is the difference between 720 50p and 1080 50i mode (Sharpness and quality)?

Thank you!
 
Just wanted to let some peoples know that the Sandisk Ultra II was a perfect match for cbrandin's 66mb patch. No hiccups on anything I threw at it. Played back in camera fine too. Excellent card and cheap. 15MB/s is its read/write, which is almost double the patches' settings.
 
Noise is a result of the captured sensors noise floor.

Like audio level noise floors, all video sensors have a noise floor.

Noise is very fine detail. Depending on how badly the image is compressed, fine detail (including noise) is smeared by the compressed encoding format.
If you were to capture direct HDMI out, you would get the highest quality output, fine details, fine noise, and all that makes up the uncompressed video.

Fortunately, we are lucky to have someone who understands the technical programming aspects for the GH2 and its AVCHD codec.
The higher quality AVCHD ouput is now getting closer to the same quality detail in static and motion seen in the uncompressed frame comparison. Ralph_B was very helpful with his
HDMI frame to AVCHD frame comparison.

The 132Mb/s 3GOP AQ2 version was the best. Fine detail differences looked almost undetectable
60Mb/s AQ2 is a real nice compromise which looks excellent static and shows only a little loss in motion.

With a higher quality encode, It's a lot easier to model noise with a program such as Neat opposed to having your shadow detail smeared (mud) by a low quality encode.
The lower quality makes the noise bubble with moving elements which makes this type of noise hard to remove, not to mention all the detail lost.

BTW,
I shot this at Biosphere2 in Arizona a day ago.
You should check it out if your in the Phoenix Arizona area.
GH2 66MB/s AQ2 Lumix 20mm
72507f4d0dbc0a4ae39ed2deb7c611.png
 
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