Robert McLachlan, ASC ... on the Panasonic GH1

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
For those who don't know about this, and who are interested in what working professionals say about cameras...

Robert McLachlan, member of the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) and CSC (Canadian Society of Cinematographers), had some interesting things to say and a pretty good endorsement of the GH1's image quality, in a post he made on Illya Friedman's Hot Rod Cameras site.

For those who don't know, Illya manufactures a PL mount adapter for the GH1, which lets cinema lenses be used on the little camera.

You can see the full text of the post in the comments section of Illya's "how to shoot with the GH1" page, here. It's the 9th comment.

Here is an excerpt:
At Technicolor Vancouver I viewed the material with master colorist Gary Shaw and we both cracked up when we saw it. It’s SO good. Gary had timed 16mm and 35mm stuff I shot 20+ years ago and was amazed.
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McLachlan's IMDB page
McLachlan's site
 
Barry_Green said:
Illya manufactures a PL mount adapter for the GH1, which lets cinema lenses be used on the little camera.
Click to expand...

I guess modding a camera to use a lens that costs 20 times what the camera does........well, that kinda says something too. I went to his site and he's apparently doing it for 7Ds also.
 
Barry_Green said:
For those who don't know about this, and who are interested in what working professionals say about cameras...
Click to expand...

Only one of the items listed I have a question about:
# The “FHD” 1920×1080/24p mode does NOT use a standard 3:2 pulldown. Make sure you remove the pulldown using a method that preserves the real 24p frames and not the interpolated frames. The interpolated frames are of particularly low quality.
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What 'pulldown' removal method is recommended to 'preserve the real 24p frames'?
 
Best to just ignore pulldown entirely. Install the PTool firmware patch and record in native 24p and never worry about pulldown whatsoever. While you're at it, get higher bitrate, mud-free footage, 4:2:2/high-bitrate MJPG, NTSC<->PAL switchability, and enable 3rd-party batteries.
 
Barry_Green said:
Best to just ignore pulldown entirely. Install the PTool firmware patch and record in native 24p and never worry about pulldown whatsoever. While you're at it, get higher bitrate, mud-free footage, 4:2:2/high-bitrate MJPG, NTSC<->PAL switchability, and enable 3rd-party batteries.
Click to expand...

I need the ability to playback video in the camera (it's totally critical IMO to check for moiré, etc, because if you point it at something with a weird pattern the LCD will often moiré but the footage actually isn't...and you can check the first frame by zooming in, or play back the footage with HDMI out), until that gets fixed I will keep dealing with pulldown. Until MJPEG gets proper 24p I'll stick with AVCHD (at the new high bitrate it is pretty awesome anyway), PAL NTSC switch is a good thing and will probably help increase resale value of camera, along with everything else. 3rd party batteries...I only have panny batteries and two is enough for most of the things I do.

But anyway yeah, I have been using a pulldown removal method that works and the footage looks great. Only downside is I occasionally lose the first and last frame.
 
Barry_Green said:
Best to just ignore pulldown entirely. Install the PTool firmware patch and record in native 24p and never worry about pulldown whatsoever. While you're at it, get higher bitrate, mud-free footage, 4:2:2/high-bitrate MJPG, NTSC<->PAL switchability, and enable 3rd-party batteries.
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Barry, what's your take on the 23.971 frame rate? When native patch is applied that's the resultant stream's frame rate. Not a big difference, but NTSC standard is 23.976.
 
Ben_B said:
I need the ability to playback video in the camera (it's totally critical IMO to check for moiré, etc, because if you point it at something with a weird pattern the LCD will often moiré but the footage actually isn't...and you can check the first frame by zooming in, or play back the footage with HDMI out), until that gets fixed I will keep dealing with pulldown.
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Native footage plays back fine now. It's been fixed in PTool v.3.36
 
svecher said:
Barry, what's your take on the 23.971 frame rate? When native patch is applied that's the resultant stream's frame rate. Not a big difference, but NTSC standard is 23.976.
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The sensor is running at 23.976. Don't know why the file is reporting 23.971, but Vitaliy has verified that the sensor is running at the right rate.

And yeah, Ben, that playback issue is long solved. Just don't patch the audio to be a high bitrate. Changing the audio bitrate makes files not play back in-camera, but you can go as high as you want in the video bitrate and use native 24p mode with no issues on playback.

And if you like intraframe MJPG, you can get 4:2:2 now.
 
I read somewhere on the threads that there are problems editing the native footage in final cut pro because of the 23.971 -- can anyone confirm it works?
 
Barry_Green said:
The sensor is running at 23.976. Don't know why the file is reporting 23.971, but Vitaliy has verified that the sensor is running at the right rate.

And yeah, Ben, that playback issue is long solved. Just don't patch the audio to be a high bitrate. Changing the audio bitrate makes files not play back in-camera, but you can go as high as you want in the video bitrate and use native 24p mode with no issues on playback.

And if you like intraframe MJPG, you can get 4:2:2 now.
Click to expand...

Hmm I will give it a go...

I love intraframe 4:2:2 MJPEG...just need 24p to work right.
 
Can't have those together yet; intraframe 4:2:2 MJPG at 30p, or AVCHD at 24p, one or the other...

... but heck, the day is still young, and Vitaliy is still hard at work, so who knows? :thumbsup:
 
Barry_Green said:
Can't have those together yet; intraframe 4:2:2 MJPG at 30p, or AVCHD at 24p, one or the other...

... but heck, the day is still young, and Vitaliy is still hard at work, so who knows? :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

:) Yup!

Anyway, I love the new AVCHD...looks great.
 
rundavids said:
I read somewhere on the threads that there are problems editing the native footage in final cut pro because of the 23.971 -- can anyone confirm it works?
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It does not cause problems, and 23.98 native footage from the GH1 does work just fine. What happens is, with 23.98 native footage from the GH1, the files transcode to ProRes with parameter selected for field dominance; it comes up as "Upper (Odd)." When you create a 23.98 Pro Res sequence, FCP expects this parameter to read "None," and when you drop a clip into the sequence it will give the ol' message "for best results, the sequence and clip settings should be the same," yada, yada, yada. You can tell it to change the sequence to match or not, it will make no difference in how the footage renders or works within the sequence.
 
Another solution is to open the clip bin in FCP and with right (or ctrl) click > Item Properties > Format... and there change the field dominance of the clips to 'none'.
 
rundavids said:
I read somewhere on the threads that there are problems editing the native footage in final cut pro because of the 23.971 -- can anyone confirm it works?
Click to expand...

Working with the footage in Premiere, getting no issues at all, it looks cleaner and runs fantastic.

Can't wait to upgrade to CS5 and see how the Mercury Engine burns through the footage even faster.
 
Barry_Green said:
Best to just ignore pulldown entirely. Install the PTool firmware patch and record in native 24p and never worry about pulldown whatsoever. While you're at it, get higher bitrate, mud-free footage, 4:2:2/high-bitrate MJPG, NTSC<->PAL switchability, and enable 3rd-party batteries.
Click to expand...

Have you updated your camera?
 
WesScog said:
Working with the footage in Premiere, getting no issues at all, it looks cleaner and runs fantastic.

Can't wait to upgrade to CS5 and see how the Mercury Engine burns through the footage even faster.
Click to expand...

Looks cleaner than the pulldown stuff with a higher bitrate?

Yech I'd avoid editing a Long-GOP codec natively...
 
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