The Panasonic G1HD | GH-1 Video Mode : A Real Video Mode

CFLs are not giving me rolling lines. Just older Fluorescents and Sodium Vapors.

I have an 85w (350 or so equivalent) in a lighting fixture here and I just turned it on to check. Nothing doing as far as rolling lines go.

Even slightly newer Fluorescents aren't really that visible.
 
squig said:
Somebody made a good point that the 720p is 720 lines opposed to the 1080 which is only 540 lines of resolution.
Click to expand...

That's true for broadcast spec 1080i (at 60hz), but the GH1 is recording whole frames with 1080 lines of vertical resolution.
 
cool that I can live with

Well I'm putting the D90 on ebay today. I should be able to pick up a GH1 by the end of the month. So you have until then to iron out all the bugs. Thx for being the crash test dummy, the beers are waiting next time you're in Sydney.
 
Kholi said:
I'm pretty much ready to confine my shooting to 720/60P with the occasional 1080/24P for locked down wides that need the extra detail.
Click to expand...

So, you can mix the two??? Like, drop both 1080/24P and 720/60P onto the same timeline in your NLE???
 
If anyone wants to host a really quick sample of Motion JPEG 720/30p I'll send you the file.

It's just a water gun showing several different colors, somewhat lowlight.

Settings:

MJPEG (HD) 720/30P
140mm @ 5.8
1/30 Shutter
ISO 100

Second Clip:

MJPEG (HD) 720/30P
55mm @ 5.6
1/50 Shutter
ISO 100

Didn't want to throw it on Vimeo because the compression is week and I haven't signed up for my Vimeo Premium Account just yet.

It's ONLY to show the Motion JPEG characteristics, and NOTHING else.

P1020079.JPG


http://gh1.dark-stone.com/kholi/P1020079.MOV

P1020080.JPG



http://gh1.dark-stone.com/kholi/P1020080.MOV
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Lots of NLEs have been able to do this for a while. Which one are you working with?
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I can speak for the Final Cut Pro crowd. We've had a multi format timeline since FCP 6 came out (which is the current version). But know this:

For offline editing its fine, go ahead and do it while banging out your story, but its always considered an "effect" taking up real time horsepower while editing, and the quality of the "non-native" clips is sometimes half quality, or will stutter, in the case of multiple frame rates.

Even when finally rendered, the up and down and cross-conversion scaling is not optimal quality. For the online, you will need to use something like Apple Compressor with manual settings set to their highest quality, to conform each and every clip that is non-native to that timeline to get acceptable professional results.
 
Thanks for sharing those, Kholi.

I see what you mean about the blockiness, it seems like it doesn't handle noise as well as AVCHD, and the first clip is even running at 26.75 mbps (according to Quicktime, at least).

At a much higher bitrate, I still think it would be a great alternative to AVCHD for filmmakers. Easier to edit, and less prone to breaking down in busy scenes. Sure, it would be much larger in size, but memory cards and hard drives are cheap. Are you listening, Panasonic?
 
It's certainly not a bad alternative. If we can get 1080/24 and 720/60, 720/24 then I'll take it as an alternative for sure.

The footage doesn't look too terrible, it's just not at smooth as the AVCHD footage.

Thanks to Daniel L for the space, by the way.
 
What's the bit-rate of the mjpeg? and is it constant or variable?

it looks a lot cleaner than the D90
 
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squig said:
Yeah the current AVCHD implementation on the GH1 is just nuts. Maybe they think there is more demand for 60i. Who knows what goes on inside the feeble brains of the marketing people.

Somebody made a good point that the 720p is 720 lines opposed to the 1080 which is only 540 lines of resolution.
Click to expand...

I keep telling you, the 60i is so that you can plug it into a big screen TV, most of which are guaranteed to handle a 60i signal and downres or do pulldown automatically as required. So you shoot the kids at the beach or whatever, take it home and plug it in to something with a HDMI input, and it almost certainly plays back properly. It's not optimized for us pros, but for people like David Pogue (NY Times) who are consumers that will rate it based only on the cool features and the instant ease-of-use.

Incompatibility with a popular consumer standard would attract bad reviews, awkwardness with some post software is going to have comparatively little impact on overall sales. Bear in mind that as camera consumers go, film/video artists are in a minority. I guarantee far more DVX100s were bought for shooting holidays and bar mitzvahs and weddings than for making anything resembling movies.

1080i is only 540 lines of resolution at a time, but the camera's recording 1080 lines at 24p. Drop it into the NLE and boom, you get progressive frames. You're not getting more resolution shooting at 720 though you're certainly getting more fps.
 
Thank you Eddy. All too often people around here think that they are anywhere NEAR the majority. Completely opposite and worse... we're barely on the radar now.
 
A great is example is a Hollywood DVD. They usually have only 24 frames on them. But its the DVD player itself that adds the pulldown to 60i on the way out.

Same with Apple iTunes HD downloads. The software/hardware of the computer adds the pulldown to 60i even before it gets to the HDTV. Some are better than others. For example, on the Mac, the Front Row application is superior at adding pulldown than just watching a QuickTime window at full screen when using the DVI to HDMI connection.

Final Cut Pro adds my pulldown on the fly as it spits out to a Kona card and an HDTV via HD-Component. Pure timeline, but can be viewed on a normal television while editing. Brilliant.
 
I just took it into PS to study individual frames, and it indeed has a vertical stripping going on. The first XL1's had this; it was do to a circuit interference on the circuit board. I wonder if this is happening too? If so Panasonic should be made aware, so they can rectify the issue.
 
Thanks for posting these clips. It actually doesn't look too bad. I can see the m jpeg being useful if you just need to turn footage around quickly.

Adrian
 
christophersj said:
Even when finally rendered, the up and down and cross-conversion scaling is not optimal quality
Click to expand...
what scaling? if you are indeed scaling just change the motion quality to best in your sequence settings and it will use the lanczos scaling from motion and compressor, and with "high precision" set it's done in 16 bit float too. fcp handles online quality just fine, transcoding externally only wastes a generation. i'd say it's the offline that suffers, for the reasons you mention.

/matt
 
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