I clearly see difference in sharpness. Watch the i in "Chipset".

To the right of the blue part of the miniDV you can spot huge macroblocking in shadow in the HBR compared to 24H. The second effect might get alot stronger if you have a more complex scene.

@duartix, Cake 1.2 follows the same settings design pattern as Cake 1.1.

When not constrained by frame limits, the I-frames use a quantization parameter that is what you set plus or minus two, and the P- and B-frames use the quantization parameter that you set.

@duartix @balazer I did some tests with QP set to 20 - thanks for the suggestion. Actually I had a look at it with Elecard Buffer analyzer, out of interest. On a heavy motion scene, the line was quite high up and zigzagged about, whereas on a fairly static scene it sat at around 45mbps. The "red line" in both cases at around 61. The "shape" of the line was very similar to what was going on in Streameye.

I know that's not what you suggested, but I'm intrigued by what the Buffer analyzer window is showing.

Sorry for these approx things but I'm still having pc trouble so can't post a screenshot.

Actually scrap the 3D example, forgot that was 60i footage (and I can't remember the settings). But I haven't noticed pulsing with my usual 24H, but I'll look for it.

@Mark_the_Harp :

You should try lowering the quantizer in small steps. The effect might not be obvious but if you lower it too much what can happen is that the codec starts encoding blocks at Q18 but then (if the content is demanding) it starts running against the frame limit and will encode the remaining blocks at a much higher Q which will give them a lower IQ. To detect that you should probably need to use Elecard Stream Analyser.

@balazer :

Cake 1.1 was very similar to FlowMotion. The thing that stood out was the use of P-Frames vs B-Frames. Does 1.2 follow the same steps?

To increase quality, in PTool go to Patches for testers, AVCHD Movie Mode, Quantizer, and then set the 1080 and/or 720 quantizer values. Try 20 or 18. If you go too low, the bit rate will bump up against the limit.

The low noise levels come from using a low ISO and using encoder settings that don't add (much) compression noise. 320 gives exceptionally low noise when you avoid the ISO noise bug.

Thanks for testing. A short GOP was not my goal with this approach. If you can get all of the frames to be equal quality, the GOP length doesn't matter so much. The short GOP was necessary to make spanning work at these bit rates. Cake should achieve the same quality on every frame, motion or not, so long as the bit rate limit is not hit. Chris's 66 Mbps settings can look very good, but it depends on the shooting conditions. With low noise and low detail, it looks good. But when the detail or noise go up a bit, the B-frames become lower quality than the other frames. My approach is an attempt to prevent that. Chris is using a lower quantization parameter than I am. If you want the constant quality VBR approach with higher quality, you can change the quantizer to a lower value. You can also raise the 24p high top bit rate limit, though you'll lose spanning if you're not using the 95 MB/sec 64-GB card.

Mark, thanks for testing. Looks good. (and sounds good!) The on-board mics are not terrible, but do you know how one would mic a harp? I may be able to recommend a mic that you can plug straight into the GH2.

@estib, you should not change the Auto Quantizer setting in Cake. Cake uses a constant quantization parameter. If you want higher quality, you can try changing the Quantizer for 1080 (or 720) modes to 20 or 18.

@Kihlian, thanks for testing. Glad to know ETC mode works - I hadn't tested that myself. The bit rate will be high only when the video demands it. HBR is the same quality as 24p, just with a lower limit. MJPEG settings were copied straight from Flow Motion 1.0 without testing. You can try using them as they are, or remove all of them.

Thank you @balazer for this great setting (not sure if I'm allowed to call it a patch any more)!

My experiments with the prev version have been fantastically rewarding, and just tried the new version 1.2 with the 1.1 firmware / ptools 3.64d. Need to do a longer term experiment, but the pictures have a wonderful quality about them, and bitrates seem to work well to match the movement in the image. More importantly - looks absolutely great. Using a class 6 card, believe it or not!

My first quick trial with 14-140 lens / 24H / Handheld with wild zooming and ISO160 gave a bit allocation: max 64 248 892 / avg 38 244 284 / min 15 309 758 and perfect picture quality throughout that clip, whatever movement was happening on screen. So obviously if the image needs a lot of bits, you will get them!

The clip below is my second test, this time with much less movement which gives rates of max 33 278 556 / avg 29 741 610 / min 22 451 166. This shows the encoder is really responding well to need and giving exactly what it says on the tin - constant quality. Have a look at the raw mts (link below) shot at ISO320 using the 14-140 at f5 and 1/25, on 24H using standard film setting and -2,0,0,-2. Ignore the crappy on-mic sound of course - it's cold at home and the harps don't like that. Download and play with the original mts if you want as I think it takes grading well. It seems to produce a sort of "rounded" quality to the image. Don't know if that sounds flaky, but it looks nice even using the Panasonic lenses!

Link if you can't see it below is http:// vimeo.com /37112107 (just remove the gaps)

@balazer tested a little your settings 1.2. HBR mode: panning = 21165 kBits/s No moving objects and camera = 10739 kBts/s.
So the bitrate in HBR is not so high.
24P (moving) = 29443 kBts/s 24P still = 16766 kBts/s.
1280x720 50p = 18737 kBts/s

Playback in camera works, maybe sometime have to turn on and off to see the clips. Ex tele mode works.
I´m using a SanDisk HD Video Extreme 30MB/s.
There are changes in the Mjpeg too? Have some problem with it, don´t now if I made disorder in it settings, it don´t works..
I´m new in the hack. Hope thys help and look forward for your cake.

Vitaliy, you are right. I made a mistake in my testing. All PAL and NTSC modes are working in Cake 1.2. There was no reason for me to make a separate PAL version.

edit: nm

New version of Cake for the GH2 v1.1 firmware image and PTool 3.64d, in the second post of this topic:

• Cake 1.2:

  • 24p and Variable Movie Mode at up to 80 Mbps

  • HBR 1080 25p & 30p, 1080i, and 720p at up to 50 Mbps (PAL and NTSC)

Please test.

HBR seems to use the same interlaced encoding that 1080i uses, so I was unable to make HBR stable and span at the same bit rates I could for 24p and VMM. The quality is still good, but begins to suffer with prolonged high motion or above ISO 1250.

HBR 1080/25p is stable 10 Mbps higher than I set it, but it seems to share a setting with 1080/30p. I set it low enough to be stable with both. If you want 1080/25p and you don't care about 1080/30p, you can try raising Other Modes Top and Bottom bit rates by 10,000.

I didn't try very hard to get 1080i and 720p to work at higher bit rates. It might be possible.