@abaci I see a ton of macroblock noise in the shadows and greys on your posted png

@Driftwood: Dark Matter is superb!

This was shot on a GH2 with a Canon FD 50mm lens that I bought on ebay for $50. There was indirect sunlight basically filling the place and so the dark areas were very poorly lit. The ceilings are 30+ foot tall and all of the windows were covered in opaque plastic so no direct sunlight inside. (Not like there would be anyway, I'm in Northwest Washington!) I don't specifically remember my F-stop and ISO settings but I'm fairly certain I was at f2.8 or f3.6 and ISO640.

There was very little noise throughout the footage and only really showed up when I started stressing the ISO to 3200 and above. 1600 ran well but I wanted less contrast so I stayed at lower ISO.

The card used was a Sandisk Extreme 16G 30MB/s. It spanned on occasion but was not consistent. I have since decided that I will use Dark Matter for everything I know will be less than 2 minutes. Short actions scenes are just plain perfect to shoot with this. It allows so much latitude because it is just so good in low light. Not to mention that it is all I-Frames (admittedly I don't quite understand this yet but I am taken to believe that all I-Frames can't be bad)

Settings were Nostalgic -2(ALL) on 1080p/24fps.

I found an interesting effect of the hack though. Seems that the hardware was nearly completely maxed out. When shooting with Dark Matter no high light and lots of detail to resolve, the sound would cut in and out. Not really an issue for me but thought I would mention it.

Thanks again Driftwood...you're certainly in my band of heros @vitaly and @cbradin for all they've done too!

Martin, Really beautiful work! A great example of seeing. I hope you post more "somethings".

@Cablefreak76 absolutely amazing clip you did, like the compos and movements. quality looks really super. What was the soundtrack, if I may ask?

@lumixuser lol

Btw: I love you guys. I love patience...

@driftwood does it mean: totally you're happy with Canis Majoris now

@Driftwood Glad to hear it. :) Too bad you can't get a beta to us before the test on Sunday - we have 8 GH2s confirmed as of today.

Testing Mysteron in the mist, pushing it in FCPX using the ToneGrade plugin. Had the ISO bug going in some of the EX clips, never mind I forgot. Used 'Vibrant' -2 -2 -1 -2 for the first time. I think at least some of the images turned out the way I wanted, like the dock. Mysteron will definitely stay with me a while. The buoy man turned up out of the blue and was very nice and chatty, brightened it up a bit. :)

@rajamalik IMHO 5Dto RGB does the best chroma smoothing.

@modernhuman Both are good codecs, but nevertheless it's a transcode. So I'd avoid additional losses. Plus, after conversion you are dealing with 422 and 10 bit, so there is more data to preserve. That's why I'd prefer a higher data rate than your original stuff. And, yes, 444 has it's problems, I try to avoid it as well.

@rajamalik maybe also check this pavtube gh2 mts to prores 422 hq, there is also another one or two brands, I don't remember the names, maybe a consumer thing or pro, but it transcodes, http://camcorder1080pvideotips.com/?p=229

@nomad I guess I haven't seen a real difference, between HQ (220mb/s) and plain 422 (145mb/s), but most of driftwood's patches hover around 145mb, so 422 should be enough. Obviously, if the work is hi end, 422 HQ all the way, ensuring that last 2%. 4444 messes with the RGB values, at least in my workflow, so I don't use that.

With ordinary AVCHD ProRes HQ is indeed overkill, but with the high bitrate settings like the ones from Driftwood, I'd aim for 422 HQ and even 444 for critical work. Have a look at the bitrates – they are all Intra!

Don't waste the quality and time involved when converting in 5DtoRGB, disk space is getting cheap again.