@LPowell & @driftwood

What would have been smart is doing what JVC were toying about for ages which is putting a small half silver mirror inside the lens at a 45º angle, but only covering one side- then bouncing the image to the other side with another 45º mirror with a variable offset. Considering the GH2 exposed sensor and m43 standard- there is LOADS of room inside the lens to construct a custom assembly. This way you could use any Nikon / Canon lens (because it needs the room) with a 3D adaptor...

Just an idea- YMMV. This idea would have to be SUPER refined to work. In fact I can already think of issues,.. but it would be 3D!

Besides I have sworn off 3D until the tech gets better in my opinion. (what does that mean?)
Well having 2 cameras Genlocked and Synced is just problem No1. Then you got dynamic positioning of the offset - toe in etc... 2x Scarlet- what 40 grand (with everything) but the Rig will put you back a house! Darn!

@driftwood
Panasonic seems to have avoided exposing any useful technical documentation on their 3D lens. It doesn't look like a pair of 2:1 anamorphic lenses, which would have been clever. What they have revealed is quite underwhelming - a pair of side-by-side 12.5mm f12 lenses that each produce a field of view equivalent to a 65mm lens on a full-frame still camera. That implies that each of the two lenses use about 40% of the width of the image sensor in 16:9 mode, and only 20% of the height. In my opinion, Panasonic has laid a pair of dodo bird eggs here...

@LPowell Ah! Penny drops.

@LPowell
OK! So there is no real benefit to use that particular format? (One might aswell squeeze down 1080 in post) Or am I not getting it? :)

@LPowell I wouldn't mind trying out 2:21 aspect ratio settings for the gh2, Maybe you can help in making the proper settings for it? (For 1.5x adapter) / tell me how to go about it. Is it possible to change pixel aspect ratio?

Which anamorphic diopter is better? A +0.4 or +0.5 tokina?

@CraftyClown
@Brian202020
Brian's 30p->24p conforming trick is how I use MJPEG as well. I find the 20% slow-down adds a cinematic quality that isn't quite recognizable as a slow-motion effect. For music videos, however, I'd just go with 30p as it tracks the performers' movements better than 24p.

@Ulisse
If you use MJPEG mode at 1920x810 without an anamorphic lens, the frames will come out looking vertically squashed, which is probably not what you're looking for.

@CraftyClown
"...I can't see a good workflow for working with these nice anamorphic settings in PAL land :("

I've used the 30p MJPEG mode on my old GH1 for music video's before. I conformed the footage to 24p and it all had a slight slo-motion effect. Of course we had to speed up the song on set for playback. You could do the same thing just conform to 25p.

Update for PTool 3.62d, with support for anamorphic MJPEG videos at up to 2160x1080p!

Thanks once again to Vitaliy, PTool now supports MJPEG frame sizes beyond 1920 pixels wide. I've made use of this new feature to optimize the GH2 for native anamorphic shooting with both 1.33X adapters in HD video mode, as well as 2X adapters in VGA video mode. Used with an appropriate anamorphic lens, these MJPEG modes will produce videos that are automatically played back at the correct widescreen aspect ratio, without need for post-production stretching:

HD mode: 1920x810 videos for 1.33X anamorphic adapters, with peak bitrates of 100Mbps.
VGA mode: 2160x810 videos for 2X anamorphic adapters, with peak bitrates of 100Mbps.

* Note that the 2160x810 VGA mode produces an aspect ratio of 2.66:1. For a 2.37:1 aspect ratio, you'll want to crop these videos to a 1920x810 frame size.

@GrgrMD:

"Also note the color noise/pixel_mess at the bottom of the MJPEG frames."

I'm glad you're seeing that too. I thought it might have been our camera.

I am not commenting on the resolution of the hack in normal shooting mode.....

however. I applied this hack to my gh2 and set the camera to ex tele mode and I noticed that even though the file reads as being 1920 by 1080, it has the exact same framing as the 72060p ex tele mode. Due to the fact that ex tele uses a 1:1 pixel ration I can only conclude that it was upscaling the footage to 1080p because it could not possibly have had enough pixels for true 1080p.

that being said. I would love to use this patch and would welcome an ideas on how to solve this issue. I only shoot in ex tele mode so this is a deal breaker for me

Looking at the 1080p originals the person on Vimeo posted overlayed on a timeline, the AVCHD and the MJPEG both seem pretty close, but AVCHD looks much better to the pixel peep. I'd guess that has more to do with the frame compression then with how much detail the MJPEG mode is capable of resolving.. or is originally working with.. or whatever. Now although there is motion in the scene, it's still a static camera shot, where parts of the the image aren't moving and AVCHD should excel greatly. A scene with high detail and more camera motion might show the playing field more leveled, though that's even harder to setup a test for in a controled manner.
We still locked to 30fps for MJPEG?

Also note the color noise/pixel_mess at the bottom of the MJPEG frames. Furthermore, am I noticing the same odd jagged color edges in the MJPEG that we've come across in 4:2:2 captures off the HDMI on the GH2? Mainly seeing it in the reds.

sorry double