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GH4 4K Panasonic video camera, official topic
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  • Cine-D looks really clean at 0, 0, 0. Maybe pull back the highlights and shadows 1 or 2 pips.

  • @MRfanny

    What country are you in? The GH4 won't ship till the very end of April in the US.

  • April 15th will be a total lunar Eclipse for North America. I wonder who will have the GH4 and a nice 800mm telescope for that event? Hopefully the clouds will stay away. Should look really cool at 4K Cine-D.

    Side note- 800mm is just about the tightest field of view you can use with a non-MAR m4/3s camera and still fit the full moon in a 16:9 aspect ratio.

  • @mpgxsvcd In my experience, it depends on who is doing the mooning.

  • Andrew from EOSHD posted some new test footage. Download the 4K source off of vimeo if you can. Footage looks great to me.

  • Seems the U3 cards are getting cheaper by the day. Now a 64GB will be under $60. Glad I waited a bit for pre ordering the cards for the GH4. Never had a bad Transcend card but with this new spec it could be that they still can get bad batches. Now if Vitaliy and the rest hack it to perform better you will probably do good getting a Sandisk at 280MB max.

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J3KA814/

  • Hello. Please note its NOT only the YouTube compression that kills GH4 footage!

    Look at the BMPC4K material on youtube (smooth edges, no aliasing, no micro compression artifacts) and compare it to gh4 4k. GH4 have strange ALIASING and my guess is, that its the IPB compression (insufficient 100mbps IPB) that is causing this "aliasing" kinda thing. Also it makes SKINS very plastic and lacking detail. Im disappointed that no-one's talking about this. Don't you see it? Propably we need to see some footage recorded via YAGH to external recorder to further judge (and solve) this issue.

    @driftwood You have done remarkable work with GH2 compression over the years, but I'm surprised that you haven't noticed this kinda obvious characteristic of GH4 IPB footage.

  • GH4 have strange ALIASING and my guess is, that its the IPB compression (insufficient 100mbps IPB) that is causing this "aliasing" kinda thing.

    LOL.

    To your knowledge, all youtube video that you see also use IPB compression, just much worse.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev Hm, laugh as much as you want. Its there and its not present for example on BMPC4k footage. Its NOT youtube. And btw, judging over YouTube footage IS RELEVANT since it is the most common distribution channel of video footage today! I think you should see this too, since you also worked lot with GH2 footage. :/ I'm disappointed.

  • yeah, it's utter garbage. i'll stick to shooting video with my iPod touch 4^^

  • I think one of the things you have to consider @blackspot is that cameras like the GH-4 can do things that the BMCC and RAW cameras like it can't do....that is...look like video and crunch its image in a very small (but efficient) codec. With that said...99% of what we've seen so far looks like...a camcorder/small camera shot it. It's been mostly in the hands of amateurs. The look can be dialed back with this camera...unlike its predecessors. BMCC and other cameras ARE dialed back (so to speak). Wait till someone does something special with this camera. Unfortunately...since it's a consumer and not pro-sumer camera..we're going to see a lot of the typical crap one would expect from a consumer (mostly on YouTube) plastic skins and all.

    And when you say disappointing...disappointing compared to what? A RAW camera? I mean...shoot with the settings turned up and you should expect the same anomalies that a cheap camera will produce. Shoot it correctly and you wouldn't. It's not the camera. It's doing what it's supposed to do for people on both ends of the spectrum.

  • think you should see this too, since you also worked lot with GH2 footage

    Right now I see bunch of inaccurate statement. Btw, common to any new camera topic in such state.

  • Instead of being childish and calling "bs" just rebut what I said. Correct me if I'm wrong. I've seen 35mm FILM look like cheap home videos on YouTube. We finally have a camera that has pro features built into it....but it doesn't mean everything you see will be pro quality. This camera can probably get a better image than cameras costing 3 times it. But you won't see that....because everyone in theri mama can afford this camera and would handle it like the example I gave with the 35mm film. Common sense should tell you that. Your going to see a lot of crap.

    ...and trust me....we've seen our fair share of crap with the BMPC, BMCC and BMPCC.

  • I'll have to say, the three videos I've downloaded from the web have had major artifacts and aliasing and I've downloaded some 2GB videos. Who knows what they hell they did to get them to Vimeo prior but I didn't see this so much in the BMPC stuff I've downloaded.

  • @Ian-T Point #1 It's been mostly in the hands of professionals all over the word, not amateurs Point #2 It is a prosumer, not consumer camera, meaning that it has tons of features that professionals will be able to use

  • That being said I'm still eye balling two of these for a new traveling lifestyle show I'm trying to land. 4k to 1080 for web distribution at $1700 sounds good to me.

  • Yes, my statement may be inaccurate now, and the "problems" with gh4 footage may be obsolete later on. Its still early stages. Im disappointed, that people don't see this problem I see. I might be wrong about what is causing this behavior. Since there are people discussing about 100mbps IPB being insufficient for 4K recording in general, so Im only proposing this being the origin of the problem. I just hope this subject to see the light here. Im sure there are many people comparing GH4 and BMPC4K at the moment, though its 2 very different cameras. Many people consider buying 4K camera and there are only 2 realistic options in this price range.

  • One thing we've learned is that the camera does display aliasing in the 1920 x 1080p mode but I have yet to see this problem in the 4K mode. I did however see one one issue in the Andrew Reid video but for the most part it was not present. The thing is you said you were disappointed...at what? The aliasing you've seen because of the compression? Then what is the BMCC and BMPC's reason for their aliasing? <<Rhetorical Theirs had nothing to do with compression. I would like to know what you expected from a 4k long GOP camera? You are comparing a RAW camera with something that's compressed. Do you think we won't see any difference when we start seeing 10 bit 4k out of the HDMI? What I do see in the YouTube videos...even from these professionals is an overly sharpened image. Someone mentioned earlier in this thread that they thought the image from this camera was sharper than what they have been seeing from the BMPC. Well....yeah ....but it's because the sharpening looked like it was not dialed back. It was shot straight out of the camera as is. I don't anyone (but Mr. Reid so far) has been trying to get everyone's favorite...movie look. They were just trying to shoot the best 4K image out of a semi-pro camera.

    EDIT: It's shimmering that I sometimes see when things are in motion (on trees, tight patterns etc) which makes me think they had sharpening at 0 or something. Just my thought.

    EDIT 2: And then there's the over saturation in most of the videos I've seen. Even in the "Light of the Yucatan" video. I think people (beta shooters) get so happy with being the first that they don't dig deep in getting the most out of these cams. Give it a month or so till we start seeing more carefully shot images out of this camera.

  • @Ian_T YES, thats it - SHIMMERING on the edges. Its also visible on STATIC footage (look at the far horizon and you often see it.) but it really pops up badly on handheld footage.

    And yes, Im am very KEEN to see footage recorded externally with beautiful smooth edges, since colors are not problem with this camera.

  • OK. Then this brings back memories from the GH-2. Same issue in some of the videos. It had to do with over sharpening of the image (whether from Pana lenses or just the sharpening too high). If I remember correctly some of the Pana lenses were automatically adjusting the sharpening in the background to compensate for the distortion correction. But manual lenses had no such issues. Now I know what you are talking about. I see it too.

  • Actually, there are no fewer than four options at this stage: Black Magic, Gh4, Sony AX, or wait and see what NAB brings

  • The footage I downloaded was 4k

  • @jonpais. I agree with that last statement. It does come down to those cameras for me. Up until a couple weeks ago I was going for the BMPC. But more vids from the GH came out. Then there's the super slow motion. What's strange is I hardly use slow mo but I feel like I would miss it. Dumb, I know. But watch BlackMagic come out with some crazy slow mo firmware right after I get my GH.

    @vicharris What kinds of artifacts did you see? Compression? Aliasing?

  • All of that but I don't see it in downloaded BMPC footage. Though the guys shooting the BM footage might be a little more aware of how they are uploading the footage but who knows