@Vesku @rNeil

Thanks for answering me ! You are right, noise is much better in .mov ! Vesku, could you say me how i can change this "normal player settings" ? It looks weird for me to need to edit the player, for having the "real" camera results...

Made my own music video to showcase one of my songs. It's electronic music aka melodic dubstep. Anyhow... made this with my GH2 and GH3. All details in the description. If you like the music better alone its available online on the major streaming sites. Enjoy.

@Draksider

A lot of the folks around here use the mov over the AVCHD, for noise reasons ... less with mov. And after first trying out everything at -5, the consensus has been more contrast -4 to -2, sharpness -5 to -3, saturation around -2, noise at -5.

This is using either "standard" or "neutral" profiles most often. DO get a nailed WB in-cam, and of course dead-on exposures. You don't have the latitude to get either wrong and get the best end-result.

Done right, over all it's a pretty nice rig.

Hello all. Just wanted to say thank you for your input, comments and advise since I started this thread a year ago last May.

I Sold my GH3 to be able to purchase the GH4 and made the purchase on line Friday. Hopefully the GH4 will arrive soon!

I've started the same thread topic for the GH4 for anyone wants to participate. http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/10255/gh4-best-video-settings#Item_5

Love mine too ... with the little (or sometimes not so little) irritants that come with it. EVERY tool will have them. That's part of what makes having them fun, though, isn't it? I know mid-70's through late-90's Jag owners ... who love their cars ... constantly berating the original electrical harnesses shorting out every few weeks, and the way those Brit-designed/built vehicles could NOT take 90*-and up heat without blowing their cooling systems out ... on cars they'd nursed for 20 years! :)

@GlueFactoryBJJ ... Was just looking at some 4k from the GH4 on a full 4k monitor at NAB yesterday ... yea, why didn't they put all that in our GH3's? ( ha ... )

Still, dialed in with good post, the GH3 isn't anything to be embarrassed about ....

@andersen123 Well done! Love the music, the shots look a tiny bit underexposed, but good control of the highlights and I enjoyed your shot composition. Did you use any filters?

@surfculture very nice test. strangely, I liked all of the results (especially the film convert, for a stylized look), except for the color corrected ones, which looked kind of yellowish to my eyes (but again, I'm watching on a MBP Retina, not a calibrated monitor)

I realize this will appear a bit rambling, but this is the edited version... :) In many ways, this is a kind of summary/replay of the discussions a few pages back regarding optimal settings, with MY reasoning/understanding thrown in. I just didn't really understand the "why" behind the comments, being a noob and all.

I've been playing around and taking some video outside over the last few months and, like many, have been kind of disappointed with the "color recoverability" (probably wrong term) of the GH3. Now before everyone jumps on me for this, let me explain.

Since I got my GH3 (almost exclusively for home videos) I've been playing with different settings and trying to learn how to get the most out of a camera like this. My previous camera (still have it as I'm still transferring old tapes) was a Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camcorder. By comparison, with the Z1U what was recorded was what you got. With the GH3, I have a lot more flexibility.

So I started learning about video and kept seeing that the "good" cameras for video always produced video that was really flat and dull out of the camera, but during processing would "come alive" with some color correction and grading. I was amazed. So I started trying to shoot everything as flat as I could with the GH3 (Natural, -5, -5, -5, -5) thinking I would be able to do the same.

Unfortunately, once I started processing these videos in Premiere Pro CC, there were limitations that I've been trying to ignore, but wouldn't go away. I realize that some of them could probably be addressed by using SpeedGrade or Resolve, but, for home videos and similar, that is just way more work than it is worth... I'm not a colorist. And even then, I question that the results would be as impressive.

So I've been trying to understand WHY I'm having trouble bringing back flat video out of the GH3, when it appears to be relatively easy with "higher end" cameras. And I think I've figured it out.

While I may be overstating the obvious for those of you who are professionals, I'm just trying to see if my understanding is close to correct. Here goes...

The higher end cameras don't produce video as nice (IMO) as the GH3 straight out of the camera (with just about any settings). However, their video can be brought back to the point where they CAN look better than the video on the GH3. I guess this is why all pros keep going on about "latitude".

These higher end cameras have a number of advantages that give them this ability. From my perspective they are dynamic range (sensor), bit rate, bit depth (e.g. 8 or 10-bit), color encoding (e.g. 420 or 422), and codec (I could well be missing some). While they are somewhat inter-related, it seems only two are directly responsible for the GH3's limitations and are not resolvable with things like external recorders (or sensor limited).

Because of the GH3's 420 8-bit recording/output (SD card or HDMI), it will NEVER have the latitude that the higher end cameras have. So from what I can see, it becomes even more important to get it as close to "right" out of the camera (for the look you are trying to achieve) than these higher end cameras... without a hack that will give us access to higher end recording. EPIPHANY ALERT! :)

I say this because the GH3 appears to only have about 1/3 or less of the latitude of higher end cameras due to its 420 8-bit recording (I haven't scientifically tested this, so it could be a bit higher or much lower). So we can only recover about 1/3 of the information that a higher end camera can. Due to this, we need to have the camera set close to how we want it so we can do the final color correction/grade and get our "perfect look".

Based on this, here are my thoughts on in camera settings (especially since photos and videos appear to share the settings):

Photo Style: I'm going to have to do a lot of experimentation here to see what looks best to MY eyes. I really don't know what I'm going to select here. Especially in light of discussion regarding skin tone earlier in this thread.

Contrast: I think I'm going to end up a bit higher than -5 on this one, though below 0. My reasoning here is partially based on EOSHD.com's review of the GH3 where they found -5 left some "muddy" shadow tones. Though, theoretically, a negative value here (up to the -5) should allow for increased shadow detail recovery and apparent dynamic range. Though I may get more benefit by adding some exposure compensation for an "exposure to the right" (ETTR) approach at the risk of blowing out some highlight detail (my current preference).

Sharpness: I think that this will stay at -5. However, I will need to do some experimenting to see if -5 really just doesn't add any sharpness (or minimizes what is added) or actually actively softens the video. This can affect the amount of aliasing and moire that can be see in addition to the visibility of noise.

Saturation: Like many here (though I didn't understand it before), I think that I will be setting this much closer to 0 than I have been in the past, though probably not above 0. I just haven't been able to bring the saturation back in post at -5. Not to mention that it seems to be easier to reduce saturation than to increase it without strange color artifacts.

Noise reduction: I am likely to keep this at or close to -5. I say this for two reasons. First, noise reduction will almost always reduce detail. Because of this, I would rather have the detail and associated noise and adjust it afterward to my liking (in Premiere or using Neat) than to not have it and have no way to recover the real detail (sharpening doesn't add/recover detail). Second, with products like Neat, there are far better (if more computationally expensive) methods to control noise than what is available in the GH3. Though I may increase it depending on if I don't want to do much/any noise reduction in post (i.e. how lazy I am and the video's importance).

Anyway, am I nuts? Or am I finally beginning to understand the limitations of the GH3?

I also may try transcoding to ProRes (DNxHD?) 422 10-bit to see if that helps at all in post. My poor hard drives! :)

Picture Profile: Natural (-5,-4,0,-4)

Normally I use all setting at -5 but I noticed that when I have lots of underexposed areas and hard backlights I need a bit more saturation to avoid losing colours on the shadows. Graded with Film Convert and Colorista

My eyes don't even have the same color balance.

At least when you have the monitors calibrated, they are in the same ballpark... :)