Quick question guys. I haven't gotten my hands on the GH4 yet, but I'm curious to do some testing on GH4 best settings (movin' on from the ol' GH3 Best Settings thread!). Any chance someone can post a clip with CineLike D and everything dialed to -5 as well as highlights and shadows at -5/+5 and master pedestal at +15? Curious to see how flat the flattest image truly is. Also, I only ask of this because I have yet to find someone who has posted something with these settings, but if someone already has on a different thread feel free to shoot me a link! Thanks :)
If just occurred to me... Sorry for all the screen grabs vs. video. They're are just too many perimeters that I'm testing before actually creating something that "moves." Time lapse shot in 4K, rendered out to 1080p.
Exposed for the sky. Even with You Tube's compression - continuous tones look good with low noise.
I'm finding that my ideal settings currently are Cine D with highlights dialled down -5. Leaving contrast at 0, sharpness -5, NR-5 and Sat @-2. I've played around with dialling contrast down to -5 but when you colour correct back to nice black levels the image becomes washed out, needing extra saturation dialled back in and becomes noisy. Cine D at contrast 0 feels flat enough for me to get a nice grade from with contrast at 0. The highlights dialled down just stops blown out windows etc.
4K is absolutely rocking though. Wow what a leap from the GH3.
@Xenocide38 I couldn't agree more. At first I thought 4K would be "bonus" to have just incase I needed it. But the results I'm getting from 4K are pretty amazing in post. Especially 4K rendered out as 1080p. The noise is smaller. Gradients have less or no banding. With CINE D (my setting of choice) caucasian skin tones are such an improvement coming from color profiles of the GH3. No more of that "pink, plastic" color rendition. CINE V is rich, vibrant and flat out sexy - IF that's the style you're looking for. That said, CINE V @ 4K still does retain much more information in post than I expected. Blacks my appear slightly crushed.... but they're not. Nice. Screen grabs of CINE V attached. These are straight out of the camera - no color correction.
As for best settings, I haven't done enough testing with the highlight/shadow features but so far have preferred the standard curve (0,0).
I do like cinelikeD and have been shooting with all settings at -2 or all -5 depending on the content.
Even without down-converting/transcoding into 1080p 4:2:2, the 4K files have more color info to play with.
Sure 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 or even raw are better but the extra resolution of 4K means more color information from pixel to pixel. 4K 4:2:0 grades much nicer than 4:2:0 1080p. Those extra pixels also help for stabilizing and sharpening. 4K, while not everything, does offer more than some people give it credit.
One thing that isn't apparent ... taking the 4K footage and down-converting to 1080 gives you a final file of 4:2:2 color "scale" rather than 4:2:0. Which, coupled with the ability to 'warp-stabilize' and other things, gives a very nice set of "tools" to apply to getting a better final-appearance file.
@tinbeo Premiere's "auto scale" doesn't bring down the resolution of 4K when auto sizing to a 1080 sequence. It just makes it "fit" within the 1080 sequence I believe. You are compressing twice the information (4K) into a 1080 edit. This allows you the ability zoom and/or crop in (roughly up to 200%) on the 4K footage or clip without loosing anything in a true 1080p HD edit. Hope that made sense and answered your question.
Based on my tests I've determined that the variable frame rate feature is pretty much worthless. You can get much better looking footage by shooting 1080p 60 FHD and time stretching. It looks much better than VFR even using AE's built in time stretch function.
The only reason I'd use VFR is if I absolutely had to deliver footage straight out of the camera ... and that's not going to happen.
@nopacnone Fear Not: I bit the bullet and purchased two of the new UHS-II Class 3 280Mb/s Cards from B & H. (A 64GB and a 32GB.) The visual result is the same even on these two "bad-ass" cards.
FWIW: The one thing about All-I footage is NLE editors, like Final Cut and Premiere Pro, LOVE All-Intra. Doesn't bog the machine down as much as IPB Inter-frame when editing/playback.
@maddog15 I just did some 1080p tests in both 200mbs ALL-I and 100mbs, and the 100mbs shots actually grade a lot better! Not sure why it's operating this way. I'm using a panasonic USH-1 card - could it be that the 200/ALL-I only operates on those USH-3 cards?
Or is 200/ALL-I just a complete gimmick based on bitrate theory, but actually degrades image quality?
@fredfred27 Yep, I see your point. Regardless, I certainly wish the VFR modes weren't so "Canon MkIII" in detail.
@nopacnone Yeah, that's a good analogy. Uprezzed 720. Also I agree with the 4K compression. And you can't beat the space savings of IPB Long GOP apparently even in 4K! It's looking more like I'll be shooting most everything in 4K and then editing in 1080. When needed, I'll switch to shooting in 1080 60p if I want great slo mo shots reinterpreted to 23.97 in Premiere Pro. Otherwise it's 4K shooting and editing.... for now.
Bit Rates: To this day I absolutely love the way my GH2 shoots with Driftwood's Moon T5/T7 (All-Intra @ 158Mbs). As far as the 200Mbs mode on the GH4 I'm a bit taken aback. Though it's early in my testing - the noise level seems a bit crunchy/staticy vs smooth and creamy. I'm becoming a Long GOP IPB fan on the GH4 as the 100Mbs modes are quite wonderful in 1080 as well as 4K/C4K. Drew at the DREWnetwork - who's opinion i respect and have learned much from - has stood by "IPB Traditional Long GOP Inter-Frame" even through the high bit rate, GH2 hack days.
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