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Driftwood Quantum X Settings, Series 2: Sedna A, B, C
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  • @onionbrain Thanks so much for your detailed analysis. It doesnt matter about the print quality partially because all profiles were subjected to the same test. And youve certainly changed the ideaology once again surrounding picture profiles. The new Sedna matrix is being reconstructed following these findings. Thanks Andrew.

    Nick

  • Today we had a video shoot for a short movie, I used Quantum X v4d Orion dark matter v3. Most of the shots were 1080 24P, we did also a couple of takes with 720 60P (for slowmo). Al takes were shot with 64G 95Mb SanDisk, had no crash or errors with 34Gig of footage.

    Tanks @driftwood for sharing your settings :-)

  • thx @onionbrain i test everytime when a new setting is installed on my gh2.
    but i never do test it like you have done it now... it makes things much more clear.
    .

    I also do like the vibrant, Nature also looks good, when it is set to -2 -2 +2 -2...

  • @onionbrain good test! According to this review (which may have only been of the stills mode of the camera): http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicDMCGH2/page12.asp

    ...Vibrant has as much dynamic range as cinema, whereas they both have a bit less than standard. You're point about standard and cinema being essentially the same is interesting--might make me switch to standard as my default. Oh, and by the way, @driftwood you are rockin the house! Looking forward to trying some of these new patches! :)

  • More Sedna Matrix... still tweaking...

    Sedna matrix 7-14mm Panny lens - 25p HBR at 14mm B.png
    1920 x 1080 - 799K
    Sedna matrix 7-14mm Panny lens - 25p HBR at 14mm A.png
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
    Sedna matrix 7-14mm Panny lens - 24p HBR at 12mm.png
    1920 x 1080 - 3M
  • Onionbrain, your post puts the views into a different perspectives. Thanks so much. This will become a tool of sorts.

  • @atticusd Yes, posterisation - some call it banding - is still a problem.The GH2 is my first DSLR, but it was never a problem with the gear I used before: Sony PD150, Panasonic AG-DVX100, Canon XH-A1, Sony Z1. All 8-bit 4:2:0 Codecs, with HDV being less efficient than GH2´s AVCHD. Other DSLR don´t show it as far as I know...? The answer seems to be "can´t be done, permit". But a small explanation would be helpful, why this is - and will probably be -an issue. The "Banding" thread from June 2011 never came to a conclusion according the GH2´s abilities...

  • Thanks @onionbrain I think I found a new love for vibrant. The colors are what I call thick and noiseless. I can't believe how much punchier the colors come out in that mode. Also...so far...in good lighting there is no apparent noise in the shadows. Looks to me like the cleanest mode.. Then again that could have something to do with the Quantum v4c I just loaded into the camera. I have not color graded it as yet but so far it seems exactly how you described it...like 4:2:2 colorspace.

  • @driftwood Time to demand your shares... Maybe they show a Nikon in order not to make it too obvious?

  • I've always adored Cinema and Standard, time to give Vibrant a shot!

  • @ Driftwood. Yo that's crazy man. I like how it works with everything but Panasonic cameras.

  • @Driftwood About that Camera Bag from China, WoW! You should write them and get an exclusive to market that bag. You should copyright your name right away... Al

  • Gave vibrant a shot, and compared it against standard. In terms of colour, I can easily get standard to the same saturation as vibrant in post. In terms of noise, it looks like vibrant is slightly better but almost imperceptible (had to pixel peep)

    Here's another test for 4b… this time with underexposed areas. Sadly, I don't have a plus account and vimeo reencoded poorly :(

  • Did some shooting today with Dark matter 2, sadly 80% would only give me write speed errors on my 16gb Sandisk 30mbps card everything else worked fine. *I used a Panny lens and a FD, both gave me write speed errors in 80%.

  • Orion 4b test

  • @driftwood, nice screen caps- you seem to have cracked the matrix and we may have to jump in lol

  • @sakattaq76 @Stray @AlexManta @matthere @SystemD @otcx @redbaron @mozes @exilenorth I'm grateful if it was helpful to you in any way. Thanks for the note!

    @itimjim Adding blue to Nostalgic is like adding gasoline to fire -- relative to noise.

    @ChrisPeters Well, the paradox with Nostalgic is identical to the paradox with Cine D from the broadcast line. You can raise levels on Standard to expand the range of an image -- beyond the benefit of default Nostalgic. But, if you raise levels on Nostalgic, the noise becomes very apparent.

    So -- I honestly believe Standard is the best all-around setting. I haven't spent any time out in the fields with Vibrant as yet, so I'm sure there are problems yet to be encountered. The issue with vibrant is that it seems to boost colors without excessive chroma noise. And, it does very much resemble the look of Canon DSLR's

    @qwerty123 Well, if you go to 0:48 in that test video you can see Vibrant back-to-back with Cinema. Clearly overall brightness is lower with Cinema.

    In a general all-around sense -- I do think Standard is the go-to profile. It's very probable that Standard was designed around the capabilities of the camera, whereas the others were designed around Standard to offer solutions for consumers as determined by various marketing studies.

    Thanks!

    @Ian_T After staring at those results at full resolution here in the studio -- I took Vibrant for a walk around the house. At 0 saturation it was over the top -- but it was like I was looking at footage from a 5D Mark 2 -- except with decent resolution and no aliasing. At -1 saturation it really was a 5D Mark 2, except with elements of Sony's Cinematone.

    Normally this kind of saturation means chroma noise -- and that's the mystery of Vibrant at this point. It's Canon color without chroma noise. And, according to the charts it's handling noise as well as Standard.

    So -- I intend to take Vibrant out into the fields in the next few days for real world tests. But, from the charts, Vibrant is impressive as hell on the default v11 firmware.

    @jhero Well, I agree and disagree. Standard at +2 saturation may be similar to Vibrant at -1 saturation, but the noise handling characteristics aren't identical. +2 saturation on Standard results in ugly chroma noise. -1 on saturation with Vibrant doesn't create ugly chroma noise. And, on a purely visual level, Vibrant seems to be creating a pleasing image in a way that I haven't before achieved with Standard.

    All that said -- I still haven't been out on the streets in the real world with Vibrant -- and that's the real test. In the next few days I plan to give Vibrant hell to find the problems.

    @driftwood I'm very grateful if my little stuff is of assistance to you in any way as you do the big stuff. My thanks!

  • I always founds it kind of funny how vibrant was barely mentioned, where as it was always about smooth/standard/cinema/nostalgia.

    Is it because the saturation is over the top, and people want a flat image to work with?

    I've found the same as onionbrain with real world testing... Vibrant appears to be very good as far as noise is concerned...it's contrasty and saturated, but if I'm going to do that in post 9/10 times, I may as well capture it as close as possible in camera, since it is 8 bit 4:2:0 after all.

  • @onionbrain Ah, I did set standard saturation in camera to -2 but you're right, if I wanted to bake the saturation into the shot I'd definitely go with Vibrant. I usually shy away from vibrant colour however (personal style) so I might even try Vibrant at -2 saturation

  • Is it just me? I Love the detail the current GH2 Ptools settings are now producing, but I still see allot of macroblocking/posterization and banding in posted samples and with my own footage. All have been original MTS or png frame grabs that I downloaded and played back using either Splashlite media player, After effects, and Avid MC on a full 1080p monitor. I have noticed that both the red and blue channels are still very weak in every settings I have tried so far, plus with my own original settings. I'm also confused on the amount of noise I am getting on my GH2 even when I compensate with an iso bug fix selection order, even iso 160 is a noisy buzz in the image. I always have used smooth with -2 setting on all. and I have tried different fim modes as well with none or not much better results. I'm not trying to piss anyone off and I greatly appreciate all the time and effort everyone is putting into helping the cause for a better image. I'm just wondering does anyone else see what I see?

  • @exilenorth nice vid! it sounded like there were cars in the background drifting too. pretty sick.

  • @rigs, I have no banding/macroblocking in my source file

    Screen shot 2012-03-11 at 11.06.04 PM.png
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
  • @jhero thanks for the pic sample. I see a ton of it in your png file as well, particularly in the red and blue channels. I use After effects to isolate each channel, hold the alt key and the top row #1 key for red and alt key and top row #3 key for blue channel. Alt plus #2 for the green channel which looks better but still has some macroblocking.

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