@LPowell

Still getting the errors with Version 2.1 for 720p High "P" mode with Auto ISO and the 30 mb/sec Sandisk card.

The failure for SH mode occurred with both the 25mm F1.4 lens and the 14-140mm lenses in a darker room with AFC. This probably will not be a huge issue for most people but it is something to be aware of.

I am very interested in testing pure black scenes like the one you posted above for Astro Photography. There is a full moon on Monday. I am going to try to video that with the 2.1 settings. I am interested in seeing if the Black of space shows up better with these settings over more moderate settings.

My experience just based on maybe 30-40 hours of footage is that pushing the greys down towards black gives good results, but it really depends on the source material. Also I seem stuck on the Cinema profile, but I'll try the others again with the new patch.

just used flowmotion 2.01 for an interview outdoors was on sedna AQ2 before noticed two things -sedna wouldnt span, so i basically got 4-7mins of video -fcpx wouldnt import footage

with fm2.01 -no problem spanning at 1080p24 -fcpx imported footage no problem

good work LPowell!!

@nomad, yeh, but it doesnt happen with any other patch in pal setting? 24p yes, note the flicker is in all settings, 24p/25/50. That I find weird.

@kovtun66 yep manuals do look a little smoother. I confirmed this by taping up the contacts of my Panny primes (see http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/546/gh2-digital-sharpening-removable-with-hack/p3). AFAIK there's no way to defeat that sharpening yet (but I'm just listening in here at the mo, v. busy).

One thing nobody tried (to my knowledge) was selectively taping up the lens contacts - the idea is that maybe you can keep focus control but trick the body into disabling the corrections.

@LP others, my bad, should of explained better. I am worried that I was taking some test images in the lounge in artificial light and the tv is switched on ie if I video the tv its flickering like mad? I dont always video the tv lol, but I have never seen it flicker before or I can eliminate it ie if I reduced the shutter to 1/25 or 1/50 before on other patches or the stock f/w then the flicker would go, as the frequencies are matched? Interestingly no lights or anything else is flickering, just the tv? Does the camera need a full reset, is it thinking is ntsc even though its set for pal?

Oh, sorry, forgot to tell, this is a cut done with Smart Cutter demo. This is why there is a word 'demo' :)

@charlie_orozco - "Both framegrabs were taken with levels applied with gamma at 1.5 to lift the mids and lows."

Thanks for posting your comparison shots. I'd be very interested to evaluate the original MTS footage of the Flow Motion v2 shot, since the frame grab you uploaded has been altered to exaggerate the contrast in dark shadow areas. The AVCHD encoder's 8-bit compression uses very coarse quantization at the dark end of its dynamic range, though as you demonstrated, sensor chroma noise can be boosted to make up for its inherent limitations.

At extremely low illumination levels, the eye's low sensitivity to blue and purple hues makes them appear much darker than other colors, which can overemphasize the perceived blotchiness of shadowed areas. When boosting gamma in dark regions, saturation should be lowered to maintain a more natural-appearing monochrome look to shadowed areas.

In my experience, the lack of an in-camera pedestal adjustment to lift the image above the sensor's coarse shadow noise region has been the most difficult drawback to using DSLR's to shoot video. Rather than struggling to extract presentable results from the camera's weakest area of performance, I much prefer to shoot with the kind of flat contrast shown in the footage I uploaded in my previous comment above. In post production grading, pushing the grays toward black almost always turns out looking better than lifting the shadow details up into gray.

Tried this for an hour or so indoors and out, with dim light, room light, sunlight and shade with my trusty Olly 45mm. Quality great, microtextures great even in dim light, very smooth. Epic!

I really like the 720p this patch delivers, and 24H is great, but when I hit low light, I don't like it one bit... The lit zones look great but wherever there are shadows it's all muddy. I noticed this right away, I have tested EOSHD Unifed, Mysteron, Sedna, and the noise in the low lights was always great, specially for denoising afterwards. Fine grain. Even looked good as it was. But with this patch it's very muddy. That's the only objection I have. Here is a comparison blown up 200% and then the two framegrabs below. The first one is Flow Motion v2.01 at 24H, settings f9-1/100-160iso, with the Panny 20mm pancake. The second one is Sedna Q20 version A also at 24H, same settings. Both framegrabs were taken with levels applied with gamma at 1.5 to lift the mids and lows. It clearly shows the difference in the low light areas.

I couldn't test EOSHD Unified head to head, but I can say I shot a lot in low light with 2500iso and the grain was great, so I don't think the Mbps have anything to do with the quality issues. EOSHD Unified is 88Mbps intra. It seems this FMv2 patch exceeds in well lit situations, but I don't like it so much when doing low light. Is there a way to fix that?

With the supreme sharpness and contrast of the GH footage, If your shooting 24/25p for playback on a large Tv panel you virtually have to abide by film shooting rules with regard to pans, smooth motion etc or the image will strobe/flicker like crazy. 50/60p or interlaced is more forgiving, but really, if you want good results you have to shoot with all this in mind.

I'm starting to add a slight blur in post to some of my videos just to take the edge of the sharpness and in some cases dropping the shutter to 1/40 to induce a little more motion blur, but I'm wondering if adding grain might be better. ( this is for outdoor high contrast scenes).

I find it's getting more difficult to shoot GH handheld, a tripod or support is very much a neccessity now to have a bit more control over camera motion.

@adventsam Flickering of videos on flat panel monitors is commonly due to mismatches between video frame rate and monitor refresh rate. It may also be caused by inconsistent AVCHD player performance. This type of problem is not affected by high bitrate patches, but it may be more noticeable with high-contrast subjects.

@LPowell The first test I did when you posted V2 was to run a clip through GHears Lee. The depth was amazing. I'm still fighting a blue tint in underexposed video but the solution to that is....don't underexpose. It is a great patch!