1440x1080

I have been getting a lot of block noise with my GH2. In well lit situations the problem is not there but as soon as I have some transitions to shadows, I get this huge blocks that look like a mobile phone video. Is there anything wrong with my camera? Is there something I am missing? Look at the couch and at the arm of the girl. Here is the video:

Noise issue GH2 Driftwood 176M GOP1 - ISO 160 - F1.4 from WB on Vimeo.

Thanks a lot!

Long story short, have been shooting on 5dII for a few years. Recently broke into the anamorphic world via a Iscorama 36.

Have a short film mapped out + script, i was going to shoot on my 5D which i decided to sell and move into GH2 world.

I have to learn this little beauty pretty fast as i want to shoot in the next week/week and a half.

• What is/are the cleanest and most usable and reliable hacks? i dont need 10000mb/sec, just something tidy and reliable, maybe around 44-70 mb/sec? willing to donate of course. I have fast SD cards BTW. Ive noticed Flow Motion V2 to be pretty sweet?

• Picture Profiles. I have looked into this a little bit but have not really found anything decent, I always shot with Cinestyle on my 5D. are there any 'log style' profiles out there? or anything nice and flat.

• Ill be shooting 1080 24p, from what i gather '24p cinema mode' recording AVCHD '24H' will be my best bet? not sure how the hack affects this.

• With regards to importing. My usual workflow is card in, MPEG Stream-clip and convert to ProRes 422 HQ, this is the right way to go about it yes?

• Not sure if this is a question best suited for here but, can i go as wide as 28mm on my GH2 with the Isco 1.5x squeeze without vignette? im fairly sure i can, just was hoping for some confirmation.

Once again, sorry for the shitty post just need some fast good answers.

Cheers, Rob.

I need some help...I want to shoot 3-4 Short Films with my newly purchased Panasonic GH2 and I am constantly amazed at the results that the hacks produced through this forum have reached.

I need a little guidance as to which patch is best for me and how I can apply the hacks to my camera?

I want as close to a standard Motion Picture look as I can get (without sounding patronising). I know a lot is in the colour grading but if I could be able to shoot raw footage that complements skin tones, looks perfectly clear and sharp and shoots at 24fps with a beautiful rendering close to any "Hollywood," standard footage for Short Film Drama use produces then i'd be an extremely happy filmmaker.

Continue the good work guys and gals it's all looking brilliant!

Viva the GH2 Revolution! :)

Question is: Will any of the patches help with quick motion in low light. I'm still working on post production techniques, but I'm wondering if some of the patches can help without alot of post-production. I just received 2-SanDisk Extreme Pro 95mb/s 32m disks and will be hacking for the first time.

Thanks

1: Do you have to record a short(few seconds?) clip after spanning on the a 64 sdxc card to keep from getting the "file number limit exceeded" message on an UNHACKED Gh2 after turning it back on or does that only apply to once it's hacked?

2: Is there a certain record limit I should refrain from reaching (30 minutes?) where I should stop the recording and then follow up by recording a small clip right after to just be safe? Basically is it safe to record an hour straight then stop and record the tiny clip then turn off the unit.

3: Only one of the two gh2's will be hacked and will be the only mobile cam during the event. Would using the hacked gh2 with cake 2.0 or flowmotion with 2 64 gig cards be fine for 4 hours of record time?

4: Does recording over 100 clips also get the "file number limit exceeded" I just want to be confident on this shoot and heard this mentioned somewhere.

I have read various things about the following, but really just want these answered by someone with some experience. Thank you.

The Lpowell 75mbps retains the 60p but is a lower bit rate (duh) and doesn't feature native 24p.

Then there's also the 50mbps patch that has what I want with the exception of the screaming data rate.

Since the Video Bitrate of FHD and SD modes is shared is it impossible to get native 24p, 60p and 100mbps in one patch?

Also I'd like to have access to a mode for quick, unedited uploads to the net. I was thinking of using the MPEG modes for this but I haven't gotten past the thinking stage.

I apologize to anyone who thinks I should have toiled more before posting.

Second question: In the GH2 it was impossible to record new clips and even to review the recorded clip. If I press record she says "Cannot Record, File Number limit exceeded", If I try to playback she says "This motion Image cannot be played". How should I proceed to record more stuff and eventually review what I've shooted ?

Thanks a lot

I'm really liking what I've seen from people using the Orion v4b patch. I think that a lot of it looks like big screen / feature film quality with is amazing!

Does anyone know if this patch retains all normal camera functionality.. e.g. playback in all modes, spanning, ect...? If not, does anyone know what is the highest quality patch that does? What patch would also give you the best quality at reasonable bit rates, would it be Sanity 5?

Basically, I would like to know what patch is going to retain all normal camera features while enhancing them as much as possible. If the Orion patch does this, that's perfect. What is the difference between the Orion v4b and v4d patches?

I'm currently running a SanDisk 16gb 95 MB/s card which I just purchased with the GH2. I have the 14-140 and 20mm lenses. I will mainly be doing music videos, with some possible low light shots for nightclubs.

Also, when hacking my GH1 I would just make sure "prevent version compare" was checked when loading a new patch, and I wouldn't rename the firmware filename, I would just save it as the original firmware filename. When loading a new patch / firmware in the GH2 do we still need to rename the file each time as a higher number for it to take effect, or can we just overwrite the original?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Since the concert hall will be lower lighting than I'm used to, I think the GH2 (and GH1) would benefit from a decent hack. But I'm concerned about recording times- all the good quality hacks that I'm reading up on appear to be high bitrate, but I'm going to be recording for a long time continuously, and would like to swap SD cards as infrequently as possible. I need some sort of balance between image quality and file size.

Also, since it is a live event, reliability is more important to me than it is normally (I don't mind fumbling around and experimenting on a shoot in a controlled studio environment, but this is different).

I'm open to any suggestions, for both the GH2 and the GH1. Thanks!

Thanks !!!

I really wish there was a way to completely lock all exposure controls while shooting video on these little cameras. Is there anything on horizon or techniques for an exposure lock while shooting with the GF 2 or 3? This auto ISO is giving me a headache.

==MY TEST==

I went on a shoot this weekend, and was using Sandisk Extreme 16gb 30mb/s cards. I wanted to ensure both spanning and playback in camera for the shoot, so I went with driftwoods "spanmybitchup" patch. I did just a few short preliminary tests: the test I did was to shoot the papasarts star chart (which I've attached--I also attached the more extreme codec test chart v2 2010), and let it run. I waved my hand around in the frame from time to time and also had some talking to get audio. Everything seemed good: I was getting spanning and smooth playback in camera with audio. (EDIT: also attaching Stray's death charts with color information!)

==MY SHOOT==

So during the shoot, after a few shots, I was getting the message "motion image cannot be played" for all my clips (or something like that I don't remember exactly)--my heart sunk! An actor asked me to check to see if we recorded something on a previous take, I had to say that "yes it was" without checking. I was worried about requests for playback--and this was only with one actor: imagine this on shoot with clients! For certain shots, I wanted to be sure that something was recorded since I wasn't at the camera, and I couldn't do this. The scene I was shooting was an actor in a car at night--he was lit and most everything else was dark. That's when I got the messages. I put in a new Sandisk card, and formatted it. Reshot the same scene and I was getting the same error.

==LESSONS==

1) In camera playback is important at least for some of us, and for some, like me, it is even more important than low gop. For me, I am willing to forego a very very high quality low GOP setting (awesome work driftwood!!) that doesn't have playback in camera on good SD cards for an improved long GOP with ultra reliable in camera playback. I'm NOT saying that everyone wants this or should want it (especially if you have the cash for more super high end SD cards or for extra harddrive space). But I'm guessing some people are in my situation as well.

2) It seems there's a relatively standard procedure for patch development (using streamparser, tweaking settings incrementally, etc etc). BUT there seems to be no standard procedure for testing spanning and in-camera playback. You might not think that makes a difference, but it seems that it does: it seems to matter what you shoot when you are testing things like spanning and in-camera playback. Or, at least the number of clips you shoot or the ISO you shoot at makes a difference: otherwise, I don't know how to explain the divergence between my pre-shoot tests and what happened on the shoot. I welcome some constructive thinking about standardizing spanning and camera playback tests.

==DESIRES==

The ideal for me would be to get a hack that improves quality over the stock settings, that has very very reliable spanning and in-camera playback with audio, and works on good quality cards like the Sandisck 30 mb/s (16gb). I know some people are getting the SandDisk extreme pro 64gb cards... but a lot of people (like me) already have a stash of good quality cards and don't want to fork over even more money to get these super high end cards.

I did test w/ @cbrandin 's (Chris's) 66M patch. We know that this doesn't span (but getting around 10 or 11 minutes is okay for me, although I'd love spanning). But what I did notice is that I couldn't get in camera playback with this either. I'm going to try the 44M patch.

Thoughts?

We also have deblocking tables to mess with. How digitally smoothed should we treat the signal of the adjoining sampled macroblocks?

VY Canis Majoris explores these areas further and each setting analyses approximate conditions of input required for certain times of the day where the natural light is weaker/stronger.

The first releases were VY Canis Majoris 'Day PM', 'Night', 'Skin Tone Soft', and the Crossfire released 'Green Screen' over on the other thread (an Intra version is being prepared). 'Day AM' will be out very soon. Including the highest measured matrix to date - no AQ required, tried and tested deblocking over the three main settings (24p, HBR and 720p) this is the first in a few settings for various filming conditions.

More settings in this series to come... ... ;-)

LOOKOUT FOR SOME NEW TERRIFIC MATRIX SETS FROM CHRIS BRANDIN ON CANIS MAJORIS.

NOTE: ALL MY CANIS SETTINGS HAVE THE 4 MINUTE RECORD LIMITATION CHECKED TO GUARANTEE WRITES. UNCHECK THE TIME LIMIT AT THE BOTTOM OF PTOOLS AND ENABLE > 30 MINUTE LIMIT AT THE TOP OF PTOOLS TO RELEASE THIS.

REMEMBER: IF YOU USE THESE SETTINGS PLEASE MAKE A DONATION ABOVE TO VITALIY KISELEV FOR HIS TIRELESS WORK IN MAKING THIS HAPPEN. THESE SETTINGS ARE TOTALLY DEDICATED TO HIM. THERE ARE MANY QUIET USERS OUT THERE WHO HAVE NEVER BOTHERED OFFERING ANYTHING. PLEASE, PLEASE HELP TO KEEP THESE HACKS GOING. NO MORE DONATIONS = NO MORE SETTINGS. IF YOU HAVE MADE A SMALL CONTRIBUTION IN THE PAST, NOW IS THE TIME TO DONATE AGAIN. Thankyou, Nick

If anyone has played with this, I'd really like to know. Thanks!!!

I took the time to re-shoot some tests I did. I erased the footage of the original tests, but because there was a lot of interests on other forums, I decided to re-run the tests and upload the results.

I am using a Google/Gmail account to facilitate the transfer and you should be able to download my files from there now.

By following the link below, you will find a zip file that contains my newly shot test clips that should help you to see what I see.

Once you download and extract the zip, please read the ReadMe file contained therein before you watch the clips. It will give you some background and logic as well as explaining the files contained and the naming nomenclature.

Please let me know if you can't download the file so that I can figure out why.

As you will see, I purposely shot a high contrast scene at low exposure so that it would reproduce the areas that cause the most noise problems for My GH2.

Please let me know what you think.

The Link to my files:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0J7h38ZfdK4U296TDBtLW1HSWM/edit