@driftwood, yeah, great looking shot there!

@LPowell @cbrandin Great work guy's from what I see from the results AN 444 Soft is a keeper, The reason I'm saying so it's because it renders the edges much better to my eye it's smoother. Let's not forget about the noise... once again AN 444 Soft is way more pleasing..

Oh I feel so chilled out here in France.

@cbrandin Screen grabs are down to your monitor's pixel resolution size. Here's one on an apple macbook air at its native 1280x800 res.

@LPowell Remember, Cluster 6 GOP is set up to use less bandwidth under GOP6 than your GOP3. Indeed what you're suggesting is AN is actually more resourceful than FM and produces similar dc values looking at your charts.

I actually use Elecard's YUV viewer and picture quality estimator. I wouldn't travel through any third party or middleware to analyse footage.

If its not too much trouble, please could you link me to your mts footage so I can evaluate how each are looking - so I can add it to my database. I have already analysed Cluster v6 against Cluster v5, FM, Sanity - checking dc values and was very happy with the Cluster v6 results. Cluster v7 with 444 matrix was built under similar techniques but is in NO WAY a finished product - its a simulated matrix which does extremely well under certain conditions.

Alas, Im always intrigued by your choice of subjective tests.

below: A picture from AN 'Boom!' sharp for GOP1.

@Zaven13 I have to agree with @cbrandin, basics, long lens work, images subject to heat rise in the mid ground to the distant. I remember using heat generating tools to get just that effect shoot on a long lens.. or shooting a long road shot and the heat rises from the tarmack. Out of curiosity, what was that lake side store producing? and what lens were you using?

Here are unedited 200% crop frame grabs from back-to-back videos taken with a Lumix X 45-175mm f4-5.6 @ 45mm f8, ISO 200. The first was shot with Flow Motion v2.02 and the second with Apocalypse Now 6-GOP 444 Soft.

The first pair of shots are uncorrected. In the second pair of shots, I boosted the gamma to show more of the details.

Flow Motion v2.02 @ 24H:

Apocalypse Now 6-GOP 444 Soft @ 24H:

The FM2 video has an average bitrate of 88Mbps with a DC quantizer of 5, range 5.

The AN6 soft video has an average bitrate of 75Mbps with DC quantizers of 5-7, range 5.

The tests should be done in a room with constant lighting, the camera must be securely mounted on a tripod.

@SuperSet Thanks for that, but when comparing the two patches. Please take into account that your settings as well as focus should be locked down. I see that the first and last clips you had a different point of focus after each patch, so its really hard to compare fine details or lack there of (i.e. Duck's back and the rock beside them)... as im interested in the "soft" 444 patch and noise differences between Sanity (which i use for most of my jobs) and Flow.

@nomad You're right, I thought about that but, as you know, it became quite unusual to shoot at 24fps in our Pal countries. And we have to think about shooting audio at 24fps as well... On the other hand if it's the price to pay for ultimate quality, let's go for 24 !

Depending on your needs, all of the highly acclaimed recent ones before 444 are good for HBR too. Due to technical decisions by Panasonic (actually, 25p came as an afterthought) it'll never be as good as 24.

If you are striving for ultimate quality, consider shooting in 24 and upspeeding to 25, like it has been done for 80 years in European TV when screening movies …

@Zaven13 I was unable to reproduce the distortion in your ETC frame grab above using my Lumix 45-175mm zoom in ETC 24H mode. However, I did happen to take some footage that illustrates the atmospheric distortion effect I suspect may have been the cause of the distorted details in your shot. This was taken at 175mm in ETC 24H mode with the GH2 fixed on a tripod:

@cbrandin These videos were recorded at different times. If necessary, I can re-flash the gh2 to some other setting (soft matrix), but not "sharp2", and make a video in 1080p - 24 fps, the result is the same. All eyes on the window, where the contours are jumping on each new GOP frame. Very strange that the new "sharp matrix2" this does not.

@Shon - I didn't create these settings, so I don't know details about them. I created soft matrices for 1080p only (they aren't used with 720p) and they are intended to be used in a particular way. I noticed a big color difference - I don't see how matrices could do that - unless they have been changed into something else.

@cbrandin I have to say, I do not speak English, try to understand what I say. You need to know why.

It occurs in all cases, and 24H, and 720p, in this video I use a format 720p - 60fps. This happens in all settings (DREWnet Soft Matrix, sharp Matrix, nebula..) but "sharp2" does not.