GH3 Best Video Settings

rNeil

Depending on what subject/lighting you are shooting, contrast shouldn't go above -3 for studio or controlled lighting, and yea, sunlight like maddog15 was shooting is definitely -5 on the contrast.

Sharpening ... the cam doesn't do the cleanest job of that, so if you plan to do any post-work on it, stay at -5 or highest -4. If you're going direct to say youtube you might go up to -3. By 0 ... not pretty if you're going to look at it past a small viewer.

Saturation ... for post-processing in non-people shooting the pref's around here range between -5 and -2, with a few shooting sat at 0. If skin-tones are involved, you should probably try between -2 and 0.

Noise reduction ... the cam is not the best option, so again ... looking at the settings suggested here you'll find -5 to -3.

Again ... if you're going to pass the shots straight out to small web-viewing or things like that, you might take some of the settings to the higher side. If you're going to do any grading in post, stay to the lower side. Flatter original footage keeps highlight and shadow detail well past "normal" settings, typically is less noisy, and doesn't risk clipping either highlights or colors. Also ... do NOT under-expose or you will get noise in your shadows when you lift them in post ...

starios

@maddog15 very very nice, the shots against the sun are amazing, very good cc, nice subject!!

starios

@rNeil from my discoveries in gh3 and getting in mind a lot of opinions from pv: contrast -5 for DR and -3 or closer to 0 (never 0) for skin tones, sharpen almost never, saturation as you said -5 to -2, I am usually at -3 and in low light conditions the less noisy result for me is saturation -1 or even 0 and noise reduction 0 or +5 depends the light. If it is extremely dark :P it is better to go even at 6400 iso and grade it a bit darker lowering the mids than 1600 and pushing all the trash up, for sure this offers the most non pro result but in light infortunately gh3 has low limits :(

maddog15

@starios Thanks a lot. I wish I had focused more on the sun shots. Those were my favs too.

rNeil

@starios ...

Yea, pushing shadows 'up' is not a pretty sight, is it? On the Adobe forums I just "counseled" another still-shooter-now-shooting-GH3 to nail WB and exposure as tightly as possible in-cam. Especially to avoid under-exposing, as it is FAR better to expose flat & to the middle at a step higher ISO than slightly underexpose as step lower ISO. He's so worried about protecting his highlights he hadn't realized you have to balance those.

And besides, shooting "flat" with quite low contrast and moderately low saturation settings is all about getting things as close to the middle in-cam as possible. One of the delightful things about hanging around here is all that I've learned about this from so many others here. :)

tosvus

@rNeil and @starios, thanks for more good insight! The last point about WB is one I made the same mistake on - used to shooting raw photos and never had a problem in post, but definitely something I should worry more about for video!

starios

@Mistas, about bandwidth and fps, it sounds reasonable that 30fps have more bandwidth than 60 per frame but I probably don't know how to test it in post, in my tests, shooting in 50fps(europe) and shooting at 25 image have same details in darks, same noise, same color, I probably don't know how to test it, could you or anyone upload an example of differences between 30-60 in same mbps. I am asking cause it looks to me like gh3 always shoots maximum fps and delete half frames, I hope not!

maddog15

@starios "I am asking cause it looks to me like gh3 always shoots maximum fps and delete half frames,". Really? How did you come to this conclusion? Surely not.

starios

Yep, probably not, sorry, it is not a conclusion :) I just find it strange that I cannot see any difference comparing with some friend's old nikon that when you set 50fps video becomes useless.

jonpais

Here are some face shots I made with the GH3 at 24p. http://jonpais.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/faces/

maddog15

@jonpais Good stuff. Very natural looking. What profile settings did you use?

yak

My 2 cents on why 60p is as good or almost as good as 24p.

"In All-I the compression is done in each frame is restricted to that one frame. In IPB, the compression is done across frames, by taking advantage of parts of the image that do not change from frame to frame."

Since there is alot less movement between frames as 60P there is more interpolation, how much more... no clue. But a 60P All-I would be a very different story, It would halve the data. Not IPB.

surfculture

to continue my exploration of the calibration image from my GH3, my last video. Preset: all-intra 25p

joethepro

@rNiel I disagree a little bit about never underexposing. I have had great success with a mild to moderate underexposure in shots where I wanted to preserve the highlights in a very contrasty scene. The GH3 holds so much detail in the shadows, and its grain is "high quality" i guess you could say, that when using something like Neat Video it clears up the noise perfectly. You may lose a slight bit of resolution and detail in those areas compared to a proper exposure with slightly blown highlights, but Neat Video brings almost all of it back with its awesome temporal filters.

matt_gh2

@surfculture Looks great.

jonpais

@maddog15 Thanks. I shot using Standard with contrast, sharpness and saturation all just a couple notches south of the factory setting. I left noise at 0 since I still haven't got a denoiser, though I'm considering Red Giant since it's less expensive than many others. The first couple shots were made with the GM1. I stopped shooting with it because I couldn't hold the longer lens steady at all. I added a smidgen of blur in post to those couple shots because I had sharpness set too high in the camera, and to match the rest of the shots, though there's still a touch too much sharpening going on in those for my taste.

mrbill

http://eriknaso.com/sunday-in-the-park-panasonic-gh3/

Surprised no one has posted this. Skin tones look good to me..

Donzo

I have been working with GH3 for my movie.. the camera is great, here the music video I shoot on Gh3, I did alot of green screen shoot.. the setting was Mov 50mb/s and -4

olli66

short off-topic question (sorry!) guys: the RETRO preset on GH3 which I really love I'd like to make some photos in post-production look that way, any tips?

rNeil

@Donzo ... loved it, both the song and the video too. Thanks for posting!

starios

@Donzo gj !

liammatador

Just a quick one...does anyone have any suggestions for best settings to use if you don't want to do much post production. Normally I do a little bit of colour correcting but I'm no genius. I'm thinking about a specific client here who isn't video savvy anyway so it'll be best for me if I get the best possible image straight from the camera. Any ideas?

tylerknight

Password: DistrictView

Shot with the GH3, Fd Lenses with RJ Lens Turbo

rNeil

@liammatador ... for out-of-cam give to someone not too savvy/critical ...

Camera settings before shooting:"Natural" or "Standard", "mov" and pick your frame-rate but avoid the ALL-I modes, contrast -2 or -3 depending on the scene, saturation -1, noise -3 unless you're shooting above ISO 1600 then noise maybe -2 (don't like their de-noising), sharpen -1.

Get a good WB in-cam of course ... I've found with mine that using an Expo-disc (neutral) and then setting the grid for two points "amber" gets better (slightly warmer) image if people are involved.

Other than having an expodisc, a gray card works well. You can sort of get to WB "manually" by looking at your screen if you're used to what that ends up looking like on your monitor or tv screen in play-back.

Keep your exposure good checking to make sure you don't really go off either side of the histogram.

And hey if they're not too savvy, any color/contrast problems you can note is because every video player uses its own particular color-interpretation scheme and of course there's no way you can correct for that. It's not only true, it works! :)

Neil

rNeil

@tylerknight

Good commercial bit of filming there, nice utilization of zoomed stills, "straights", and in-cam movements during the interview/painting footage. Nice rhythm to the editing/audio also. Grading on my monitor (calibrated for video but not claiming b-cast monitor quality!) is a bit to the flat side, but I would guess this would play decently on anyone's computer/tablet or even say over a public tv?

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