Personal View site logo
AVCHD maximum image quality settings and testing
  • 1002 Replies sorted by
  • Ralph_BRalph_B
    Huh? The LCD always goes slightly green when you go into record mode - pre-hack, post hack, any hack! Are you saying sometimes your's doesn't?
  • driftwooddriftwood
    Well much greener than normal - defo difference when you hold it against a bright chart.
  • cj7cj7
    >> slightly green
    It usually does, and I usually see it in my video editing software. I always wanted to ask someone
    about why it does.

    I want the color before starting taking video.
    It just makes it difficult for me to determine the right white balance and other settings related to color adjustments.
  • _gl_gl
    > I want the color before starting taking video. It just makes it difficult for me to determine the right white balance and other settings related to color adjustments.

    @cj7, I suspect it's because before you record the sensor is running at 120fps to give you fast focusing, and there just isn't enough processing power to apply the extra colour processing at that framerate.
  • ElenionElenion
    According to Ralph_B tests 240m retains more details especially in dark detailed areas.
    What i found really interesting about 240m is that it seems to hold way more color information especially in the blue and red spectrum.
    I think you should look at these pictures channel by channel and then by the luma, because in this way we can compare also how many information it retains (then how more effective the codec is for postproduction purposes). From this point of view 240m is much superior than 66m.
    Here the differences between 240m and HDMI are so giant that the HDMI looks like 4:2:2 compared to the recorded one. The rendering of the grain by hdmi is superior but i've seen something that puzzled me: hdmi has more details but seems to have less latitude. What do you think?

    However we're not far from HDMI luma details.
    Thanks Driftwood for the giant effort!!
  • ElenionElenion
    Other observations:
    240m vs 66m: Blue are slightly better and red are much better. Greens are just a little better.
    HDMI vs 240m: Blue and red are more contrasty with less shadow information but they are full of details and the grain is perfectly rendered. There are no huge differences in green channel except little more details.

    I think that the grain makes a huge part in defining the differences between hdmi and record, because most of the gh2's grain is red (medium size) and blue (big size) while the green grain is very very fine and not much noticeable.

    PS: I'm looking at the motion test
  • cj7cj7
    @_gl Thank you very much for the information!
  • ElenionElenion
    Looking at the night shots we can observe in the blue channel that the 240m is more bright (more details in the shadows and burnt highlights) than the hdmi (that hold more details in the highlights). My idea is that codec and hdmi are processed in different ways but also hdmi doesn't send a raw signal straight from the sensor.
    From my observation the red channel and blue channel are brighter in the recorded footages, the green is brighter in the hdmi. Blue channel suffers from sharpening and is definitely the worst channel.
    The 240m has smeared noise.

    What do you think?
  • proaudio4proaudio4
    Raplh,
    again thank you for your excellent tests and Elenion for his detailed review!
  • f1lm3rf1lm3r
    Just wanted to lay to rest a little conspiracy, but the actual footage is never affected by the change on the lcd when you press record. just take a picture and compare the white balance to the footage. it just changes in lcd.
  • sohussohus
    Sohus' quick starter pack: all popular settings collected in one .zip file with .txt index files.

    seta: @sohus stock + 30min removal + pal/ntsc switch (also enabled for all other settings)
    setb: @cbrandin 44M/32M(spanning) GOP12 AQ4
    setc: @cbrandin 66M/44M GOP12 AQ2
    setd: @bkmcwd 66M/50M GOP3 AQ3
    sete: @stray 88M GOP12 AQ2
    setf: @driftwood 132M GOP3 AQ2
    setg: @mpgxsvcd 44M GOP12 AQ4 (working with all cards, tested with EyeFi class 6, slowest card ever)
    seth: @driftwood 176M GOP1 NOAQ

    I find these the best settings. Let's see if we can improve upon them together!
    Sohus quick starter pack.zip
    8K
  • StrayStray
    @sohus A quick correction, my 88M (sete) is a GOP12 patch, not a GOP3.
  • HallvallaHallvalla
    @sohus

    Thanks - very helpful!
  • sohussohus
    @stray

    Changed the description. I will change the settings file also and update it with the next version.
  • Raysito22Raysito22
    Hi there. First things first, just say I've been reading this forum since May or so, just didn't have the guts and the knowledge to post here. Thanks Vitaliy for the amazing work (I'll be making a donation soon), as well as driftwood, Chris, Stray, bkmcwd, and so many others for your amazing settings and the info. Thanks also to sohus for the "starter pack", a long time needed recopilation.

    Just a simple question, appart from the greetings. Would a Transcend class 10 card have any problems with driftwood's 176M settings? I know you usually say "try yourself", but I just got my GH2 and need to do some recordings safely by tomorrow. So a little help would be appreciated.

    Thanks.

    PS: Sorry for my English, there aren't good teachers here in the Canary Islands. And I hope I can help you developing the settings in just about 2 weeks, when my broken PC gets fixed.
  • JspatzJspatz
    @Raysito22
    My experience with 176 and Transcend class 10 card 32gb is that it is OK for average to moderately detailed shots, but will give out on high detail;e.g. sharp wide angle focus straight down on grass. The detail is corner to corner, forces the highest possible frame size, and the card will fail after about 3 seconds on it.
  • Raysito22Raysito22
    Ok, thanks for the feedback Jspatz. I guess I'll stick to bkmcwd 66 gop3 at least for the moment. I'll probably try driftwood's 176 later on, and most probably work with it for short movies.
  • JspatzJspatz
    @Raysito22
    I have no problem with 176 and Sandisk extreme pro. It never stalls and almost always spans except if you are on a complex scene when the file is closing.
  • driftwooddriftwood
    @Jspatz try the 220M patch on sharper detail and let me know if you could. Many thanks for testing.
  • JspatzJspatz
    @driftwood
    Do you mean check the AQ setting and move it from 0 to 1?
  • driftwooddriftwood
    @Jspatz no the earlier 220M GOP1 Intra from a few days back. Alternatively wait for an update to tackling high detail. Its very very diffficult getting GOP1 to work like everyone wants it to work for everything. Very difficult and very time consuming. Thank f@ck Im off for 3 days tomorrw.
  • JspatzJspatz
    Strange. I wonder if there is version confusion. I have it as set C and the description says AQ1 but the auto quantizer patches are unchecked.
  • driftwooddriftwood
    no AQ at all should be on for either. Im doing my own Q settings for Intra which will be released soon.
  • driftwooddriftwood
    yeah ignore the description!
  • Raysito22Raysito22
    @Jspatz Hmm, thanks for the insight but I don't really understand what's on with the extreme pro's. A lot of people have had trouble with them, being slower than class 10, but others as yourself seem to be working fine with them. What's really going on with UHS-1 SD cards? I'd buy one, indeed I bought the transcend over it because I read hereby that UHS-1 cards weren't working fine.

    Thanks again.

This topic is closed.
← All Discussions