@tired

Better topic for question is http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/10255/gh4-best-video-settings#Item_226

I finally got the opportunity to shoot some test footage using a loaner GH4 over the weekend. Took a lot longer that I anticipated to get all the settings dialed into where I liked them. But I'm officially sold. With the proper tweaking in cam, I found the footage cut really well with my GH2. Way easier to match over my GH3. Especially when shooting people. Interview footage was always super challenging to match up in post between A and B cam setups when using GH2 and GH3. But this weekend round of testing proved that a GH2 and GH4 combo will work very well for most of work I do. GH3 is now sold off. So if anyone is selling a GH4, I'm interested.

http://beautifulchemistry.net

Higher bitrate does not necessarily mean better quality. It depends on the"flavor" of .mov and mp4 being used. All I can say for certain is that for static macro shots .mov shot in 4K and downsized to 1080p looks better to my eyes than .mov shot at 1080p and 200Mb/s. On the other hand fast action shots in 4K .mov downsized to 1080p look inferior to 1080p at 200Mb/s.

and why the limited functions while in 4k photo mode I personally would like more options in settings.

@h2otara yes the bit rate gain is for me a better improvement than the new "photo mode", it's odd that the patch doesn't mention it.

I just updated the firmware, and before I even shot a test to check the bitrate (which is now 96 mb/s in 4K .mov), I noticed that the record time on my 64GB card had dropped from 1:22 to 1:14.
I really appreciate this discussion as I don't see anywhere in the update notes that they improved the recording bitrate, and I may not have updated it for some time.

Thanks @yaz72, I will.

@yaz72 you may be right. Can other GH4 users confirm this fact?

@h2otara I have no idea why you got such low bit rate in mp4, I never encountered less than 97 Mb/sec, and this with shallow dept of field shots. To be honest I didn't properly test the mp4 format before the firmware 2.

The camera has tones of options, I had to focus on the essentials, to get what I wanted. Now I'm using natural profile, with NR dialed to minimum always, a little bit of - contrast (from -1 to -3) and sometimes - sharpness (from 0 to -3). All of those depending on the job. Curves, iDinamic, master pedestal, are all a wast of time and all of the produce unrecoverable results. I also prefer the color rendering in neutral profile much more than Cine D or anything else. For stills, the standard profile rules!

@DrDave, yes a test wold be interesting to see, maybe I will do it later, now I have a lot of editing to do :).

@Eno Good to know about mixing .mp4 and .mov, and not mixing frame rates. I was in my photo blind today and switched from NTSC 4K .mov to .mp4 and all of my total bitrates are in the 73,000 - 79,500 range, same as I was getting with .mov. Any ideas??

@Eno That's valuable info, thanks. I've been shooting nothing but 4K and all in .mov. I guess I'll just need to test and make sure that Premiere Pro doesn't have any problems with .mov and .mp4 clips in the same timeline. I've noticed that my .mov files are about 79 Mb/sec.