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GH4 Firmware 2.3, V-log for $99, Epic Panasonic marketing fail
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  • rNeilrNeil

    @Tjabo

    Depending on your preferred workflows, PrPro has several ways of incorporating LUT's ... in the Effects panel tab in the lower left quadrant, in the search type in lut and see what pops up ... also, in 2015, the new color workspace ... there's an "Input LUT" on the basic tab that is there to "place" non-Rec709 footage into the Rec709 space that Lumetri panel is built around.

    I'd suggest first putting a Fast or Three-Way effect on a clip, THEN going to the Basic & loading the LUT you want, THEN going back to the color control effect you'd chosen to tweak the image there for WB/exposure/contrast (think L/G/G or O/G/G if you understand colorist lingo) and then go back into the Lumetri panel for doing your colorist work.

    Neil

  • TjaboTjabo

    @balazer, I'm a Premiere Pro user, so what would be the preferred method to utilize your LUTs? Guessing I'll have to delve into DaVinci Resolve?

  • TjaboTjabo

    I had to look REALLY hard to see any banding on YouTube. I think this is pretty good stuff! I totally get the dreary, overcast day shooting as I live in Mid-Michigan where we almost never see the sun. Lol

    It's hard to capitalize on wider dynamic range when there just isn't much range to capture. Haha...

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @Vesku I think it is more to do with the youtube compression and the compressed file I uploaded to it. The file uploaded was compressed at 40mb/s in compressor and it still came in at 1gb. My local 100mb/s copy came in at 2.5gb and looks great played through my WD TV hub. That is not to say that banding does not still exist in the orginal, I just think it is more obvious after two rounds of compression...

  • VeskuVesku

    @lmackreath

    Nice video but there are severe banding and color errors in gray skies in your "Fools on a hill" video. V-log 7 bit colors are showing their limitations. The video lacks photo-like smooth tones. Can it be partly the Youtube low bitrate causing these errors?

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    I think I would struggle to shoot two stops over indoors and/or in low light unless I was using a really low f stop so for varied scene work I would stick with Natural..

  • crowbarcrowbar

    @ Imackreath - I also use the Genustech variable nd filter, seems like it is very neutral in that it does not have a color cast. In my last test posted here, with V LOG I also over exposed - reading the in camera meter about 1 2/3rds over on average. Zebras were set at 100% and I was careful to not see them at all except in a few unimportant high lights but often exposed just shy of them showing. The histogram was way to the right quite a bit but never too excessive that it climbed the right side.....This paid version then makes me think that the zebras are working normally now compared to the free loop hole version...At least this was my impression, need to shoot more with V LOG but still do not trust it for important work..

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @crowbar Thanks for your comments. Like I said it was not easy using vlog in a run and gun situation. The main issue I had was being consistent in keeping the exposure two clicks above the norm. I did this by keeping my aperture constant (around F2.8) and using my Genustech variable nd filter to control the changing exposure levels in each scene. Nailing focus was also hard with the faded view of vlog through the viewfinder.

    It was all recording using 8 bit internal. I have been very interested in the atmos stuff but money dictates that that is not an option at the moment. To be honest I am happy with Vlog and think when exposed\graded correctly it offers the best image profile out of the GH4.

  • crowbarcrowbar

    @: Imacreath, your footage looks great and are examples of content that works with V LOG - also makes me want to get that lens: Voigtlander 25mm! I have a Veydra 16mm and have posted examples under the Veydra post. I assume that your videos were recorded internally at 8 bit?

  • balazerbalazer

    When I was analyzing Dr_Jon's GH4 footage a while back, I noticed that Cinelike D is using xvYCC encoding. It's a trick to encode very bright saturated colors and out-of-gamut colors that would otherwise be clipped. If the GH4's luma range is set to 0-255, for example, the max luma value is 255 and the minimum is 0. After decoding to full range RGB, reference white is (255, 255, 255) and reference black is (0, 0, 0). But because of the way Y'CbCr works, the RGB values are not limited to 0-255. You can have a super bright red, say (330, 20, 20) that's actually brighter than white. And you're allowed to have negative numbers. So (-30, 200, -20) would be a super-saturated green, outside the sRGB gamut. With that trick Cinelike D actually has a larger gamut than V-Log L, but without sacrificing color precision the way V-Gamut does. If your workflow doesn't know how to deal with negative RGB values, they'll just get clamped to 0, which clips the colors to the sRGB gamut. It's a best-of-both-worlds kind of encoding: full compatibility with Rec.709, and a very large gamut for super-saturated colors.

    Since v0.13 of my LUTs, Cinelike D is decoded using xvYCC, providing full access to those very bright saturated colors and out-of-gamut colors.

    Here's a frame which was overexposed, clipping the whites. I applied exposure compensation in post to bring the exposure down to where it should be.

    This version was decoded the normal way, clamping RGB values over 255:
    image

    This version was decoded with xvYCC:
    image

    Note how the second version has some very bright reds that were clipped in the first version. Of course the shot is still overexposed and the whites are clipped. You wouldn't normally try to overexpose. (I asked Dr_Jon to overexpose that shot for my analysis) But xvYCC is great for very bright saturated colors, e.g. red neon lights, that are much brighter than white. With xvYCC you can capture them and preserve their hue and saturation, instead of having them turn from red to pinkish-orange.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    It was a bit hit and miss for me, all my footage was pulled down back by two stops within the filmconvert plugin to get it exposed correctly, and even more so in some shots. I do think though that none of my footage exhibits the banding and macroblocking problems associated with underexposed footage.. So it's horses for courses..

  • dialdial

    Does anyone feel that 2 stops over is too much when using Filmconvert? A lot of my footage seems slightly over exposed, I tend to get better results with only 1 stop over.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @Tjabo yes I knew I was going to slow all the footage down in post so was tied to shooting at 1080p rather than 4K. In terms of highlight detail I think because it was such a dull overcast day the dynamic range off all the scenes would have been pretty easy for any profile to manage.

    I don't know if by overexposing by 2 stops on the hill i might have blown out some areas that would have been safe if exposed normally. I suppose that might be the trade off with vlog.. If you expose to the right to keep away from underexposing and macroblocking you run the risk of blowing out normally safe highlights...

  • TjaboTjabo

    Looks good! Did you shoot it all in 1080/60P and then slow it to a lower timeline speed?

    Also, how do you feel about the highlight recovery? In some of those hilltop shots do you feel like you could have pulled more highlight detail if you hadn't overexposed those shots by the full 2 stops?

  • lmackreathlmackreath

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @Tjabo thanks!!.. Here is the other one..

  • TjaboTjabo

    @lmackreath, thank you! I think that looked beautiful. Another impressive example of VLog as far as I'm concerned.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    Ok as mentioned here are some vlog tests I did at the weekend. All shot with the Voigtlander 25mm F0.95mm and graded with FilmConvert vlog profile in FCP X using the Kodad 5207 stock

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    Vimeo looks cool and has a better embedded video player imho than youtube, but its iphone app its god awful, and its apple tv app never streams full quality and the picture quality always degrades to a pixel mess as if my bandwidth is not enough. I have a fibre connection so thats not the issue and i have never had a problem streaming hd over netflix (their compression codec must be amazing!)

  • TjaboTjabo

    Same here, but I don't lament my lack of a paid Vimeo account (or I would just pay for one I guess, Lol). Vimeo is really funky for me to watch a lot of the time, with a lot of random stoppages when the video is already loaded way beyond that point. I figure I can't be the only one, and YouTube works pretty well for me other than adding a bit of contrast and sometimes providing a bit less image quality.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    I kind of have to use youtube these days as I only have the free vimeo account and their file size limits dont cut it. I render everthing gh4 at 100mb so even a 4 minute video can come out at over a gig!

  • TjaboTjabo

    @lmackreath, I can't wait to see some of that! Hopefully my unlock code will be here today and I can start playing too. One thing I'm very interested in is seeing what YouTube compression does with the VLog footage. So far what I've seen looks like YouTube treats it pretty well comparatively.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    Did some run and gun stuff over the week, all in vlog, religiously tried to shoot all my footage 2 stops over. I am editing the stuff together right now but with the filmconvert gh4 v log profile I am not seeing any blocking or magenta cyan artifacts, and the footage looks great. Will post results tonight...

  • aaronchicagoaaronchicago

    Since I upgraded to Ninja Assassin I'm selling my Ninja Star with CFast card and accessories. If anyone is interested send me a PM.

  • SoupertrooperSoupertrooper

    @Zachasurp How does the Ninja Star handle the GH4's noise and magenta/cyan artifacts?

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