Reminds me of my prom, big expectations......

@pechente i kept my camera ready yesterday night with battery removed in full charge. still i didnt get the patch.... this abt this situation he he,.... i am checkin out every 2 hrs......

Well, not there yet as it seems ;D I know it's hard to be patient for this.

DRIFTWOOD NEWS

The release of v5b or v5c β Pictoris 01/03/2012

NOTE: Ignore the plain version 5 of this patch (deblocking was left on by accident from a finale test which didnt work out - thanks @mozes)

Warping over to you is the hot new star of Quantum, v5 β Pictoris, a mini version of the giant world of Quantum X with settings for spanning, ETC Mode and long recordings for general use. Version 5b, incorporating a hybrid version of the quantiser matrix that is AVC-Intra fused together with the GH2's internal matrix means the Luma values have been pushed up even more for finer detail. Version5c incorporates the 'Orion' setting's matrix and again is available in CBR and VBR flavours. So four variations in all.

The new setting also incorporates yet another variation (could be the best yet) of 720p with B frames - NTSC users will have to settle for GOP9 structure, whilst PAL users will enjoy low GOP 6. Everything seems to have passed colour death charts okay so I'm hoping you documentary/long duration lovers are going to enjoy this one. Nick

TIP: You can now experiment with sharpening back on (0 to +2 in camera) for Quantum settings.: 27/02/2012

As you are all aware now, Quantum settings enjoy the AVC-Intra matrix standard along with scaled AVC Intra p/b variations made by myself. This helps soften up skies etc... this should give you a nice opportunity now to mess around with in camera picture profiles/sharpening filters - for example Nostalgic picture profile (like all profiles on stock settings in-camera you can use upto four settings to control contrast, sharpening, saturation and noise reduction - many people have been using -2,-2,-2,-2 because the Panasonic matrix is overtly sharpe). So try giving the second setting - for Sharpeness - an adjustment upwards (e.g. -2 upto +2), now that you have more headroom control with the AVC-Intra smoother matrix. Let me know how you get on. Nick

Up-and-Coming Releases: 27/02/2012

Work is on hold for Quantum X AVCHD-I 100/50 as 720p60 is still proving problematic and unreliably worthless. 720p50 is fine... but we await further developments before this setting can be completed. Nick

Recent Releases: 25/02/2012 16:30pm

Quantum X (v4 Orion) CBR - Constant bitrate

NOTE: THIS IS THE CLOSEST TO QUANTUM 9B.

Finally, after much analysis and to see if this would perform better on every IQ/Q I decided to stick to the formula of Quantum 9b which many people were in love with and bring it up to date to use with version 1.1 of the Panasonic firmware (req ptools 3.64d). Personally, I'm happy with this as it seeks out (using cbrandin's excellent AQ formula) the best Q (Quantisation) for the image in question and fully utilises the bitrate. If you are into spanning, this may not be for you as I would always reccommend a very, very good Type 10 card. But anyway, enough ranting on, fire it up and test away! Nick

Quantum X (v3 Rocket) RC VBR - Adaptive bitrate

We had to change a few settings from today's earlier release. A slight hiccup on the calcs probably left in from another trial. Now all is well. Slightly changed Frame Limits and Frame Buffer calcs on this Release Candidate (RC) . Sorry for the mess around on this setting. Enjoy. Big change in HBR and 1080i sizes after allowing 720p to go to 12 & 15 GOP for PAL & NTSC respectively, it gave me the opportunity to take HBR mode higher for the allocated bitrate (whether it reaches this level is yet to be seen) as now I could lift the frame limits which in v2 were reduced for 720 because of the shared limits. Shared Frame Limits have been the biggest headache for optimising the separate settings - and 720p60 being the biggest memory user of the lot kind of dicatates all the other settings. Anyway hope you like - the b frames seem happier too. Time will tell... Nick

Q. What's the difference between the two above settings?

A. v2 Rocket VBR is now superceeded by v3 Rocket RC - an adaptive or variable bitrate setting which only matches bitrate to roughly the quality of the subject matter (seen on a graph the peaks wave up and down according to bitrate estimated for the subject on a constant Quantiser coding level). Sizes of files will be smaller. In contrast, v4 Orion works more like a constant bitrate - giving the same bitrate attack ALL the time to the subject matter (seen on a graph the peaks stay constant - therefore, the quantiser is working hard to allocate the best quality Q to the image and use all of the available allocated bitrate). Sizes of files will be naturally larger.

*** Coming Soon ***

Quantum X AVCHD-I 100/50 All INTRA Details to follow...

(pic1) A25p image below from QX 'Orion'More images to come..

(pic2) Streamparser grab from 720p50 INTRA from Quantum AVCHD-I (The ALL Intra Setting) - coming soon...