Checked some of the footage from the weekend... with the Orion v4b. @640 and 1250 iso. I think I used standard (dialed down) profile and it looked absolutely great. No traces of banding in OOF areas (although I used long dof for most shots) and primarily a 28mm Lomo (+ some shots with a 35mm zeiss flektogon - primarily macro). I hope to be able to share some samples later this week. More work to do now.

I saw some traces of red channel banding (red light on smoke, black background) although it wasn't intrusive and the noise produced from the high-ish iso in the scenes I couldn't expose to the right should be easy to remove if I want to.

Really looking forward to having a go, grading it!

@Driftwood I've re installed everything with no chance, This is what I get (VBR)--- :

@terry2 Then your sd card isn't good enough for Orion. Change it.

@Driftwood

Hi Nick, tried another test but I get a lot of banding on all lights grading and VBR. Here is the complete file analysis of mediainfo:

• • • Media Inspector 0.7.443 file analysis report.
• • • Media Inspector is ©2011 by Diego Massanti - http://mediainfo.massanti.com
• • • MediaInfoLib by Jerome Martinez - http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net Created on: Mar 5, 2012 6:30:20 PM EST Report for file: 00000.MTS

General / Container Stream #1 Total Video Streams for this File.................1 Total Audio Streams for this File.................1 Total Subtitle Streams for this File..............1 Video Codecs Used.................................AVC Audio Codecs Used.................................AC3 SubTitle Codecs Used..............................PGS File Format.......................................BDAV Play Time.........................................26s 365ms Total File Size...................................458 MiB Total Stream BitRate..............................145 Mbps Video Stream #1 Codec (Human Name)................................AVC Codec (FourCC)....................................27 Codec Profile.....................................High@L4.0 Frame Width.......................................1 920 pixels Frame Height......................................1 080 pixels Frame Rate........................................23.976 fps Total Frames......................................631 Display Aspect Ratio..............................16:9 Scan Type.........................................Progressive Color Space.......................................YUV Codec Settings (Summary)..........................2 Ref Frames QF (like Gordian Knot)............................2.805 Codec Settings (CABAC)............................No Codec Settings (Reference Frames).................2 Video Stream Length...............................26s 318ms Video Stream BitRate..............................139 Mbps Video Stream BitRate Mode.........................VBR Bit Depth.........................................8 bits Video Stream Size.................................437 MiB (96%) Audio Stream #1 Codec.............................................AC-3 Codec (FourCC)....................................129 Audio Stream Length...............................26s 304ms Audio Stream BitRate..............................192 Kbps Audio Stream BitRate Mode.........................CBR Number of Audio Channels..........................2 Audio Channel's Positions.........................Front: L R Sampling Rate.....................................48.0 KHz Bit Depth.........................................16 bits Audio Stream Delay................................889ms Audio Stream Size.................................616 KiB (0%) Subtitle Stream #1 Format............................................PGS Codec ID..........................................144

@terry2 Then summit aint right for you. Im not getting what you get. With that card (which I have) I get sustained 147M all the time. Try the new version 4c and let me know. Also check your exposure, picture profile settings (try Nostalgia -2,-1 or -2, -2, -2)... and check things over. READ threads. I don't need your media info report - it won't help me apart from prove your bitrate.

Remember GH2 is 8 bit, 4:2:0. The matrix is doing its best to smooth out banding. You have to get exposure and ISO perfect with this camera. Experiment. Also in post your'e going to have to work a bit in the red channel - its well known that 4:2:0 is poor on the reds.

The next matrix I'm working on will take a long long look at the Cr part of the matrix. Slowly things will get better but things take time. Please give me time!

INFO: In simplistic terms, component video's color space is also known as YUV or YCbCr, where Y encodes luminance, U or Cb (blue) the difference between the blue primary and luminance, and V or Cr (red) the difference between the red primary and luminance. The low chromatic acuity (clearness of vision) allows a percentage data reduction of the color difference signals. In digital video, this is achieved by chroma subsampling.

In AVC h264 colour space profiles the notation as follows: 4:4:4 = no chroma subsampling. 4:2:2 = chroma subsampling by a factor of 2 horizontally; this sampling format is used in the standard for studio-quality component digital video as defined by ITU-R Rec. BT.601-5 (1995). 4:2:0 = chroma subsampling by a factor of 2 both horizontally and vertically; it is probably the closest approximation of human visual color acuity achievable by chroma subsampling alone. This sampling format is the most common in JPEG or MPEG and in the GH2's AVCHD implemntation.

Dark Matter yeah! Settings for the creatures of the night, perfect. THX!!! Before you dive deeply back into tweaking, could you give a little bit more info about the differences between the 3 matrixes? Some guidance where to look at?

@terry2 - Not sure if you're "fully" re-installing. I had a similar issue when testing out some of Sage's custom setting a little while back. The settings would appear to upload just fine in camera. However, shooting and later analyzing the data hinted that something was wrong. The footage both looked "off" and Streamparser was showing data that was inconsistent with the loaded settings. A couple of guys (including Sage himself) patiently helped me through it over at DVXuser. Turns out the fix in my case was to reload the stock firmware to the camera first to basically set it back to factory original. Then attempt to re-upload the desired custom setting. Worked like a charm! So if you haven't already done so, try uploading the stock 1.1 firmware to reset the camera. Do a couple of test shots to be sure everything is working at stock levels. Then go ahead and try to upload your preferred Driftwood settings and see if that does it.

@Driftwood I noticed the new Orion 4c settings weren't linked in the first post yet, so just thought I'd mention it in case it was an oversight. :)

Also, in case it helps, here are all the Driftwood Driftwood Quantum X patches in this thread so far, put into the 10 slots of PTool and into a ZIP file so they can be easily accessed at once: SMBU v2b, Rocket v3b, Orion v4b and v4c, Pictoris v5c.

The video settings are the same as you specified, but I have changed the audio AGC values to the ones I have specified in the audio hacks thread (since so far no one has suggested better settings in the months since I first posted my "thepalalias AGC v1" settings).

14 AGC 3

36 AGC 2

203 AGC 1

235 AGC 0

@Mozes

So you found HVS v3 to be the best of the 4 Orion matrices so far for dark areas?

@Mozes

Okay. Dang, thought I could save myself some testing on my own. :)

EDIT: Okay, well I'll be curious to see what they differences look like, even transposed into your own patch. :)

did some mini mini test with several iso's dark matter v3 : 1600 is usable 800 is a super fine grain the vimeo and attached file are iso 800 25p / dark matter v3

also @driftwood i had a lockup yesterday when messing around in class whilest watching a movie in the school's movie theater. i was filming the b/w movie and the light on everyone's face when all of the sudden after 6 sec my whole gh2 froze and had to remove battery. iso 2500, dg summilux 25mm 1.4, orion v4, sandisk 64 95mb, -2-2-2-2 cinema mode