WorkHorse

apefos

WorkHorse patch for GH2 hack, the result of developing after my three previous threads here in the Top Settings (check last posts to download the final versions):

This is the best thing I loaded to my GH2. Stable, reliable and excelent image quality in all modes, works for cards with 24/30/36/45MBps constant write speed or above depending on the version loaded. Best option is to use 45MBps cards and above, which I used for the tests.

setg is the recomended version, safe and great quality. seth and seti are for lower speed cards, but does not have same quality of setg. setj has more aggressive settings for even better quality.

four versions: (use setg if you have proper card, it is safe and avoids all mosquito noise and texture mud in the high bitrate modes)

setg: for cards with constant write speed 36MBps and above, I frames compression = 3

seth: for cards with constant write speed 24MBps and above, I frames compression = 4

seti: for cards with constant write speed 30MBps and above, I frames compression = 3.5

setj: for cards with constant write speed 45MBps and above, I frames compression = 2.5

The base is FlowMotion 2.02 from LPowell because he did a great careful job to tweak the quantization, matrices and tables and get perfect image quality in all modes with quiet camera or camera movements.

The modifications are in datarate and gop to make it completely stable and reliable without stop recording in all modes. For best image quality use the 24H, SH, FSH and HBR. The 24L, H, FH does not have the same quality and are for save memory space and for you to try in lower speed cards if needed.

The bitrate is very well distributed among the I, B and P frames giving a fluid random texture and noise in all modes and isos, The gops and datarate are well balanced to each other with the benefits from the quantization, matrices and tables from FM202.

In the setg 24H, SH, FSH and HBR, the texture is beautiful, noise is homogene, no macroblocking, no mosquito noise, no texture mud. Great use of the 8 bit codec in dark areas, excelent high iso performance which cleans ok with neatvideo and with a small amount of film grain you cannot tell it was shoot in high iso. Optimal results for blu-ray output and big screen projection.

720p 60p upscaled to 1080p works great for slow motion, just use your skill to denoise, sharp and upscale it. Apply film grain to your taste. If you like the feel of the original noise, just keep it, or just remove a little bit of chroma noise keeping the luma noise, and no need film grain.

No stop recording in all tests with setg. tested with green grass under sun and shadow and also tested in all modes with the four Stray's colour death charts. Tests done with 6400 iso which is very difficult to the hack to handle and it worked ok. Tests also done in the end of card space (3 minutes left) and no stop recording also. Sandisk 32GB SDHC 45MBps was used.

The audio has Pasadena settings, from FM202.

Spanning was not tested with this patch. Also it needs transcoding with 5DtoRGB free software before editing to avoid the diagonal pattern (rain). It is clean after converted to Apple ProRes. I Converted to the LT version with great results and smaller fle sizes.

If somebody wants to test spanning I recomend to use the lower bitrate modes and tweak the TOP and BOTTOM datarate limits in the advanced settings for testers in PTool.

Enjoy!

apefos

The patch below is optimized for cards with a constant write speed of 24MBps or above.

The I frames have a minimal compression 4.

If you have proper card, use the setg, better quality.

apefos

three versions: (use setg if you have proper card, it avoids all mosquito noise and texture mud in the high bitrate modes)

setg: for cards with constant write speed 36MBps and above, I frames compression = 3

seth: for cards with constant write speed 24MBps and above, I frames compression = 4

seti: for cards with constant write speed 30MBps and above, I frames compression = 3.5

yskunto

This community is alive because contribution of people just like you who do voluntary work on hack and/or donation to personal-view. I would like to test your setting, but I do not have GH2. I only have GF2 which will not benefit from your optimized for stability 720p60 setting. Any GH2 owner would like to give comments to apefos work on 720p60 setting?

apefos

the 4 versions are here, according to the first post explanations:

apefos

This is the Holy Grail for the GH2:

The four versions of WorkHorse with quantizer 14 wich is the lowest best quantizer. Setj with compression 2.5 for I frames is working ok for me in the Sandisk 32GB SDHC 45MBps card, stable. This improves textures for 720p in dark areas of high iso, amazing!

apefos

Now that all variables are tweaked for quality and stability, it is time to try a shorter gop for 720p...

I will try gop6 because it is the shortest gop wich uses I, P and B frames. In my math there is datarate room for it without changing anything in the workhorse...

The patch is done... Just charging the original battery...

apefos

GOP6 gave bad results for 720p60. It is stable, no problem of stop recording, but the B frames decreased in size to compensate for more I frames and this introduces mud in textures, more noticeable in high iso. It seems that the default GOP30 used before is the best option because the textures are great with it. I am not willing to increase the datarate because the datarate I found is very stable. I will give a try to GOP15 because there is 4 gop15 inside 60p and two gop15 inside 30p and 60i. If GOP15 shows some amount of mud in textures I will go back to GOP30 and finish the job.

apefos

My job is done. GOP6 and GOP15 for 720p 60p are worst than GOP30, more mud in dark low light textures. So the last uploaded patches are the best.

Both GOP6 and GOP15 are perfectly stable as GOP30 is also, but GOP30 shows better textures. After I found the best balance for all settings, the GOP does not matter so much for stability.

So you can download the last uploaded 4 versions with Q14 and use without worry. I recommend setj and cards with 45MBps write speed or above.

The quality is amazing, really really good in all modes. No need improvements in 1080p 24p. But I think there is a way to improve the 720p even more. In my math calculations I found that the way would be to keep all the settings as they are, and increase the size of 720p B frames and P frames in 20% keeping the I frames size as is. To do this there is the need of tweak the matrices and tables but I do not know how to do it and I do not have enough free time at this moment do learn and try.

So I invite the masters of hack @driftwood @LPowell @Ralph_B @bkmcwd @qwerty123 @papasarts @cbrandin @balazer @stonebat @Brian202020 @mpgxsvcd @sohus @sage @duartix and others (sorry if I miss someone) in a colaborative way to do a try in keep the I frames size and increase 20% in the B and P frames size for the 720p 60p and 50p in the workhorse setj q14. If you want to try your efforts use the last setj q14 to work with and shoot a dark room in 720p 60p iso 1600, 3200, 6400 to perceive the textures and noise behavior in dark and midtone areas, and in areas of light intensity changes forming low light gradients. And try to tweak the matrices and tables to increase the size of B and P frames in 20% keeping the size of I frames as is. My advice is: do not change anything, just the matrices and tables for 720p B and P frames. Good luck!

Edit post: If there is a way in PTool to increase the size of 720p B frames and P frames without change the I frames size and without changing the matrices and tables, please let me know.

Thanks!!!

driftwood

GOP6 for 720p60 is excellent done correctly.

apefos

@driftwood

thanks for the comment.

in 6400 iso I noticed that the GOP6 and GOP15 gives more mud in texture in low light in 720p60. GOP30 is better for high iso in low light in 720p60, less mud, better texture.

Also I did try the quantizer 5 and quantizer 0 for 720p60, aggressive settings, but I did not perceive significant improvement in low light texture compared to quantizer 14, so the last uploaded patches are still valid. Decreasing quantizer from 14 to 0 in 720p increased the smaller B frames around 5% to 10% but not enough to make significant difference. An increase of 20% to 30% would be welcome in the smaller B frames for 3200 and 6400 isos and I believe that this just can be done in the matrices / tables.

This thing is already pretty good to my eyes. As I said, only an increase in B and P frame sizes in 720p60 would make a difference in low light with very high isos (3200 - 6400). Isos up to 800 are already pretty good in low light in 720p60 with excelent noise/texture even in dark areas.

If you will clean the 720p60 3200 / 6400 isos with neatvideo there is no need of a better patch. A patch better than this for 720p60 in 3200 / 6400 isos would be useful for pixel peepers.

driftwood

@apefos Show me some low light mts comparisons GOP30 against GOP 6 (e.g. Nebula T8) at 60fps if you get some time so I can measure for you.

Also try out the Nebula T8 matrices with your settings. They are very aggressive offering a finer / smoother frequency matrix than most other settings out there. These may improve a few things for darkness / shadows. You may have to adjust datarate and GOP Related stuff accordingly. Just remember the closer you bring the GOP Related stuff to its correct IPB weight (ie 1, 3, 0, 0, 8, 0 as in the 1 = Intra, 3 = P frames, 8 = B frames for a classic 12 GOP) the more powerful the quality/bitrate required)

apefos

@driftwood

Thanks for all suggestions about merging other matrices and tables with the workhorse settings!

I will do a better comparison between gop6 and gop30 for 720p60. At this moment I have 720p60 gop30 MTS original files for download.

I did a lot of 720p60 street and people shoots in low light with isos 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800 yesterday night, it was done with the workhorse setj with the gop30 for 720p60. (I think there is only one iso 400 shoot in the newspaper street store)

I am uploading the original MTS video files to my dropbox for download and check quality, some already available for download (49 files):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/84uutsz8ay8gjtq/AABChMl1OVC74UpTzyO3ZkIPa

marciocons

Nice Apefos, do they behave like this in 1080p?

apefos

1080p is better, the texture is more beautiful and also stable. Datarate is higher and shorter gop because the camera can handle more aggressive hack in 1080p.

apefos

@driftwood Many thanks for intriguing me about the gop6.

I did a new careful comparison between 720p60 gop6 and gop30 with same scene, same low light condition and same isos (800 and 6400), starting at correct exposure and stoping down 1/3 fstop each time.

the difference is very subtle, the gop6 holds better the texture in the dark areas to avoid the mud and the noise is a little more random, so gop6 seems to be better.

so I uploaded here the new version of the workhorse with gop3 for 1080p24 and gop6 for all other modes. I also keept the gop30 version for people who wants to do comparisons. To my eyes it is pretty good now, no reason for me to keep experimenting anymore.

I abandoned the versions for low speed cards because they are lower quality, so in this upload there is just the better version.

For my needs there is no reason to improve it anymore, it is great quality even in 720p60 6400 iso. I perceived that isos up to 1600 does not need denoise or filmgrain, in higher isos denoise and filmgrain are welcome for more professional look, not due to que patch quality, but because the GH2 noise in higher isos are annoying (6400 and 12800).

Great quality in 1080p24 also. HBR and Variable mode also working great.

In this post there is the seta gop3 for 1080p24 and gop6 for other modes and setc with gop3 for 1080p24 and default panasonic gops for other modes.

In the seta gop6 the 720p60 gives 48Mbps measured in streamparser which is pretty good. Now I am satisfied with the textures in high iso low light. (the setc with 720p60 gop30 is 38MBps which was used in the uploaded MTS videos in previous post)

In this zip file there are also two versions for patch merge, the setb and the setd, with all workhorse settings but without the scalling tables and deblocking tables. This way the workhorse settings can be used for merge with the matrices and tables from other patches in PTool for who wants to do experiments. (this is not needed for who want to use it, just load the seta or setc and you are done).

The workhorse is the stable modified flowmotion 2.02, kudos to @LPowell for the matrices and tables. If you prefer other matrices and tables you can use the setb and setd patches to merge with other patches and experiment.

It is stable and reliable in all modes, no stop recording. No matter what I do, it never stops. I tested it with iso 6400 which is difficult to the hack to handle, in all modes in the grass and death charts, all recorded ok for more than 30 seconds in correct exposure, overexposed and underexposed. Also tested the i-dynamic in the high option in a shadow/highlight situation, works ok.

I tested the original battery and chinese cheap battery, both works. Manual vintage lenses and native eletronic kit lens with autofocus, both works. It remembers me the Rolling Stones song: "if you start me up, I'll never stop". Rock on...

All files that I recorded can playback in camera with sound. I used the Sandisk 32GB SDHC 45MBps card for the tests.

For me the seta uploaded here in this post is the perfect hack patch.

@marciocons you can load it to your gh2 now, it is ready to use, see download link below. Remember that you need to transcode the MTS files with the 5DtoRGB free software before edit to avoid the diagonal pattern rain. The oficial h264 decoders in the edit softwares cannot handle hacked mts files. This is not a problem of the workhorse patch, most hack patches needs this. I am transcoding to apple ProRes 422 LT in 5DtoRGB with excelent results.

Finished job. Thanks everybody and enjoy! Feedbacks welcome.

kris

Hello! A useful supplement for people with WINDOWS-issue diagonal rain EDIUS7 no. Could easily be worked into the program with MTS, files. Thanks!

apefos

New informations:

About ETC (ex-tele): I tested all modes with the kit lens with continous autofocus and auto exposure enabled, quiet camera and also doing rotation, pan, zoom in the death charts using the ETC (ex-tele) enabled for more than 30 seconds and no stop recording.

About spanning: I did not test spanning with the workhorse because I do not need it.

About image stabilization: all tests done with the kit lens was with image stabilization enabled and it always worked ok.

apefos

StreamParser Frame mode and Time mode screen shoots from the SDC4 death chart 10 seconds recording showing 24H, SH, FSH, HBR and Variable80 modes from WorkHorse seta patch GOP3 for 1080p24 and GOP6 for other modes:

apefos

also for 24L because it is good quality and useful to record more time in the card, similar datarate to 720p60 SH:

apefos

4GB long time recording test: APPROVED !!!

10 minutes continous recording in 720p60 SH: APPROVED !!!

10 minutes continous recording in 1080p24 24L: APPROVED !!!

5 minutes continous recording in 1080p24 24H: APPROVED !!!

tests done with kit lens, image stabilization enabled, quiet handheld, using the SDC4 death chart, shutter 1/60, auto exposure shutter priority, iso 6400.

apefos

Now you will have the original MTS video files from camera to judge the workhorse seta patch with your eyes. Remember the seta is the best version until now with gop3 for 1080p24 and gop6 for 720p60, fsh and hbr.

there will be 46 files to download in this link after upload complete, it will take some time to upload all files:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/arwbhh8e60x665p/AADEJBoeUnUSQ-8RUb5wTC0xa?dl=0

I will need to delete files from dropbox to allow upload new files, so download asap.

My conclusions about the seta:

the 1080p24 24H is amazing quality, the noise and texture is pleasant to the eye even in extreme dark areas of the image. makes the high isos pleasant without the need of noise reduction.

the 1080p24 24L halves the datarate compared to 24H but for my surprise it keeps great quality. In high iso extreme dark areas the texture is a little more groos, but there is no changing in the frame rate perceiving and noise/texture is enjoyable. It is a good choice for mix footage with 720p60 in the timeline and also for save memory card space.

the 720p60 SH is the main goal of the workhorse, and I am happy I could accomplish this: to keep the great flowmotion quality, and make it stable and reliable. the texture and noise are ok, and there is no frame rate changing in dark areas, it is agreeable to the eye. the noise and texture are more gross compared to 24p but the good thing is that it is homogene and keeps the same frame rate perceiving in all areas of the image. considering the perfect stability, without stop recording, this is excelent for 720p. it is quantizer 0 (zero), short gop6 and delivers a maximum 48Mbps, pretty high settings for a stable 720p.

If 24p and 60p for cinema production are your needs then the workhorse modified flowmotion seta patch is an excelent choice that you can load to your gh2. high quality, stable and reliable.

about spanning: for my needs spanning is not so much important because each shoot in my job will be no longer than some minutes and the workhorse seta is tested and approved to record continous 4GB which gives 5 minutes in 24H, and 10 minutes in 24L and SH. So consider this if you will use it.

these modes passed the test of continous recording the death chart until 4GB.

now the weak points of the workhorse seta:

the hbr 1080p30 and the fsh 1080i60 is where the seta shows some weak points. sometimes (but not always) in the extreme dark areas the hbr and fsh are weak, showing macroblocking and frame rate seems to be lower in dark areas. See the dark grass in lower right corner of the image in the uploaded files from 00072 to 00076 and you will perceive there is significant improvement in 1080p24 and 720p60 but hbr and fsh shows it's weakness. in the fsh and hbr files 00074 and 00076 you can perceive that the dark parts of the image in lower right corner have macroblock and are in a lower frame rate compared to the bright areas. But among various shoots this is the only one in which I found this weakness, it is an extreme low contrast dark grass. the 1080p24 and 720p60 shines in quality in this situation, with great texture and noise even in the dark low contrast grass in the lower right corner of the image (see files 00072, 00073 and 00075). this makes the workhorse seta special for cinema production, and proves that the FlowMotion 2.02 matrices and tables are perfect quality, a great careful job from @LPowell.

What I am doing to try improvements:

All the settings are very well tweaked and calibrated between each other, when I look to each setting my feelings is that I cannot touch anything. The StreamParser shows that the results in the recorded files are tuned with the PTool combination of settings for all modes. The 24L results in PTool proves that changing settings for fsh and hbr makes no sense because the 24L is great quality with similar settings that fsh and hbr already have. So the only thing I can do is to try a shorter gop. I will test the gop3 for hbr, fsh and 720p to perceive if the camera hardware can handle it. if yes and if it improves the quality I will upload another patch, if no so the seta will be final.

In the first gop3 for all modes tests with the death charts, the bitrate for hbr and fsh increased significantly, from around 36Mbps to 52Mbps which I believe will make a huge difference in real world shoots. but for 720p changing from gop6 to gop3 makes no difference in datarate, it is stuck at a maximum 48Mbps in both gop3 and gop6 and I perceived a decrease in some frames size in streamparser so I am not expecting good surprises for 720p gop3, the real world shoots will bring answers.

These gop3 real world shoots will be tomorrow, from now download and enjoy the seta mts files in the link above.

apefos

A new idea about the 720p60

If lowering the gop from gop6 to gop3 does not increase the datarate anymore in 720p60, this made an idea to come in my mind:

the idea is to remove the B frames from the 720p encoding and work only with I and P frames. where there was a B frame it will be a P frame. P frames are better quality and biger in size compared to B frames and also they are not bidirectional predicton, so the "I and P frames only" encoding can improve the final compression quality considering that it will use all the workhorse modified flowmotion settings.

The "only I and P version" would need to keep the all workhorse settings, no changes, to use all improvements achieved until now.

I think Panasonic already uses this idea in the original firmware...

I do not know how to remove the B frames from the encoding, so If someone could change the seta patch to do this please do it!

I will do the real world shoots with gop3 for all modes (with B frames) and see what happens...

thanks

LPowell

I tested apefos' original version of his WorkHorse modification of Flow Motion v2.02 here in his previous thread:

http://www.personal-view.com./talks/discussion/comment/178208#Comment_178208

I ran another test on each GH2 AVCHD mode in WorkHorse seta. The bitrates produced by the latest version did not differ significantly from the original version and for those interested, I'd recommend reading my analysis in the link above.

A short summary of my conclusions:

WorkHorse makes no significant improvements on FM2's 1080p 24H or 24L video modes.
WorkHorse uses a 6-frame GOP for HBR and FSH modes, downgraded from FM2's 3-frame GOP.
WorkHorse downgrades HBR, FSH, and SH max bitrates to ~60Mbps, instead of FM2's 100Mbps.

I didn't perform any further reliability tests so I can't comment on apefos' claims in that matter. I certainly don't dispute that running the GH2 at 60Mbps rather than 100Mbps is a good way to improve its reliability - that's why I included 60Mbps patch options in FM2, using the 24L, FH and H video modes. After examining the video samples' technical encoding details, I concluded that WorkHorse 60Mbps SH mode was comparable to FM2 60Mbps H mode, and likewise WorkHorse 60Mbps FSH mode comparable to FM2 60Mbps FH mode. These modes all deliver excellent image quality for largely static shots which do not require the 100Mbps bitrate of FM2's HBR, FSH, and SH modes.

The one major difference is WorkHorse's 60Mbps GOP-6 HBR mode, versus FM2's 100Mbps GOP-3 HBR mode. Since Panasonic did not see fit to provide a low-bitrate option for HBR mode, we get only one patch choice for 1080p30 and 1080p25 recording. I chose 100Mbps for FM2 because I wanted to achieve 30p and 25p image quality as close as possible to the FM2's 100Mbps 24H mode. If you find a lower HBR bitrate acceptable, WorkHorse offers an FM2-based alternative.

apefos

@LPowell thanks for the analysis

I arrived from the streets now after doing more tests with the gop3 for all versions.

here in this post it is the workhorse gop3 version for all modes. I tested it in the same low light dark grass in the fountains in the street square and the frame rate perceiving improved a lot in the dark low contrast grass for hbr and fsh. the sete is for load to camera, the setf is for merge with other patches if you want to try another matrices and tables.

the reason I did a lower bitrate for hbr and fsh compared to the original flowmotion is because the datarate for these modes are shared with 720p60 and my main goal is to do a perfect stable reliable settings for 720p60, this way the fsh and hbr needs to use same datarate of 720p60. gop3 improved all these modes.

the workhorse was developed because the original flow motion was stoping recording for me in 720p60 in the gh2 with the sandisk 32GB SDHC 45MBps card. So my goal was to find a good settings balanced between quality and stability / reliability, this is the reason the workhorse uses lower datarate compared to the original flowmotion, but the final quality with this sete gop3 for all modes is pretty good, also the seta with gop3 for 1080p24 and gop6 for 720p60 is pretty good for these modes also.

comparing patches with a horse what would you prefer? a super fast horse which stops due to be tired or a average speed horse which does not stop? this is the reason I called it workhorse, something you can trust and no worries about stop recording.

enjoy!

apefos

here is the link for the dropbox folder with the new street tests for the all gop3 sete.

the files are uploading (17 mts files) to check noise and texture in dark areas.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9uya2iibb6vxkxt/AAAN5pqDBlnrcaURK7QeAuwpa?dl=0

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