100Mbps Flow Motion v1.11 Failsafe Patch with HBR 25p & 50p modes

LPowell

Flow Motion v1.1 Patch updated with HBR 25p support

See the first post of this thread for info and downloadable INI file:

http://www.personal-view.com./talks/discussion/2099/100mbps-flow-motion-v1.1-update-with-hbr-25p-support/p1

A flowing stream of water is one of the most challenging types of subject matter for an AVCHD encoder. The rippling motions of churning water produce innumerable complications in the encoder's motion tracking algorithms and require high bitrates to maintain excellent motion quality. In these sample videos, I've panned the camera in opposition to the direction of the water current, imposing an additional layer of complexity upon the patterns of motion. Be sure to download the original MTS files from Vimeo, as this type of subject matter is not well-suited to their web video compression.

Tomaso

@LPowell My original post is updated with one of the original .mts files with motion on white background http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/42452#Comment_42452

DrDave

"Trick Mode"=brilliant.

LPowell

@DrDave Thanks, credit goes to cbrandin for analyzing the Trick Mode sample footage I supplied, and then updating Stream Parser to recognize its behavior. While it is quite "tricky", it's just what Flow Motion needed to support 4GB file-spanning at 50Mbps on Class 10 SD cards!

balazer

Can you explain how trick mode works and how you achieved it?

jamesgh2

I have the Flow Motion v1.1 Update with firmware 1.1 installed. When I go HBR mode NTSC the 29.97 stream never passes 22.7 megabits with a low of 19mbits. What am I doing wrong.

The FSH, SH and 24H modes all behave well with this patch and great quality. The new HBR mode doesn't do a thing for some reason.

Thank you for your help and continued improvement of fantastic settings LPowell.

Kount_Michula

My first test of v1.1 with the Olympus 12mm F2. All images are handheld and straight out of camera.

SMuller

@LPowell Exciting times with the new firmware 1.1-friendly PTool! I've tried to keep up with things on this website, and now this is my very first post to it! Lee, I haven't installed a GH2 hack/patch yet, and frankly I intentionally held off after installing firmware 1.1 and enjoying that, but your "Flow Motion" patch from reading about it makes the most "sense" to me as an upgrade (especially now that it's firmware 1.1-compatible), although I'm sure I'll experiment with Nick Driftwood's best higher bitrate hack as well. I've got the proper SanDisk cards for spanning, and I don't doubt that both hack/patches are excellent for specific and different purposes, but I'm having a hard time drawing a dividing line there - even when I don't mind chewing up lots of card space (for a high visual quality short video). I'll admit I'm lazy not to offer to carry out the experiment myself, but I'd love to see a comparison (or "proof" at risk of sounding too bold) in video between both hacks/patches where perhaps Nick's would show flicker in high contrast areas of motion whereas yours would not, and then where Nick's would show greater detail than yours in more static shots. Frankly I think there are times where a "softer" image is quite alright, so on theory alone I'm leaning more toward your patch for most shooting.

Please correct me if I've made any wrong assumptions here. So far I've been just an observer sort of taking people's words for what they are (without doing personal testing). Not that I'm disputing your GOP3 theory as you wrote so eloquently on, or the value of your hard work! What's transpired here goes beyond even the important effort to milk more quality out of a little camera in order to empower lower-budget production - it's become a real education on how many modern cameras work, and could work better! I see both you and Nick as the primary educators, even though I know we all have to thank Vitaliy for starting this fire!

A few questions if I may regarding noise in dark areas that some have pointed out with your patch. Have you seen significant improvement in this with your firmware 1.1-compatible release by adding custom Quantizer Tables as you've mentioned you intended to do? Also, do you think there would be significant improvement in the noise by following this advice I've heard (from DREWnetwork "Episode 6: Hacked GH2" on YouTube, with my comments as stacy6903): by setting the GH2 to an indoor white balance setting for shooting everything (including outdoor scenes), and then color correcting in post, thereby eliminating much of the "noisy" red channel?

Also I'm intrigued by your MJPEG patches both for the GH1 and GH2, but again, not without some questions that come to mind. Although I realize there may be some quality issues with MJPEG compared to AVCHD that I've heard argued long ago, and that was more recently first brought up on this site by one "whose name shall not be said", MJPEG is a joy to edit with and I'm guessing easier to key in 4:2:2 color on the GH1 than in the GH2's 4:2:0 color that apparently keys worse (even with a good Driftwood hack, according to Drew's Episode 5) than other 4:2:0 8-bit cameras. More interestingly, I'm getting the impression that the GH2 can suffer at times (and under certain settings) more than other 4:2:0 8-bit cameras from color banding, but less so with your MJPEG patches which also work well (or better than Flow Motion?) in low light. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong. My goal with the GH2 is to produce the "best" possible MOTION video for Blu-Ray, within it's own 8-bit color limitations. I would imagine that might mean trying out debanding/dithering isolated areas of posterization through AviSynth or some other method, but I'm wondering if your patches including Flow Motion could save me from this and other troubles I've mentioned - or save "US" as I'm sure my verbose posting here seems familiar to what at least a few others have expressed concerns about.

I'll keep future messages shorter.

Thank you again Mr. Powell!

troyjason

edit

Gerald

@LPowell Thank you so much for your work. I think this took quite more time than optimize one thing to the max. Because there are so many things to think about, light, position, panning, where start, where end, aperture, camera movement, sound recording, atmo and so on, i am glad not to worry about wich patch is on the cam. Just shooting, thats wat i like most. Will start practice with LP-FloMo patch next weekend. Now i can keep my attention on shooting scenes. No more excuses on technical limits. I think now the only next level patch that makes sense to me is a AF101, C300 or F65 ;-)

If i dont get good videos with your patch, maybe i should try basket-weaving. Thank you!

duartix

@LPowell You might put a disclaimer in your water flowing videos to download the originals. ;) There's a first time for everything and Vimeo's compression is totally destroying them.

otcx

Here is small test, but there is no point to watch it from vimeo (total vaste of time). If you like to see how well these settings catsh the sonw then download orginal.

Frame

Tested the patch with 1.1 GH2 Firmware, Ptools 3.64. Deliberately filmed underexposed motives, panning around.

No high bitrates, 1min.20 takes 152mb in HBR Mode.

1min.20 in 24P Cinema Mode/High take 250mb.

Much blocking in dark areas in both modes. Can blocking be fixed? Is this related to "Auto Quantizer for 1080 modes" ? I did set it to 4-All to details. Did not find any information about Auto Quantizer yet... All the best, Frame

shamhead

I also found quite a bit of blocking in shadow areas and reds, no high bit rates in HBR 25p modes. The previous firmware version worked much better for me.

rikyxxx

@Frame @shamhead

Please, read carefully what stated by Lee in the 1st post:

As with any complex video camera, there are a number of considerations and limitations to bear in mind:

Listed bitrates are the maximum seen in practice, filming well-lit, sharply-focused, highly detailed scenes. Average shots will produce average bitrates. In low-light conditions, I recommend trying MJPEG HD 1080p30 mode for its ability to maintain high bitrates in near dark conditions.

If shutter speed is set longer than the frame rate (e.g. slower than 1/60 at 60p), low-quality video files may be produced. High shutter speeds will reduce motion blur, which may force the encoder to operate at higher bitrates.

=> I recommend trying MJPEG HD 1080p30 mode for its ability to maintain high bitrates in near dark conditions.

kodakmoment

Same low light macro blocking problem here. 1080p30 is no option for people who need to shoot 25p.

shamhead

@rikyxxx I realise this, but even so, in a reasonably well lit interior I tried out the previous Flow Motion patch on with great success, I'm now having these problems. I'm not very technically minded with regards to the bit rates etc, and judged this purely by eye. So of course I could be wrong.

rikyxxx

@shamhead "I tried out the previous Flow Motion patch on with great success".

But you tried out 24p mode, not HBR 25p, right?

shamhead

@rikyxxx Yes, though I have also noticed the same blocking in the new 24p version in both shadow and out of focus areas whereas before it was nice smooth graduations. I'll try re-testing, maybe I'm doing something wrong.

PixCanFly

@rikyxxx We already know 24p and 30p are good for most patches. I think PAL users were hoping to see a good HBR 25p setting. When you want to shoot 25p, you would prefer to keep everything at 25p. You don't change framerate just to maintain high bitrate in a shoot.

rikyxxx

@shamhead: "I have also noticed the same blocking in the new 24p".

Ok, I see. I didn't get it previously :-)

@PixCanFly

I fully agree, however that's the way the patch works (so far). I just wanted to point out that Lee is already aware of low bit-rates in dark condition.

Frame

I tested Driftwood Quantum Xv.1 now. Lesser macro blocking in 24p and 25P/HBR Mode in low light. But this time, I left the "Auto Quantizer" settings unchecked and untouched. Again, what are these "Auto Quantizer" settings?

460mb for 1min.20sec 25P/HBR Mode

660mb for 1min.20Sec 24PCinema/High

There are more PAL-Viewers in the world than NTSC-viewersSo I hope, at least the chinese and indian population should be a motivation to provide a marvellous HBR/25P hack in the future? (Hope also you´ll have not to scroll too long to get to the next comment...)

LPowell

@Frame - "Deliberately filmed underexposed motives, panning around. No high bitrates, 1min.20 takes 152mb in HBR Mode. 1min.20 in 24P Cinema Mode/High take 250mb. Much blocking in dark areas in both modes."

Thanks for trying to find the weak spots in Flow Motion 1.1. I'm interested in what you call "blocking" and would be intrigued to see any sample footage you can post.

Regarding shadow noise in low-light conditions, is everyone aware of the GH2's black-level clipping? In the AVCHD encoder, Panasonic chose to crush the bottom 16 levels (out of 256) of the luma scale to zero, probably to make dimly-lit amateur videos look cleaner. If you boost the gamma on a dark area, you can often see low-level shadow noise suddenly drop to pure black in some macroblocks. Many people assume that this is due to coarse encoder quantizing, but the damage is actually done before the encoder receives the RAW data.

To fix this problem requires some basic color correction, which should be done before evaluating any GH2 low-light video. A slightly negative Pedestal adjustment is used to shift the entire histogram down by 15 to eliminate the ugly gap between pure black and the lowest level of shadow noise. Once this is done, you can boost the gamma to bring out shadow detail without blowing out the highlights.

Thanks, also, for the (now deleted) list of PAL countries. It's a pity that Panasonic didn't make more than a minimal effort to support 25p in firmware v1.1. HBR mode is actually nothing more than FSH mode scanned at 25p and encoded at 50i, and is not even flagged as a 25PsF progressive file. As a result, you may need to manually indicate that it is progressive rather than interlaced when bringing it into an editor.

LongJohnSilver

@Frame actually the complaint for the 25p should be filed to Panasonic

@LPowell

It seems that the previous fw + patch was giving higher bitrates. What could be the cause for this difference?

I'm a PAL user too and I was thinking to upgrade to 1.1 for the 25p feature. Does it means that the 24p cinema mode will always have best quality?

This evening, before upgrading I will try to get some shot with the 1.0 version and then with 1.1 25p in a controlled condition. I have a plus account on vimeo so I can have original files available. What would be a good subject for comparison at home?

I read tha the 25p is shared with 1080i how I choose the 25p from the camera menu? Is there a specific menu option?

Thank you in advance for your great work.

LPowell

@LongJohnSilver - Yes, I'm afraid the GH2's HBR 25p mode is not capable of performing as well as its 24H mode, which is dedicated solely to optimizing 24p video. In PTool, there are a number of 1080 patches that apply to both 24p and 25p modes. As a result, HBR mode is not fully independent of 24H mode and for the sake of reliability, its performance is inevitably compromised compared to 24p. That's why in Flow Motion 1.1, HBR mode works at 75Mbps rather than 100Mbps.

To chose HBR mode, go to the movie menu, where it's found along with 24p mode. You cannot choose HBR mode from the list of modes that includes FSH and SH modes.

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