@driftwood Sharpening does help, and helps enough imo. The thing is the matrix, unsuprisingly, changes pretty much everything. So we're all going to have to spend quite some time getting used to how the camera responds to different lenses, shots and settings. I'm finding this matrix, and particularly the Orion settings so good, in terms of its look/feel, I don't think I'll be going back. However, I disagree with some at the moment about how much you can push it in terms of CC & Grading, I've not honestly noticed that much difference in latitude/response over default matrix settings. In fact in contrast to what troyjason said, yep skintones seem improved but thats just a softening effect I think. Actually I find secondary correction on skintones to be a harder task (though not that much harder) with this matrix. I think its worth trying tweaking contrast settings when shooting people (more on contrast in a moment).

Anyway heres my quick and dirty test from last night as regards sharpening. I shot with the Pana 14-42 (cos we all know what it does) and a Helios cos its's the softest lens I have. I think that there are a couple of things that are well worth looking at with this matrix, as in more tests need doing. Changing contrast settings for one, I'm finding that tweaking that be a far more worthwhile thing to do than it ever was with the default matrix. One of the pana lens shots attached has contrast pushed to +2, which along with Sharp set to + 1 made things good. Another thing worth looking into more with this new matrix is panning at varying speeds, there is to my eyes considerably less 24p judder. however, upping the sharpness, unsurprisingly, does effect this benefit.

The attached images are in order, Pana 14-45 shot at sharp set to -2, +2 and +1 with a contrast of +2. Helios 44 with sharp at -2 and +2. yeah sorry, it were late and I moved the tripod a teeny amount, another oops on the WB of the Helios shots, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Pana lens does seem to introduce a bit of aliasing on the hair when sharpness is pushed I think, but thats par for the course with that lens. I shot with all the different sharpness range, but I'm only posting the extreme ends of it. All shot on the Standard profile ISO 800, Colour and NR at -2. More, much more worthwhile tests need to be done, and every picture profile needs revisiting really.

@iLovPieNCake you havent set it up properly (720p60 is not GOP1 Intra - look at your first image) or youve been tampering with some settings in encoders. I suggest reinstalling cleanly, ptools, panasonic firmware, and the settings for Quantum ALL to a new folder and begin again. Follow all the stages on Page 1, comment #1 - stage 1 to 8. And make sure you download Orion 4b.

Quantum X v4b Orion 24H and 24L - @driftwood see below, is it as it should be or did I mess something up?

If the answer is somewhere here, sorry for asking. The amount of knowledge going every day through this forum is mind blowing.

One more question, If I like 24H intra with highest btrate and 720 50p intra I should stick to seaquake, right?

Well I just did some thorough visual test at iso 160, 1/25 shutter, 1.8 on the olympus 45mm, 95mb/s 64GB

"sage's" nine patch, which includes quantum v9b and other settings vs Quantum X vb4 Orion

After looking closely at about 10 comparison videos in all the different sizes and qualities.

The sage patch won every time....

Quatum v9b is much less noisy or grainy or whatever term you want to give it. In the blacks noise/grain was hardly noticeable but in Orion it was far more noticeable.

It was even more obvious with movement. When held still Orion seemed nearly as good or as good as the v9b but during movement, it was much more noisy.

720p on sages settings was also much better for the exact same reasons. Sharper and less noisy.

I also noticed a line going through my footage in the latest ORION, it looks like a vertical dead pixel line (thought at first it was on my monitor, but it is not there in the v9b footage) ???

Either way, as of now i'm sticking with v9b as it looks heaps better in all my tests.

@ricker Orion is based on 9b rematrixed. Understand the clear differences - Orion is heading much more towards extending the possibilities of the new firmware. If you want to omit the scaling tables from Orion youre essentially back to 9b on 24p!!!! Sage's stuff is just pushing my settings to further extremes but will hang at some point. I could offer a setting which goes well above these but what's the point if you want low recording duration ? Its NOT heaps better.

@JanNowak I'd be interested in your reports on 720p50 Intra cus Im dithering over including that again. So TOTALLY stress it out.

@driftwood Really weird. I just deleted all patch files including ptool and reinstalled it. Now everything works fine, even 720p.

Here's two stills from a test I shot today, ungraded/graded. Nostalgic -2+2+2-1 24p

@Braamokiev Thanks. In this test I just simply added the native files into Premiere and started grading with Colorista 2 and finally added Sharpen.

I think I am going to settle on Orion 24H and 24L for interviews. I see a lot of macroblocking in the Rocket V3 footage. The thing with these VBR settings is that you never know what you get. Some shots might turn out perfect, others might be horrible. With the CBR settings, you have more reliability at the expense of card space. The Rocket V3 footage I shot maxed out at around 350k i frames while Orion is at 780k constantly.

And the Winner is Quantum Orion V4B by (Drifwood) And The King Vitaly Kiselev.

Thanks for your works Guys!!

@driftwood and for quality only at 24p? and 50p?

@proaudio4 There's a point where banding kicks in, my matrix is based on the official AVC-INTRA matrix and scaled, I conducted a number of tests particularly on skies, and settled for what is now the Matrix in Orion and Rocket. The AVC Intra matrix is a little softer than Panny's overtly sharpe GF/H 2 Lumix matrix, but is probably for good reason based on Panasonic's research built for the 10 bit AVC profiles. We are 8 bit, performing tricks to improve what we can out of the colour range. But with this matrix, sharpeness can be utilised in-camera now, whereas before, as you know, it was always best to leave it at -2. Orion at least, gives you choice.

I'm now conducting strong tests with deblocking loop filtering to see if it is better that we turn it off (or settle on low values) which work well with Intra.

Yet another realworld test. :)

GH2, Quantum (Orion v4 rocks!) Panny Stock lens 14-42mm Smooth ALL -2, 5dtorgb 422HQ ProRes, Premiere, AE5 for CC (Color Finesse) 24H speeded up to 25p & 720p 60p slowed down to 25p & ETC mode (1080p&720p) intercut together. applied 0.5px Fast Blur to 1080p to match sharpness with 720p footage. (720p with ETC mode is bit too blurry and noisy imho.) Maybe too complex CC = noise penalty :/ should have kept it more simple. ps. In this case, I think i like YouTube compression supressing noise ;)