So today I shot a wedding for my very good friend and old boss at the motorcycle shop, Manfred. A great little ceremony with good friend, amazing family and great people. GOP1 (QuantMeBaby) is stunning, EVERY FRAME IS A PICTURE!!! I am finally IN LOVE WITH A CAMERA... here are a few stills to hold you over until I post the video in a few days. But tomorrow I have to finish my film festival submission, early shoot day better get to bed... GOP1 ALL THE WAY!!!!
Keep up the battle, guys. It's entertaining, really. But lets also define some objectives a bit.
For example- what's the best settings for the best image possible? What's the best settings for the best, most stable image possible? What's the best settings for the best, stable and lowest bitrate possible? Why use more space than required if we can use less and get more out of it? My two year old imac struggles with cutting basic HD and learning to shoot and cut something that I CREATE is more important to me than…ah, what was I writing about..?
And then we get into film styles and so much of it is so very subjective. And there's no right or wrong in this stuff, just point of view, opinion and tastes and all that wonderfully diverse stuff that should always be appreciated and respected, especially when we disagree.
Good news is it's just going to get better. Unless, of course, we continually destroy the planet or blow up the world, shoot each other instead of movies or just kick back and not worry. So remember the mantra, however old or new- "Pictures or bombs? That is the question"
Well I've got me a cute little camera, see. It's a fine little beast. I like it!
@GOODEMPIRE ok, we get it, your shooting docs and projects that require longer record times. gop 1 is clearly not for you so stop trolling and stick with the conservative patches. no one here is saying 66m looks like garbage compared to gop1 settings. i have shot with 66m patches and i prefer the way gop1 v3 renders the image in every way. if you cant see a difference thats fine, move along.
@ PerryWilson I don't think your "dick head" comment is relevant to our discussion unless you are referring to something you see in your viewfinder every time you face the mirror. I am not using GOP1 because I think it simply doesn't suit my purpose: documentary filmmaking. I was going to try initially and that was why I asked. No further explanation needed. Comparing my 66mbit footage to your 100000 mb is plain stupid. I would have had to be filming the same wedding for accurate comparison.
@ cbrandin "Depending on what you are shooting, however, criteria that define visual quality will change". Absolutely.
People seem to be loosing perspective on what the primary purpose of codecs is - that is, to compress video data while maximizing perceived quality by discarding less perceivable video data.
You can make any frame look bad by extracting visual elements that the codec sacrificed. For the most part AVCHD codecs do a good job of maintaining visual quality. Depending on what you are shooting, however, criteria that define visual quality will change. If you are doing slow motion work, for example, motion rendering becomes more important than it normally is.
Compression doesn't come for free - something is always sacrificed. It comes down to how you prioritize visual elements. Fortunately, the hack allows you to choose what is important to you. To each his own - and for very good, but often different, reasons.
I Have tried most of the hacks and gop1 is the only one that is a noticeable improvement to normal observation. It just looks better to me without any special pixel peeping or grading experiments. I have adopted v3 as my standard. It spans fine on low or medium compexity scenes and will not span only when a more complex scene is occurring at the moment of switchover. The only time I need longer than 4 minutes is for talking heads and those always span as they are usually on a plain of soft background and max out at 60-70 MBits. Cards are relatively cheap and reusable.
@GOODEMPIRE IDK send me a clip of your 66mbit and Ill compare it to my GOP1 I have tried the other GOP patches and just dont like the non organic look from them that I get with the GOP1 setting... IDK what this has to do at all with the original post where I was simply sharing images and a story... why do you care what others think... if you dont like GOP1 the dont use it... simple as that, so sense in looking like a dick head
@ cosimo_bullo here you come with your first meaningful thought: "lowlight performance". Am I wrong or does it really have nothing to do with what was discussed in this thread before? If I want to shoot in complete darkness I may need GOP1 (though even then I'm most likely going to be fine with 66mbits).
@PerryWilson it really doesn't matter how long are you here and for how long are you using GH2. this forum (as far as I get it) is mostly devoted to dslr filmmaking. And being a good photographer doesn't make you a good videographer. If it wasn't clear from my earlier posts my point was that GOP1 is a little bit "overboard" for the use in the field if you are dealing with video and not shooting 5 minutes long commercials (but then why would you use GH2 in the first place?). My guess is that people are getting obsessed (and make others obsessed) with paratmeters that in reality don't affect your overall quality significantly. I still didn't get an answer to my 1st qustion: how different is a regular one frame from my 1080p 24fps 66 Mbit feed from the one that you get from GOP1 feed? And of course I would be thankful for a chance to see your Sundance film.
@ lenuisible EXACTLY. and only after that we can turn the fanfares on and get rid of our 8 and 16 GB "slow" cards.
@Goodempire I think it's a no-no for a complete documentary filmmaking process until spanning is resolve AND... at least 128 GB SD cards come out ;-) But for some action/motion shot to insert here and there in your doc, it deserve a try...
And for the statement that each-frame-looks-like-picture in gop1 and you can extract 24 gorgeous still every second... well... it's motion picture, so, unless your cam is very well fixed, motion blur is still present ; a good part of the 24 stills will look like crap in a photographic (?) point of view.
@GOODEMPIRE I will show you my sundance film once it is allowed to be release to the public, in the meantime I can say that its not supposed to be for documentary making, never said it was. As for the "stuff you've seen" Ive been on this forum for about a month, and used the GH2 for less than that. As for my photowork what would you like to see... modeling, product, Us olympics? How about an underwater fashion shoot from my last gallery hanging?
I own an original, low serial number, non MX red, and when I say that the GH2 is getting close to than quality, I mean it. Really, what I would say is that the GH2 with the Henry's new hack is now BETTER in the shadows than the red with the original firmware of four years ago. Red of course has improved dramatically in recent years with both sensor and firmware, but the GH2 is now giving the original red a run for the money, and obviously blows it away re. lowlight performance.
@goodempire - "I don't want to offend anyone but what I've seen so far doesn't look impressive." You offend nearly everybody, so why stop now.
We should do a comparison between 24 extracted frames from a long GOP sequence converted to prores 422 and 24 frames from GOP1 also converted to prores 422 ...
@ lenuisible maybe. but does it justify using GOP1 for real-life (not promotional short-form) video such as documentary filmmaking that I deal with? I doubt it.
I think if we can suppose that individual long GOP well extracted frame could be as good as GOP1 frame (or even better if I-frame are bigger), we can at least say that for less player dependent good playback, GOP1 should be better
@ PerryWilson I'm missing the point. Are you claiming that prior to GOP1 individual frames in 24p were impossible to extract and miles away from "traditional film"? Come on! As I said, I don't see much difference between your shots and what I'm getting in my average bitrate hack mode. Plus it is kind of obvious that even GOP1 is not going to make GH2 equal to ARRI and RED. I really dislike the approach "it's good because pros (like me) use it. And.... if you are an awarded filmmaker do show us some proof as your clips might work better than your words. I don't want to offend anyone but what I've seen so far doesn't look impressive.
@GOODEMPIRE well seing as how I have shot festival winning films and make my living shooting fashion and product, I think its fair for me to use the word professional. And as for GOP1 the motion is the closest to traditional film with each frame being an individual still as we can get out of out digital cameras. The proof is in the pudding if it wasnt THE BEST option then it wouldnt be the standard for companies like RED and ARRI, and who are you to argue with the best of the best? GOP1 is simply more organic, and for everyone complaining about grain... grain is a natural part of film and even the 2/3 sensors your broadcasters work with. The grain in QuantMeBaby is so close to 16mm film grain its amazing and I purposely shoot at higher iso then people would think in order to incorporate the delicious grain of the patch
@ cosimo_bullo You shouldn't exclude you might be too.
your argument A) is totally legitimate. Could you clarify what exactly do you mean by "astonishing" in your argument B)? The "detail, clarity and latitude" look absolutely similar to the stills that I'm getting from my 1080p 24 feed with my hack settings about 66mb. What astonished you so much that doesn't exist in 66?
@ PerryWilson
I wouldn't call myself a professional photographer or DP (I have strong suspicion to these words), but I surely know what color-correction is. It is certainly good to have more information for color correction if you want your images printed in high res, but as an unprofessional person with about 12 years of experience in tv-broadcasting I don't see any practical reason to start shooting with these extreme settings and run out of space on my SD cards in a couple of seconds.
@GOODEMPIRE, you are correct... you can grab stills from any video and have them mediocre. But I am not only a professional DP but also a profesional fashion and product photographer. So my screen grabs must be "amazing" for them to hold up to my still work... rarely do clients such as manfred need more than 1080p picture, since he will be doing 4x7 and at the most an 8x10(I would still use traditional stills for this). But the "AMAZING" thing is the fact that with GOP1 EVERYFRAME is a perfect still... not like any other GOP or screen grab from any camera unser $24k right now. So for a friend or client like mandfred. I can shoot video and diviler that as a bonus, but also extract 24 still a second and choose my favorite... find me a DSLR that does 24fps in stills mode p.s. it doesnt exist
These images are great because: A) For Manfred and his bride, this may be the most joyful day of their lives and it's nice to see that. B) The detail, latitude, clarity of these "stills from video" is astonishing.
I might be stupid but can anyone explain to me why are these images "great"? I've been shooting with the 66mb settings and I'm doing totally fine: broadcast work, documentary...film fests are premature to mention. But I was able to extract still images from my 1080p 24fps footage even before the hack and it still looked decent. The quality of those stills only depended on the type of lens I was using.