Having just applied a slightly lower bitrate version of Driftwood's GOP1 "Spanmybitchup" patch to my camera and using a wide lens (Nikon 1.4, stopped down usually to 2.4ish) I'm gobsmacked (or should that be GOPsmacked?) by the reduction in noise at high gain. I understand that the noise I've been used to, has been the result of B and P frames, and with GOP1 it's just amazingly clean. I really can't believe how good it is, even though GOP1 isn't as efficient a use of data as you get with P and B frames. I'm assuming it's the result of low GOP anyway, and that's got me completely sold on this low-GOP stuff from now on. I shot some bits and pieces around the house today and it's wonderful. I want to do a candlelit harp piece at some point, but I have a major gig to prepare for tomorrow and I now have to do that rather than messing around with bits of footage.

It was that first video (the Halloween one) that got me doing the patch, and I can quite believe the results he got. Looking around the dimmer areas of my house, with a wide lens this thing can see colours you can't see with the naked eye in low light.

Something I have seen for myself is how easy it is to flood the lens with light at these very high isos and get lots of blue flare (in the case of my Nikon). I think it's something to do with the light sources being more at eye level than they normally are (car headlights, candles etc)? Don't know, but the GH2 does very gracefully clip when it happens so any stray light reflecting in the lens certainly gets into the pictures. You just have to watch where you point the lens.

The most bizarre thing is that the footage almost doesn't look real - the graininess you normally get is such a good clue that you are filming in low light, and suddenly everything's different.

He has a link to a 1080p version with and without neat and it is still nice, but for me it is the result that count, do I find it good, yes for 10 000 iso it is damn good. The other one is very nice because even if it is only ........... 3200 iso it is still very very nice, more so that it was deliberately underexposed so this tend to show more of the noise. Sometime if it is very dark the crushed black would hide the noise, but even with the vimeo compression we can see detail in the shadows. I think someone more adverse to noise could use a little NR software with very good end result.

Couldn’t you always go to ISO 12,800 and beyond in video by using shutter priority and Auto ISO even with an unhacked camera?

holly crap!, the first video is amazing! except for the blue banding in the shadows it was outstanding O.O!