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GH2 Flow Motion v2 - 100Mbps Fast Action Performance & Reliability for Class 10 SD cards
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  • @ jrd: i totally agree with you. Comparisons that are not polemic and not just simply exploit weaknesses of a setting to let another setting triumph, are really usefull. For me its sometimes a settings-jungle. Each party praises its own setting, but that does not help my comparing.

  • @peternap

    I really don't understand the comparison Lee.

    Have to disagree with you here, strongly. The typical post in these forums, raving about one setting or another, consists of footage which is impossible to evaluate -- nothing to compare it to, changing in-camera settings, web compression, unknown levels of image processing, different lenses, hand-held shots v. locked down shots, etc.

    If somebody simply knows, without rigorous examination, that one setting is better or "more cinematic" than another, great. That person has found happiness. The trouble is, nobody knows what "better" or "more cinematic" (crushed blacks? de-saturated highlights? is this necessarily good in "raw" footage?) actually means in the mind of the writer or whether the claims made would survive scrutiny or a double-blind test. So the discussion is useless.

    An actual comparison may not be the last word, and we could disagree on what the ideal comparison shot is or whether the conditions were adequately controlled or how the footage should best be tested (stressed in post?), but it's a hell of a lot better than the usual raving for one setting or another which typically goes on here.

  • I think those comparisons are still interesting though and i am thankful Lee does them. It gives me a hint which setting might be good for me in which situation. But i think its not good to play those settings out against eachother, because both have their strengths and weaknesses. Both serve their cause.

    @peternap: can you recommend me a good intra setting? Good in the sense of reliable and very good picture? I like BOOM! a lot, but its a rather specialised intra setting. I am looking for a good allround one. Cheers m8

  • Have to agree with peternap on this one.

    I tested the FM against AN boom the other day (same shoot). Not surprising, the AN contains much finer grain and almost zero mud compare to the FM. Big difference. Its not possible to raise the shadows with FM in the same extend without introducing digital noise. The all-I really shines in that part. Didn't notice any difference in sharpness, but that probably had something to do with the shoot by it self (low light, f2). The FM is good for run N gun with great results, but sadly can't be pushed that hard in CC when it comes to a low light situation.

  • @LPowell I really don't understand the comparison Lee. Boom and Flow Motion are two different animals. Nick states flatly that Boom isn't intended for wide shots or 720. It's an experimental close up setting. I don't entirely agree with that and I have had good results in extremely low light.

    Flow Motion is the action setting I and many others go to. I wouldn't consider any other for sports or fast moving events.

    Why bother to compare apples and oranges? The constant 200% views and insults are distracting from the extremely good work you both do.

  • Interesting comparison. Thank you. I like BOOM! and flowmotion a lot. Most of the time i stick with flowmotion though, because it takes less space and i never had any stability issues. Still the new matrices by nick and cbrandin really appeal to me. Visually they offer something new, i cant comprehend it on a technical level, but although they have their flaws they have lots of character and look cinematic. Just like an old soviet film lens.

    @lpowell: what do you consider an intra settings strenghts compared to longer gop structures?

    And what about a comparision of the new valkyirie settings with flowmotion? They use the same goplength and they contain cbrandins 444 matrix in its purest state.

    @valpopando: as far as i understood lpowell it tries to be extremely sharp but then runs out of bandwith etc so in some parts of the frame the image quality really drops. It has to be said though that Nick always said its an experimental setting and it was not recommended for wide or super detailed shots.

  • @LPowell says " ...the Flat 4s matrix is extremely sharp..."

    ?? excuse my ignorance but at first sight , Apocalypse Boom Flat 4s matrix looks like blurred compared to FMv2 , IMHO there is somethings that i didn't understand?

    @L1N3ARX LOL you can't believe how many place like that there are in Italy ! no one has made a horror movie yet , cause most of the houses are in danger of collapse, in fact there are barriers with signs prohibiting access... anyway we entered LOL

  • Links to downloadable video files from the comparison at the top of this page:

    Flow Motion v2.02 (unedited 200% crop):

    Apocalypse Now - Boom Flat 4s (unedited 200% crop):

  • @valpopando Do you live in Italy? Seeing such an epic example of a ghost town in this condition makes me so incredibly jealous. I can't even imagine all the amazing things I could shoot there, I almost can't believe it hasn't already been used in a major horror film. Puts things into perspective when a few old wooden shacks around here in the States can qualify as a ghost town; then you see this... damn.

  • @jdmproductions1 Yeah I think thats what happened to me, does your HBR mode also fail after 4 min?

  • @LPowell thank LPowell. My settings are Fimmode neutral (natural) -1, -1, 0, -2 - used always been an ND 4 of B & W Germany - shutter allways 100 - The clips are really all out of cam, no color grading - Result: mellow, low-contrast look on a bright sunny day :) - native rendering with Sony Vegas Pro 10 - and thanks again for the great patch - sry for my bad englisch - and: maybe it's the great light here on the Baltic coast ;)

  • Flow Motion v2.02 versus Apocalypse Now - Boom Flat 4s - 24H mode

    The latest version of Apocalypse Now - Boom Flat 4s, uses a GOP-1 all-Intra patch for 1080p24 video (as well as for 25p and 30p video modes). What makes this Intra patch interesting is its 1080p24 quantization Scaling Table. Standard GH2 quantization matrices use finer quantizers for the broad details than are used to encode the more minute details in an image. This technique takes advantage of psycho-visual properties of human vision, allocating larger portions of the encoder's available bitrate to features the eyes are most sensitive to. The Flat 4s matrix used in Apocalypse Now Boom instead takes the radical approach of quantizing all spatial features in an image at the same level of precision. That same matrix is also used for chroma channels as well as for the luma channel.

    Compared to the earlier Apocalypse Now Pseudo-444 Soft matrix by Chris Brandin, the Flat 4s matrix is extremely sharp. Rather than attempting to simulate a 4:4:4 color space, the Flat 4s matrix records all available image data indiscriminately at the finest practical level of quantization. In addition, the GOP-1 setting in this patch encodes all image data in individual I-frames, at a peak bitrate of about 150Mbps. What this means is that Apocalypse Now Boom Flat 4s is one of the purest examples yet of applied brute force - it is designed to record as much data as it can at the highest practical bitrate in each individual frame of the video.

    Flow Motion v2 uses customized Scaling Tables as well. Unlike Flat 4s, the quantization matrices used in FM2 are designed to discriminate between luma and chroma channels, using high-precision quantizers for finely detailed luma data while smoothing the minute details of the chroma data. I optimized it this way because I felt that even with 100Mbps, it was vital not to squander its bitrate on image details that are visually imperceptible.

    Using Stream Parser, we can examine the differences in the encoding properties of the two patches. In the screen shot below, the Flow Motion v2 chart is on the left and the Apocalypse Now Boom Flat 4s chart is on the right:

    image

    Many of the statistics in these charts are similar - the QP and DC columns (which measure peak image quality) are close to the same (and as Chris Brandin explained earlier, DC values below 5 produce no further perceptible improvement in image quality). The differences that stand out are in the Max and Range columns, which indicate the worst case image quality. It can be seen here that Flow Motion v2 permits only a narrow range of QP factors, maintaining consistent image quality within the macroblocks of each frame. Apocalypse Now Boom Flat 4s extends into a much wider range of QP factors, allowing image quality to become very coarse among many of the macroblocks in a frame. Even at 150Mbps peak, there doesn't appear to be enough available bitrate to encode all the details in the Flat 4s matrix at the intended level of image quality.

    Here are unedited 200% crop frame grabs from the two video files analyzed in the above Stream Parser report. Differences in the detailed image quality of the two patches can be seen in the rusted metal mandalas:

    Flow Motion v2.02: image

    Apocalypse Now - Boom Flat 4s: image

    Flow Motion v2 24H.png
    1024 x 736 - 401K
    Boom Flat 4s 24H.png
    1024 x 736 - 375K
    Stream Parser FM2 vs F4s.png
    1024 x 437 - 182K
  • Too bad edubz. Well I've been testing the patch on Transcend 32 GB cards. Was about to buy a SanDisk and the above info saved me some trouble! No problem at 24H until I go over about 4 mins. record time. Then I had experience you described. Camera stopped recording, file inaccessible. Shorter files however worked and imported fine into FCP 7 Log and transfer. My OS is 10.5.8 and I've been reluctant to upgrade for various reasons. I do have to report the continuation of horizontal banding in my fluorescent lit white walls office hallway at various ISO's and WB's and lenses. That was a surprise. Exteriors all looked fine however.

  • I wanted a 64 GB card, to store more stuff, but is it better, for fragmentation problems to have 2 32 GB cards?

    keep in mind, that I also experienced a nightmare when my sdxc card would not connect to my version of apple os x 10.5.7. And yes, I know that an old OS, but guess what, everything worked on it. It should be noted that in the sticky somewhere about the sdxc os x nightmare, if your not on the newest version of OS X, your sdxc won't be read, because only the newest lion version of os x supports sdxc. 32 GB cards are NOT sdxc right? there for mac os x users who don't want to be forced to upgrade can stay on their stable systems, and still use the failsafe patch.

    There is no patch that will let you work will make sdxc files open on anything other then lion,

    So I was forced to upgraded to lion, which I find no different then 10.5.7, but now some of my logic plugins broke, and crashes logic. But I can open up my files, and I am working, and not all was lost. But I figured that fast action performance would be theoretically be for my class 10 card, but its not.

  • @edubz Sorry to hear of your disappointment using Flow Motion v2 with a Sandisk Ultra Class 10 SD card. At the time I tested FM2 with Class 10 cards, I was not aware of the Sandisk Ultra cards, and assumed that all cards rated Class 10 by Sandisk were marketed under their Sandisk Extreme product line. From user reviews at Amazon, it appears that unlike the Sandisk Extreme, the Sandisk Ultra's write-speed is significantly slower than its 30MB/sec read-speed. Unfortunately, this indicates that Sandisk Ultra cards will work reliably only with Flow Motion v2's 60Mbps 24L, FH, and H video modes.

    For full compatibility with Flow Motion v2's 100Mbps video modes, I recommend Sandisk Extreme SD cards rated at 30MB/sec and higher.

  • @edubz

    Sandisk Ultra cards fail at very low data rates -- much lower than those typical of FM. These cards are only really suitable for the stock firmware.

  • @edubz What Lambo said! FM is extremely stable but does need the mid speed cards of decent quality. That usually means Sandisk Extreme 45mb. I've used Transcend in a pinch but don't have much faith in them.

  • @edubz the 30MB/s Ultra is not so good, get the 30 or 45MB/s Extreme, for me it works very good, and very stable !!!!! Ultra 30MB/s is slower than the Extreme 30MB/s !!! i have tested it.

  • I had a nightmare with the flow motion v2 patch that I would like to report. I used the patch before at HBR which is 30fps which was fine for me since its better for youtube. It worked, no problems

    then I wanted to try the 24 fps , which I understand it a high quality because its higher bit rate and less compression

    I used a SANDISK ULTRA 30 MB/S 64 GB CLASS 10 Sandisk card, and received the error that went something like "motion picture mode has stopped recording because the card speed is to slow" and none of my clients footage was recorded and it hard to recreate the moment.

    I wanted to use this failsafe patch because I thought it was failsafe, but it didn't work, and now my client pissed,

    should I go back to her 30 fps for less data? another patch?

  • @Butt Nice beach video, I'm curious how you achieved such a mellow, low-contrast look on a bright sunny day?

  • omething special about the blues.

    Yes I currently use it for underwater shots!

  • @butt Really nice video butt. FM 2.2 is a great all around setting, certainly one of the top three but it really excels around water. Something special about the blues.

  • thx for the tips butt, im on it

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