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I think the big secret is a Metabones Speed Booster that gives the GH4 hybrid tea/coffee making features.

Just finished this music video using the GH4 and BMPCC.

The Panasonic GH4 is $1699 and available here at B&H Photo Video Today only - tune into the B&H Studio GH4 live broadcast here (starting 1PM EDT) The Panasonic GH4, is it a cinematic monster or a wimpy video camera? It's a monster. Even compared to the full frame 14bit raw from the 5D Mark III the GH4 holds its own. It represents a big return to form for Panasonic, a consumer camera that pushes way beyond the image provided by the GH3 and AF100. As a 4K camera never has the format been so practical to shoot as it is with the GH4. With file sizes 8x less than on the nearest competitor and a price 5x less expensive than the Canon 1D C, the GH4 is the most exciting camera I have ever shot with at EOSHD. Read the full article here

I am in talks with some professional musicians and film scorers here in Berlin and have discovered some real talent... The average quality of their work far exceeds the current music licensing libraries and it is more original, more interesting.   I am thinking therefore some kind of music licensing service might be useful to offer on EOSHD especially with the Vimeo copyright problem filmmakers are facing. I don't want to see people sued for copyright infringement when they are just trying to express themselves and their art.   Some of the pros I know here are doing really high end audio - we're talking Hans Zimmer & feature film standard. However these are professionals and we need to pay them. It is simply not going to wash using a track for free that took them 6 months of recording time in studios that charge $400 per day.   I'm wondering what a fair and acceptable rate would be for licensing? I want it to start low to be accessible to artists but scale up to commercial work in the right way. Typical prices at the Music Bed range from a minimum of $50 for non-profit to $399 for commercial work and for larger scale commercial work custom quotes are required.   EOSHD music licensing would be different.   For personal work or zero budget short films on Vimeo / YouTube (non-commercial) $19 - 1 track $50 - 5 tracks $99 - 10 tracks   For commercial work - small clients (<10 employees) and non-profit organisations $50 - 1 track $99 - 5 tracks $199 - 10 tracks   For commercial work - large clients (>10 employees) and advertisements $199 - 1 track $399 - 5 tracks Custom quote - 10 tracks   For features, documentaries and short films with a crew $199 - 1 track $499 - 5 tracks Custom quote - 10 tracks   Of course before you buy you can play all tracks in full on EOSHD to see if they are what you need.   I'd like some feedback on this first before I decide to go ahead with it or not as the amount of work involved here is very significant.   In particular what do you need from such a service? What projects do you need music for... And what do you think of the pricing?   Cheers!

Yeah stills are APS-C quality from the GH4 but without that flappy mirror or the silly optical eye glass thing from 1890!   Sensor has a very fine noise in the raw files which is very film like, and ISO 6400 is perfectly usable. I also find the electronic shutter very nice, and once you go back to mechanical shutter on other mirrorless cameras, that feels really dated somehow.   Sharpness is outstanding... no AA filter blurriness at 1:1 so the 16MP is easily a match for the 22MP on full frame cameras like the 5D Mark III. In particular all the things that make the GH4 useful for video like the live view system, articulated screen and EVF are just as helpful for stills. I find I shoot better with it than a DSLR, it helps composition to have the DOF preview with the EVF and the tillable screen for low angles.   AF is amazing on this beast too... better than a Nikon D4 in most cases actually...   You can't say that about live-view AF on a DSLR haha!

Here is something else to love about this GH4 it does the stills thing pretty darn nice....this is a highly compressed jpg. cheers!

Looks fantastic.

The one question I have is: how does the gh4 stack up against the original Red One? A lot of movies I enjoy were shot on the Red, and I'm curious as to just how far technology has advanced over the last few years.

I love the look of film, sadly I've never been able to make a production with it. I've put countless hours into digital production and post processes, just to try and emulate the look and feel, because I love it's non-linearity, spirit and heart. I do shoot still photographic film though and love it. One hopes that somehow, film motion picture will have a resurrection outside of Hollywood, and become more convenient to use somehow, by way of new technologies...

All I can think of is that the bulb is dimmed or lower wattage, maybe some milky coating on the glass. Probably someone has a better explanation. Edit: Also I suppose that everything is placed further away from the black background, so light from the bulb doesn't spill on the background.

I find it strange that anybody worries about disc space anymore. It has become so ridiculously cheap, even compared to tape. For friends - especially for friends! - you should take Shakespeare as a guide: Brevity is the soul of wit. Please understand, that though FCP X can use native AVCHD, you render in ProRes (project settings). You don't need to render for preview purposes (general settings, you can disable background rendering), but you can export your timeline as ProRes master just with cmd+e. Now even if you have hours and hours of recorded footage, you hardly edit a video that's longer than 20 minutes (unless you want to lose your friends), and that will result in a file size of round about 20 GB in full HD. 1. Rendering in ProRes is waaay faster than rendering directly to H.264. 2. Encoding a full quality ProRes video with freeware such as x264 to mpeg4 is about five times faster. 3. The resulting files - if file size counts - are then visually identical with waaay lower bit rates, resulting in smaller files (about 20% smaller). 4. If you decide to keep the ProRes master on an external drive, the costs for storage are just cents, really nothing in comparison to the effort you invested in making the video. If you wish to 'smart-render' your video, then FCP X is not the right app for you.

As John has said put a book or something 2D with writing on it about 2m away & with you cam on a tripod, focus the taking lens. Then put the anamorphic on & focus that, you might need to do some fine adjustments on both the taking lens & the anamorphic to get a perfectly sharp picture. Also, can you zoom in to help you focus? Do it! Remember, that the anamorphic has a min focus distance of around 1.5m, so if you get closer than that to something you'll never achieve focus.

There is one workaround to avoid the transcoding process to ProRes - however you will not be able to record the original 4K files this way. Record in UltraHD directly to an external recorder like Atomos Ninja Blade. Set HDMI output to 10bit, you will not be able to record internally, but it will stream a very beautiful 10 bit 1080 24p stream directly to your recorder, far sharper and with less aliasing than the internal 1080p mode. However there is an issue with especially 50Hz (and some 60Hz modes), since Ninja Blade will only record a 1080i stream in AVCHD mode. To take advantage of full progressive you need to go into 24Hz.

I completely agree. Especially since the word "business" and not "hobby" is included in the sentence. Depending on how much money you charge or generate from your work, you have to adjust your budget accordingly. Just like you can't always afford to shoot with an Alexa, if a project is small or personal you can always resort to Royalty Free, Public Domain or Creative Commons music and leave the 3K$ licensing fees for commercials. I'm only concerned with human/bot ratio in Vimeo's policy. I always use properly licensed music in my projects and it would be trouble if a client has problems to upload it to Vimeo just because it is "flagged" by software without even giving you a chance to send them the license certificate.

I've been giving this some thought myself and here's what I've come up with. It's largely about focusing the viewer's attention. Lets use the film Alien as an example. Alien was shot anamorphically as was Blade Runner as Ridley Scott used to shoot his films in this format. Anamorphic lenses give shallower depth of field for a comparable field of view in spherical thus allowing you to ( or forcing you to) separate the subject matter from the background more effectively. In still photography terms refer to old hollywood portraits by the likes of George Hurrell who are in my opinion unmatched in elegance by any form of celebrity portraiture since. He was shooting with an 8x10 camera with hot lights and usually had razor thin depth of field. This made for intensely beautiful images when used properly. I feel the same is true of anamorphic in Alien, Blade Runner, etc. In alien the shallow focus really helps to create mood and probably made the sets look even better by blurring them out more. On the director's commentary track Mr. Scott even notes the difficulty of the shallow depth of field and points out a shot in which the focus was lost for a moment. I used to instinctively assume that it was better to have all the characters in frame in focus but have since learned that that's not necessary and can often clutter up the shot. I'm constantly surprised now as I watch favorite films shot anamorphically at characters that are out of focus that I never noticed the first few viewings. The smeary effect in the out of focus areas when using anamorphic is also a strong part of the look that I feel most movie lovers probably unconsciously associate with CINEMA. I certainly do...although it's more of a conscious association now. The flares can also be a nice touch but I feel they are best suited to science fiction. Shooting with anamorphic lenses slows you down but the results can be worth it...if you have the time and budget. I also think that the added difficulty of shooting anamorphically forces the D.P. to work in a way that insures better results. It's easier to cut corners with spherical. Ridley Scott shoots spherical now and I personally don't appreciate the look of his films as much as I used to. He can still make an incredibly effective film like American Gangster with spherical but it didn't have quite the magical visual element(s) that anamorphic adds. Anamorphic isn't necessary for me to enjoy a film but I do appreciate when a production uses it. This is of course just my opinion and I'd love to hear what others here think. I'm guessing most of you on this forum will agree but perhaps you have a different take on it.

As soon as you use someone elses work on your video without permission it is copyright theft - thats the law its noting to do with creating something new or influences - you can be inspired to write your own music in a similar style etc then do that its legal to be inspired ! by taking a sound recording that belongs to someone else it is just copyright theft. Sound recordings have a monetary value to who ever owns them and created them. the thing is Cold Play or who ever probabaly dont want any of us to use their recording on a video and thats their choise , just because you are I like some music doesn't mean we can just use it , the band have a say its their work . for instance in 1996 Michael Jackson asked me to remix his song 'They Dont Care About Us', it took us (Love To Infinity) 14 days to do the work for Sony/Epic his record label - we got paid for doing so , His record label OWN the sound recording ...not me . Even I cannot use this song on my video I made that I want to upload to Vimeo , even though I legally worked on the record and have Silver Disc on my Lounge wall from the sales it achieved , I dont own the recording Sony Epic own it - I cannot use it - yet my name is on the cd !

Here's a test grading using Wide-DR stock profile, password is test it's remarkable how the secondaries come out. I secondaried the skin, and considering the compression it was jolly clean It must be due to beyering at 4k not 1080p

Here's something I'd like to get feedback for from all you creative types. What methods do you use when coming up with ideas for your craft? Do you find yourself too distracted by the noise of things like instagram, twitter, Facebook, etc? How do you stay focused and make your work a reality?

good topic. but one that will probably not yield much interest here since its quite a deep subject. I think your sentence "What methods do you use when coming up with ideas for your craft?" is a superb highlight of the current phenomenon of lots of individuals who consider themselves as 'creatives' when really they are not so. I think a better sentence would be:- "What methods do you use when realising / putting in motion and ultimately seeing through your ideas?" It shouldn't need method to think creatively in my opinion. It's something you either are or are not. A true creative head is always seeing creative opportunity and if anything the main holdback is the delivery of these ideas into a completed physical object or creation. The really successful ones are the guys who see their strengths and weaknesses and seem to naturally surround themselves with like minded collaborators. Online forums are a great source of information, but unfortunately are very unhelpful at driving a personal project forward since they give a false sense of being around like minded people when 90% of the time they are the other side of the world. It's a lot harder to go out and join a theatre club and meet real people, but i imagine this method will ultimately bring more productivity. For me, I only ever undertake things i feel are worthy of my time. I try to block out what others are doing, while maintaining an awareness of my surroundings, selectively picking and choosing the finest creative output from others and allowing it to influence me subconsciously.