pietz

Panasonic definitely made the wrong call when they decided to put the stabilization into the lenses instead of the body. it makes more sense to pay more for the camera body ONCE than paying it every time you get a stabilized lens. plus, the in IBIS from olympus seems much better than the OIS from panasonic. now its just too late. panasonic decided to take a different route and they have to stick to it. and i think olympus also has a patent on the IBIS, right? one technological question i have to ask. the EM1/5 come with 5-axis stabilization, whereas the GX7 comes with 2-axis stabilization. from the numbers and tests its easy to say which one is better, but i just cant imagine what 5 axis stabilization is? in a 3 dimensional world shouldnt be a 3-axis stabilization the highest possible? i would love to have this explained if anybody knows something about it or can link me to an article. Thanks!

more information has always been the future of things. being it more color depth, higher resolution, higher framerates or less aggresive codecs. everybody should decide for themselves what makes the most sense to upgrade first. this also depends on what youre producing for. somebody making internet films doesnt have big advantages from mastering in 4k, because most of the people dont even watch the films in 1080p full screen. in a youtube-sized videoplayer (not fullscreen) 1080p video looks razor sharp either way, why not upgrade something else first that makes more sense in this context, like dynamic range And i have to absolutely disagree with Andrew saying that "4K means more Dynamic Range", as there is no technological aspect proving this, since its only a Resolution-based standard. The fact that those cameras who offer 4k right now have higher dynamic range than the average 1080p cam is a totally different story. see for yourself what makes most sense to upgrade first. i would much rather have a 10bit 1080p picture than a 8bit 4k picture as of right now...

i absolutely agree. and if you ask me, thats the biggest sign that the GH3 is not the camera it should have been, but i dont want to start a different topic. I have a G6 and the GH2 shooters guide, which means i already have a lens selection and the other tips you were talking about. doesnt makes much sense for me now, does it? anyway great job andrew! i believe it to be a great book for a very fair price.

as of right now h265 doesnt make much sense to use for professional work. you use codecs like this one and like h264 to get the best quality/size ratio. this makes sense for your final version you want to share with people. well, sharing something that almost nobody can play isnt really helping is it? im really looking forward to x265 and when h265 enters the scene. but for now stick with h264 when sharing videos. its not rocketscience. on a mac use handbrake with the quality option enabled. most people still use bitrate. why? you should only use bitrate if you directly want to control the size of your video file, but most often you dont care about the exacty size. you want it to look good. i hate people saying that they just use a bitrate of 4000 for 720p. it always looks good. fact is, for a concert video or a sporting event 4000 might be not enough for reasonsable quality. for a locked shot or timelapse 4000 might be overkill. its not that easy to determine. just go with the quality option if thats what you care about. crf24 = youtube quality, crf22 = good quality, crf20 = very good quality, crf18 = to go all out. i wouldnt recommend using lower crf values than 18. you cant see the difference. i have a eye for detail and most often can see a difference between 20 and 18. so using crf18 already gives you a nice safety bump, if you might wanna use the file to create other formats out of it. on windows use staxrip. its one of the few reasons i still miss windows. its the best encoding software for h264 by a long shot. handbrake works well but the interface is illogocally structured.

so physically speaking a 25mm 0,95f lens on m43 would give you exactly the same picture as a 50mm 1,8f on full frame. now has anybody ever tested if this is the case in reality?   well from andrews samples its very clear that the A7r performs better. no question about it. how did anybody ever result in something else?

naaaw sh*t.... on one hand im very happy with my m43 setup. on the other hand: full frame. i always talk myself into not needing full frame, but its just so tempting. any thoughts on this old debate?   those cameras look absolutely stunning. the fact that they perform well makes we wanna buy one...

maxotics is you question still on? i ve read a few times now that the GH3 has higher dynamic range than the G6. but there are no tests i could to myself.

let me start with the fact,that i think two 70Ds are terrible. but im gonna play your szenario:   primes should be used when you have time to build the set and the actors in it. the work you describe screams for zoom lenses. grab a 17-55mm and a 24-105mm.   what gave you the idea that primes are a good idea for run and gun szenarios? you need flexibility because your dops wont have time to take the extra steps to frame something nor the time to switch lenses.

dishe dont buy a G6, youre clearly looking for reasons not to like it. if you need live hdmi, dont buy it. thats exactly what i meant when i said: compare GH3 and G6 features, if theres nothing you particually need that only the GH3 offers, than the G6 is a better buy.   im not gonna talk you into buying a G6, as i dont give a s**t what you buy. youre reasoning sounds a lot like you dont want to like the camera. and thats fine, but dont steal our time for giving you reasons to like it...

sometimes i feel like andy lee's 2nd forum account, but i guess i just agree with him on this. btw im excluding the d5200, dont know much about it. just GH3 vs G6.   lets assume they would go for the same price. wow, that would be tough. high bitrate on one side, focus peaking on the other...well you seem to know the specs so lets cut to my point. even if these cameras had the same price tag im 70% sure that i would go for the G6, but that greatly depends whats important to you. set your priorities.   but in the end the G6 is half the price of the GH3, and thats why its a no brainer. the only thing im sad about is that it doesnt come with a weather sealed body :( but except that...i dont need that high bitrate. i mean why do we all just talk about bitrates. the video quality of the G6 is absolutely great out of the box. why produce video files 3 times of that size. certainly not for editing. my hackintosh with premiere pro eats any native h264 files like nothing. i dont need all-i for that.   but you came to the point where you said, what if you have the money to get a GH3? well then you should buy lenses for that money. beautiful voigtlander and slr magic lenses, my friend.   The G6 is the real successor of the GH2. simple as that. i hated my GH2 for the high level of noise - all gone with the G6, better view finder, better display, better touchscreen, some nice gimmicks, focus peaking. im not saying that the GH3 is not a great camera, but it didnt quite fit in the GH-family-tree because they changed soo many things about it. some of which arent improvements...   oh and the G6's footage looks more cinematic when you turn off sharpening to -5. the sharpening does a nice job, but it also sharpens the areas that are slighty out of focus, which gives it more of a small-sensor-kinda-look.

the G6 is just absolutely fantastic. if the GH3 doesnt have any features that you definitely need, i recommend buying a G6. you get more features for a lot less money.   concerning the bitrate. i wouldn't use a higher bitrate on the G6 even if it had the option (at least for 24p and 25p). im not a big fan of bitrates higher than 50MBit, the differences are just so very little and not even visible in most shots. if youre a pixel peeper and plan a documentary on water surfaces, i might recommend the GH3 since there might be a very little appearence of macro blocking when you have A LOT of movement in a shot. but in a real world example the G6s nitrate is definately high enough. its also great at higher ISOs. hell, the GH2 had visible noise at ISO160 whereas the G6 looks still ok at ISO3200!   the G6s footage is also very gradable. if you dont under or over expose by a long shot, youre good to go. but im the kinda person that also believes that uncompressed recordings are just absoluety rediculous if you do a good job as a dop.   the only thing i can complain about is that the AWB in video mode doesnt seem to do a good job. at least in my case. outside shots look a little to cold, whereas inside lit scenarios sometimes appear too yellow. i dont have a lot of footage to back up my complains, i just noted it during my last project.   No, the GH3 is not worth the extra money, if you ask me. the G6 is even better in some cases, for example focus peaking. one thing i expected the G series to be worse at is the button lay out. but you can customize 7 Fn buttons on the G6, its just great.

hello everybody,   i recently got my G6 and i have been loving it so far. i can only recommend every GH2 owner to get one as well, since you can sell your used GH2 at a price, for which you can almost get a new G6. but thats a different topic.   Andrew has been talking about little to no differences in using MP4 instead of AVCHD with the new G6 and i would like to hear your thoughts on this. i used Media Info to look inside what these two file types bring to the table and would like to share it with you (i'm referring to the european model at 25fps):   What I dont understand to this very day is the naming of both recording options. AVCHD is the codec used to compress the file, whereas MP4 is the container file in which everything it put together. to me these are completely different things and not opposing options, since you can put a AVCHD coded video in an MP4 container.   when i open sample files in media info i can see that both files use the AVC codec. There are only 2 technical differences with these. the first one being that the MP4 option records at 20Mb/s whereas AVCHD goes up to 24Mb/s. thats a 20% increase which should bring little improvements.   The second difference is that MP4 uses the "Baseline" profile where AVCHD uses the "High" profile. the High profile enables something called CABAC, which in short compresses files better than than the CAVLC option used in the MP4 preset. you could say that MP4 uses H.263 whereas AVCHD uses H.264. H.264 is known to be 20-40% more efficient than H.263 (XviD, DivX).   so all in all there should be a visual difference between the two recording options, but until now, i havent been able to spot them. this also means one thing if im not completely mistaken:   if there is little to no difference using a 20% higher bitrate at 20-40% higher efficiency, i dont think there is a reason to hack the camera for even higher bitrates. the only reason to look into that, would be for All-I-Frame encoding, which i personally dont see the point of if you have a fast workstation.   Any thoughts?

i havent been testing a lot with the presets. standard looks good to me, so i just vary with the fine settings. i use two different presets depending on the work i do.    if i have the time to grade and correct every single shot i would definitely dial down contrast and sharpening all the way. but recently i do a lot of work where i only retouch the footage when something is wrong with it, like the white balance. in these cases sharpening on "0" looks a bit better than "-5". but again if you have the time to retouch every single shot, the sharpening in premiere probably does a better job than the one built int the camera.   for contrast its similar. sometimes i like the contrasty look, so i take the contrast up to "0", but since you want a flat profile "-5" is the way to go and you can always dial up the contrast in your editing program.   saturation is just personal opinion. "-2" sounds good for a flat profile, its just that i like saturated shots which is why i leave it on "0". i have been doing this on my GH2 as well.   noise reduction. i havent been testing this, but in theory its a "smart blur" that takes away some level of noise out of the picture. even if the algorithm is really smart it will always come with some softening. since the G6 is much better with noise handling than the GH2 why not turn it off and leave it on "-5"? if you use higher isos or still see noise, you can test around this topic later on.   to summarize: i agree with your settings if you retouch every shot, but i would dial down the noise reduction to "-5" if you dont shoot at higher ISOs.

i work on a cruise and make these vacation films for the guests. my motivation however comes from the footage i shoot for myself. this is my first short/documentary/music video about different places between saint petersburg and geirangerfjord, norway.   everything was shot with my GH2 and 14-140mm from a tripod or with my own built rig. the stabilizer just does a great job. warp stabilizer in premiere helps to make it even smoother.   anyway enjoy :)   http://vimeo.com/70741268

im way to lazy to look for it, but i read at least a couple of times that despite the same sensor it doesnt seem to be multi aspect. so yeah its true. i believe someone pointed that out by looking at the different possible photo resolutions. 16:9 and 4:3 hat the same x-axis definition of pixels.

no offense, but if the manual says class10 than obviously any class10 will do. if youd needed anything faster they would state the necessary write speeds. here is a list of bitrates of the gopro 3 black. i gooogled these, didnt take me more than 30sec:   4K-15 (protune): 3.2 hrs @ 45 Mbps 4K-cin-12 (protune): 3.2 hrs @ 45 Mbps 2.7k cin-24: 3.2 hrs @ 45Mbps 2.7k-30: 3.2 hrs @ 45 Mbps 1080-60: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps 1080-48: 4.8 hrs @ 30Mbps 1080-30: 7.2 hrs @ 20 Mbps 1080-24: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps 1440-48: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps 1440-30: 7.2 hrs @ 20 Mbps 1440-24: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps 960-100: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps 960-48: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps 720-120: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps 720-60: 7.2 hrs @ 20 Mbpswvga-240: 4.8 hrs @ 30 Mbps   and how can we answer the 32GB question? it obviously depends on how you use it. if you only have one battery and one sd card and youre recording at 30mbps than 32GB give you 2h20m recording time. i dont think that the gopro3s battery will live longer than an hour so with this setup a 16GB card should be enough. but if your using multiple batteries and dont wanna switch cards, why not use 32GB.

i checked them on amazon. its not only the speed they promise, but what others tested with speed tests.   but again i dont know how they perform in a camera. at a little under the price of 45MB/s Sandisk cards and a lot more performace it just sounds like a great deal.

i dont know how new they really are, but i just stumbled upon the 600x Ultimate SD Cards from Transcend.   Comparing only read and write speeds they seem to be better than the 30MB/s and 45MB/s cards from Sandisk and only a bit worse than the 95MB/s cards. At 60MB/s write speed these Transcend cards should be fast enough for every GH2 hak out there, but i wanted to know if somebody tested those in real life tests? i could find anything on the web except for speed tests.   thanks

Im still thinking that my GH2 might be experiencing some bugs, but im just not sure. i stumbled upon this video:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPHIEU1X1Bo   Youve probably seen it and i know that when he pulls up Gamma to this extreme it looks like crap, but as he says in the video thats not the point. Im using Sanity 5 because the bitrate is still pretty low but is supposed to give some more detail than stock firmware.   if i rebuild this example and only pull up Gamma to "2" in Premiere my footage is absolutely useless. its not only noise at a dramatic level but also these black dots which appear when he pulls his Gamma to "3.24" it just seems as if he is getting so much more dynamic range and clearer details out of his GH2 and i just dont know why. the fact that he believes the GH2 is very "gradeble" is just the exact opposite of what i experienced.   can it be just the hack? is the Driftwood Cluster V5 so unbelievably much better than Sanity 5? or stock? i mean can the differences be this heavy?   any thoughts would be highly appreciated.

as i said i thought it would improve performance since MOV files were invented by apple (i hope thats not wrong) and MTS as a little weird to play with. also preview doesnt support MTS files for playback which is a bummer. and as i also said: im on cs6 and i still got the stutter bug with MOV files. as for my testings the "bug" is still there.

what fixed the problem was simply not rewrapping the files to MOV and just using the original MTS files. i though i would help the performance by using MOV instead, but what happend was the opposite. @AKH i didnt try your way, but i guess that you may be right with your idea. could you explain why Premiere struggles with MOV files on OSX?

i dont think thats relevant because the footage stutters in the preview before i even drop it in a sequence. to answer your question though, i dropped them into the sequences that premiere created when i set up the project

Hey guys, i usually love working with premiere. i think this program really evolved over the past years and is pretty brilliant in the latest version. however on my new hackintosh i run into serious performance problems when looking through footage. the footage of my GH2 (wrapped to a .mov container) stutters so badly in my preview window that its impossible to work with. i have a plenty fast i7-3770k, geforce 650 ti and 8GBs of ram, but the video playback still stutters. it even stutters in my timeline when the clips are marked yellow, which usually means that premiere is able to play it somewhat smoothly. i even enabled mercury GPU acceleration for my graphics card, but that didnt help a bit. it also very often shows "media pending" for a second or two, which is weird since i loaded the entire footage on my SSD with 500MB/s read speeds. i installed fcpx just for kicks and everything is perfectly smooth. i never had this trouble with premiere on windows on my older machine. is somebody experiencing similar problems or can maybe help with mine? thanks a ton

hey there,   ive searched for quite a while and could only find workflows that go the other way around as im looking for. i want to convert prores .mov files to media composer compatible MXF files. ive read that this is actually possible with davinci resolve LITE(!) which is a free download and so i want to ask if somebody can help me with the workflow :)   thanks a lot!

  youre talking about an original Mac Pro right? well what are the benefits of an original Mac Pro? that you have support from apple, but with a machine that seems to be at least 5 years old, you dont even get that. so why not build a brand new, faster Hackintosh for less money.   i paid around 700euros for mine with ivy bridge overclocked i7, geforce 650 ti (incredbly efficient that card), 16GB ram, brilliant case and a cpu cooler that i cannont hear if i put my ear against the case. im so so happy with it. its fast as shit and updates work. setting it up isnt all to bad if you follow one of the golden build on tony mac x86.