@tomson8877

Nice Balinese knives :)

HBR : 30p :45m/s Lense : 14-140mm SS : 1/50 ISO 400 Mode : smooth Color Grad : EDIUS6 Filter : HD Multi-Coated Variable ND Fader Filter

One more with Sanity 5 shoot wit a x 2 anamorphic projection lens.

@itsmc2011

Nice work - I loved the '3-shot' in the woods!

Recently I substituted for the DP on a feature, and used my GH2 with Sanity. The director and producers keep raving about the quality.

I need to update the firmware on my PZ 14-42. Do I need to reflash the camera to the Panasonic 1.1 from Sanity? http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/download/fts/index2.html

@gottue nicely done. Looks like a fun group of people = )

Hi All,

i have a question (which is perhaps a newbie one!) related to the consequence of using such settings like Sanity ones (with high quality and relatively low bit rates) in comparison with for example Apocalypse now ones or Mysteron (high quality and much higher bit rates), and this question relates to the consequences on the fluidity for editing the MTS from my hacked GH2 in an NLE like Premiere pro CS 5.5 or CS6 (WINDOWS7 OS) with a laptop with LIMITED PROCESSING POWER (that's currently a given for me, I'll try to optimize my next computer to improve that but please don't tell me just to buy a video pro desktop as this is not the intent of the question!).

I just tried Sanity 5.1 and have been very impressed by the quality of the videos (24H or 24L), especially when i looked at the bit rates and the final size of the videos which are small in comparison of what i was using (namely one of the Apocalypse Now settings from Nick Driftwood, settings that gave me a lot of satisfactions so far i must say). Basically, in a test shot not too "stressing", I ended up with bitrates/final video sizes that are around 2X less than the same ones with Apocalyse Now, with almost no visual differences as much as i can see for my taste (maybe some differences in high isos but i have to retest that). So of course I'm tempted to use this Sanity settings to reduce the storage needed (SD card and hard disk)... but I'm wondering about the consequences in processing power and fluidity in CS 5.5 or CS6 (WIN 7)?

I know that MTS are natively decoded by these versions of Premiere but that this require some relatively high processing power from the computer (I have enabled the GPU CUDA option -Mercury Engine- with my GT240M Nvidia card for info, but not sure it helps for decoding). So I am wondering if settings like Sanity 5.1 is actually a better option from this NLE decoding fluidity standpoint (on a limited computer) than for example Apocalyse Now settings? In clear wording: is higher bitrate like Apocalypse Now or Mysteron (with maybe lower and less complex compression?) easier to decode by Premiere, or are smaller files with lower bitrates like Sanity (but maybe higher and more complex compression) rendered with more fluidity when editing in Premiere?

I guess my question is primarily (but not only!) for Ralph B and Nick Driftwood as they know better of course what tweaking they do in their encoding philosophy...

A related question would be: in windows 7, what could be an alternative to help my computer in Premiere to be more "fluid" in editing Sanity or higher bitrates settings if not using the MTS files but converting them: converting them to what precise format and with which software (in WINDOWS 7 again...), for minimal loss of quality?

This last question is maybe a bit out of this topic but choosing one setting (like this great SANITY 5.1 setting) or another is always a compromise between quality, bitrates, computing power for editing in NLE, storage requirements, and so on!

Thanks for your replies!

@jlduh

Although you ask an innocent question, it's impossible to answer it because everybody's computer is different. The only way for you to know is to run your own tests. In my experience, Premiere CS plays MTS files smoothly, but that's only my experience on the machines I have used.

I don't recommend trancoding to another codec if there's no reason to do so. But if there is a reason, I've found that Cineform has the best playback performance. And it's now free.

@ jlduh

Yes, Cineform Studio is what I was refering to. But you don't actually use it to transcode MTS files. You see, when you install Cineform Studio, it also installs the Cineform codec on your machine. That codec is available to use inside Premiere. So, you do the transcoding in Premiere. In the Export settings, set the Format to 'Microsoft AVI'. Then click on the 'Video Codec' popup and you'll see GoPro-Cineform Codec in the list.

But, I repeat, if your MTS files play smoothly in Premiere, there is no need to transcode.

@Moviemaker

Sorry, I don't use a Mac.

The Private folder has nothing to do with the hacks - it's part of the standard file structure for AVCHD.

@omnidecay

If you read the patch notes, you'll see that 24H is not listed for spanning. This is because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If you want reliable spanning, use 24L. The difference in picture quality is practically imperceptible.

@mee they are! thanks for the feedback