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SANITY 4 and 5.1
  • 1139 Replies sorted by
  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @lmackreath

    Just had time to watch your video. Fabulous work!

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @Ralph_B thanks for your feedback and thanks for your patch! it was my first wedding, and was for friends so the pressure was on!

    Grading needs a lot of work, and the length is a bit too long...but all in all happy with the results!

    keep up the good work!

  • AlienheadAlienhead

    @lmackreath

    And you used a fader ND filter or individual ones? What brand? I've got a Polaroid Fader filter, it's been fine for video with the 35mm Nikon lens I've been using, but it's not the quality of the lumix 25mm. However I've been looking into getting the lumix and I'm not sure how much quality I'd be compromising with a fader filter versus individual filters (which I'd rather not have to deal with). My sense is that the extra softening of the image might only be noticeable with stills. But then I also have to add a step-down ring to use my 52mm fader.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @Alienhead I use a Light Craft Workshop 49mm ND fader and use a a ring for it to fit on the 46mm filter of the Leica. This fader cost me £60 and have never noticed any issues with sharpness or colour casting. I have watched numerous videos comparing my cheaper fader to both the Tiffen version (around £110) and the Singh Ray models (around £200 plus!) and couldn't really see the difference in sharpness at the wide to mid range.

    I used to have a Polaroid cheapy fader but again to be honest I thought the quality from that was very acceptable as well.

    I would say for run and gun shooting the variable fader is much easy to use that having to constantly change filters. All I do now is dial in my required shutter speed (1/40) and my aperture for the shot and then press record. I then simply control the exposure with the fader.

  • Brother12Brother12

    Hi There.

    First time poster, long time reader. I have attached a clip with some obvious digital noise. Running Sanity 5.0, ISO 160, lumix 14mm (not sure of the f-stop, probably high) and 24p L

    I occasionally get noise like this in my shots. What is causing it? Is it the light refracting off the mist? It looks like something more complicated than that to me though.

    Also, there is some artifacting from the compression, but try to use your imaginations.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @Brother12

    Impossible to see what you're talking about because the noise from the youtube compression obliterates everything else. The GH2 always has some noise in the deep shadows, even at ISO 160. This is normal (even though we may not like it).

  • tetakpataktetakpatak

    @Brother12 you can get rid of the noise in the shadows by using Neat Video in post, great plug-in

  • Brother12Brother12

    It's odd, because there is no noise in the shadows in similar shots. I will try Neat Video though.

  • Brother12Brother12

    Here's a better upload. You can see noise in the blacks when the HD is turned on. No other noise in the shadows in the rest of this footage.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @Brother12

    I see it, and I repeat, that's normal for the GH2. Sometimes at ISO 160 you get these faint, flashing horizontal bars. It has nothing to do with Sanity. You'll see them on the HDMI output, as well. I have no idea what causes them. Sometimes they're there, most times they're not. One thing you might try is to shoot in the range of ISO 200 to 400. I never did formal testing, but I don't recall seeing the bars there.

    On further thought, what might cause the bars is having a significant area of blown highlights in the frame. It feels like this is a sensor issue.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    Another Sanity 5.1 creation

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    How do people have their white balance set when using Sanity?...I use Auto White Balance but have it customised in the colour chart to two steps toward yellow (on the left) and 1 step down toward Magenta. I have been told this compensates for the general green cast that the GH2 gives off, and warms the auto white balance preset slightly to remove the grey and neutral colour tones.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @lmackreath

    Good question. Here's what I've been using... First, I never use auto white balance - the camera can be fooled too easily into giving you inaccurate color. 95% of the time I find the preset white balances work just fine. The other 5% I'll manually adjust the color temperature up or down to suit.

    For color correction, you need different settings for indoor and daylight. Indoor: +5 Magenta. Daylight: +2 Magenta. The nice thing is the camera remembers these settings independently for each preset white balance. For Cloudy and Shade, use +2 Magenta, since these are basically daylight settings.

    I found these settings produce extremely neutral color. For example, I have a friend who has a Canon 1D mark IV, and we frequently do video shoots together. If we both set our cameras to the preset white balances, the hues of the colors come out identical. (There are differences in the gamma curves, but that's another story.)

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @Ralph_B Sorry I am a bit confused by the above. Are you saying 95% of the time you should use the inbuilt GH2 WB presets like Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten etc for when the environment matches?

    Or are you saying create 2 custom presets yourself, one for indoor with +5 Magenta and one for outdoor with +2 Magenta and use these two only?

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    Sorry for the confusion. Create a custom color setting for each of the white balance presets. Daylight +2 magenta. Cloudy +2 magenta. Shadow +2 magenta. Indoor +5 magenta. What I meant is that 95% of the time, one of those presets will do the job. At least, that's been my experience. If I'm in a situation with a lot of mixed light, I may either adjust the color temperature manually by eyeballing it on the LCD screen, or do a manual white balance with a white card. Hope that helps.

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    @Ralph_B ok think I am getting you now...so just adjust the setting for each inbuilt preset, i.e add 2 dots of magenta to the daylight preset and so on..

    can I ask if you think this is required only when using your hack or is the colour information the same in so much as these settings will work well with any hack or even the default 1.1 firmware?

    And while I have got your attention...I am off to Paris this weekend for a weeks holiday and plan to make a nice video. I feel like being lazy on this occasion and would like to use the best gh2 profile that compliments your hack and allows me to get in your opinion the most pleasing 'baked in' image without the need for grading..what would you recommend? (including saturation, contrast, sharpness settings, I will be using the Leica 25mm 1.4 for most of the trip)

    thanks in advance

    lee

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    The color adjustments for the white balance presets have nothing to do with the hack. In fact, I discovered them long before the hack existed. You must understand that Sanity only affects the quality of the H264 compression engine. It strives to make it as transparent as possible. What comes out is very close to what goes in. Sometimes people attribute things to the hack which simply aren't there. For example, there is no "best gh2 profile that compliments your hack". It's a nonsense statement. Whatever you use, Sanity will reproduce it faithfully.

    If you like bright, rich colors, try Nature, contrast -2, sharpness -2, saturation +2, noise reduction -2. I find this to be an all around great choice. If the saturation is too much for your taste, lower it to 0. But again, this is just a personal choice for a "look" and has nothing to do with Sanity or any other hack.

    Anyway, have a good trip!

  • lmackreathlmackreath

    Ralph_B thanks for the advice, I will give these settings a go. Dont get me wrong, I didnt think any hack had anything to do with colour reproduction, but a few sites and forums have users spouting all sorts of stuff so you kinda start to believe if enough people are saying it it must be true!

  • rmkrmk

    Hi, first of all, thanks for this amazing patch! I switched from flowmotion to sanity a few months ago and I have never had a situation where the image wasn't really great (as far as compression is concerned). Until today I had only used HBR and Cinema mode. Now my girlfirend has to film an interview for a TV station and they require 50i footage and we tested a bit and the image was a lot worse than in the other modes and stayed around 12 MBit where it was about 30 under the same conditions (lighting, iso, shutter speed) when using 24p. Is the manual video mode not hacked in Sanity? Am I missing something?

    Thanks in advance!

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @rmk

    Double check to make sure you're shooting in FSH mode, not SH. Also, interlace mode on the GH2 is it's weakest mode in general. Chroma resolution is reduced. You also lose vertical resolution because of line blending to eliminate flicker.

  • AxierAxier

    Hello Ralf. In June record a video clip using my GH2 with Sanity at 24p. All right, fill a 32 gb memory card without errors. The problem is that record with another fellow who used a "Polecam" and recorded a 25. In HBR camera records at 25. The Hack work as well?

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    Sanity works fine in HBR mode. However, HBR is somewhat lesser quality than 24P because the GH2 processes it in a 50i stream. Chroma resolution is less and vertical resolution is less. This doesn't mean you shouldn't use it, especially if you need to intercut with the 25P Polecam.

    A alternate possibility is to shoot 24P with the GH2, and to playback the Polecam's 25P at 24P in post. If audio sync is important, then you would also have to slow down the audio 0.96% during the Polecam footage.

    But as always, test, test, test! See what works best for you.

  • aklumixaklumix

    Some older sanity footage from AK. Some problems with the skies, but otherwise got some okay shots.

  • aklumixaklumix

    Sanity 5.1 with the baby merlin steadicam

  • AxierAxier

    @aklumix could tell me which settings as used. Looks great

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