@rsquires I took a look at your 'moon' test scene you sent me. Im a little perplexed to your noise problems - its not that bad! What ISO were you using?

Here's the streameye results;-

First pic is the IDR reference frame 1 (at min/max QP of 16); second pic is at frame number 62, the QP has come down to a min/max of 14/17 (most picture is coded at QP14), 3rd pic shows the macroblock size in bits in the pot is around 800 avg.

@apefos From what I have seen until now matrix and compression settings can have influence onto noise reproduction. But while @driftwood seem to work towards less videoish chroma noize and more film like grain one should not judge settings to much from looking onto noise. You can turn in camera noise reduction to +2 and use a low bitrate setting and you will get out clips with much less noise than high end settings. And indeed much less detail. If you aim for the best possible quality at higher ISO you want to preserve as much noise as possible. In post you can use much better denoisers than the one built into cam.

@driftwood this shot wasn't the original one where I saw the problem. However it was enough for me to notice it. I think I had become so used to fine noise in under exposed areas that this seemed more blocky than usual. It was absolutely more muddy on the other shot where the area was considerably under exposed. I think my favourite is still Mysteron, but maybe I'm just confused. May also be that I am comparing this to GH3. Put this down to confusion. Thanks for looking into it though

So a 12 or 15 GOP structure would allow, at most, a cutting precision of about plus or minus 1/2 second for 24p material? That's a very imprecise cut....

Time to transcode. There's no reason for anything but exactly frame accurate cutting in a NLE.

One of the reasons why the grain on Intravenus and Boom (and any earlier Driftwood settings) is very tight is we were using certain hi-end matrices to drive very fine quantisation levels - matrices like the cbrandin 444 stuff entered into the GH2's encoder proved difficult to spread the quantisation across the whole picture for hi-detail wide shots. ie the top part of the picture coded better than the bottom half. It worked great with in-tight/medium shots where detail is perhaps not at its greatest (hence the bitrate availability to fully exploit the matrix).

With Cluster X Series we are kind of using the rate control technology - as employed in the GH3 (just a hunch!) to drive the quantisation. Obviously, the GH3 has the choice of both 4x4 and 8x8 transform to efficiently code the picture at very low (best) QP using much less bitrate than a GH2 has to do the same job. On the GH2 I do this using the 'Quantisation for 1080' patch in ptools - which incidentally controls the minimum QP RC setting to code the picture to. Then one must match the bitrate settings, etc... (once the rate control is tested & measured) to achieve stability and equilibrium of what such a low QP requires.

I'm sorry if we're getting a bit too technical as Im trying to describe what's happening in the encoder. In order for the QP rate control to work one only needs a fairly safe looking/but highly balanced scaled matrix to provide the rate control a decent looking low-pass frequency (artefact free as possible) under the QP desired. I decided on this manner as more and more settings were using the good 'ol 'GOP Related' patch in ptools (see fig. below) to actually give less weight to the IPB frames by doubling or sometimes tripling frame & fields to harness the QP to bitrate balance (effectively destroying the pre-conceived scaling matrix). We've all been guilty of this! Nowadays, I prefer to try and keep the GOP Related stuff to mathematically correct proportions first and foremost and then, if need be, knock back on the prediction frames where necessary (see higher numbers in GOP Related patch in ptools to see what I mean) rather than the i frames - or better still - adjusting the matrix to match. Keeping GOP Related to its standard GOP size helps keep the bottom end high quality (maximises the bitrate). One must hit the balance on the nose if they can.

fig. The GOP Related patch in ptools should match (where possible) the correct amount of i frames, P frames/fields, and B frames of the GOP in question for not just top-end hi detail quantisation but to also offer great 'bottom-end' quality QP in the lower detailed/moving scenes;-

• Top (Odd) i frame, Top (Odd) P f/field, Bottom (Even) P f/field, Bottom (Even) i frame, Top (Odd) B frame, Bottom (Even) B frame

See attachment below showing you the fields of 1080i60

For example, 1080p24 Intra in 'moon' is 1,0,0,0,0,0 (GOP1) and 'Nebula' is 1,1,0,0,4,0. (GOP 6)

It is this balance which is taking me a long long time to maximise the cpu & memory of the GH2. However, in summary, if you look at DREWnet (12/15 GOP) latest trial and measure 1080p24 against the GH3's 50Mbps IPB .mov REC MODE you will see it is performing spectacularly as good or indeed better in certain scenarios - albeit with the need for hi bitrates to drive a low QP rate control (remember we haven't got the memory saving facility of Hi Profile Level 5 and 8x8 transform on the GH2).

All in all, Cluster X Series settings are doing their damnedest to bring you the finest quality for all GOPs yet seen on the GH2. And we're still adjusting - hence the trials before we 'release candidate' them. Please continue to try them out and tell me what you think.

Dont worry @slovach I'll be offering you the best out of the AVCHD modes in the GX1 early next week. Thanks for trying out all the Clusters - I'm glad you like Nebula.

@Aashay I was getting 1-2 minutes per gig with VK/moon, just depending on the subject -- static medium tight intvs for instance, would easily crack 8 minutes, sometimes more, while wider more diverse shot and/or shots with movement, much closer to IV record times.

@puttydivision, if I recall, both shots were on the 12-35 at f2.8, 160 iso because of light (one in a tent at 1/125 for 720, the other at sunset). The one in the tent may have also had a holly wood black magic 1/8 filter on it, more to protect the glass from sparks than for effect, but effect of those filters is always nice anyway.

Nice thing about all panny glass, despite their drawbacks, is that they are totally sharp wide open. IS on 12-35 works really great too I have to say -- takes out most shake on handheld and controlled walking.

Spizz which was tuned by me for the improvement in stability is due to be released soon. :-)

@RnR01 Try them and let me know. 1080i and 720p modes could very well work.

@Butt what? You think quality would have been higher straight into FCPX and not through 5D2RGB? I'm very happy with the ProRes version, vimeo chokes a bit on the film grain and grade which may be what you don't like. It's close, but 5D2RGB is delivering a better transcode to ProRes than Final Cut right now, to my eyes.

@JDN Where do you live, where the temperature is below 30 degrees? Just even here, where I live, in the cold of Siberia, the day temperature not lower than 24 degrees Celsius.

sorry if I missed the post, does moon perform better with HBR or 24. It's my fault for not remembering which I shot in because I was testing a little bit of everything last night, but I'm sure HBR footage ended up the lesser.

Did a quick test today with Cluster X DREWnet Trial 5. Caused it to crash a few times in 24H on my 45mbps card, but all other modes seem pretty stable and it looks very nice.