Is there any 'EXIF' style data available in GH2 videos?

jimtreats

I would like to discover what lens and focal length one of my video clips was shot with and wondered whether any data was saved in or alongside the clips? I'm expecting not but thought I'd just ask.

Cheers

Jim

Mark_the_Harp

Good question. I tried to recover some data from a card using Panasonic's own data recovery tool which you can get free off their site, and the recovered folders seemed to have a few extra directories and files which you normally don't see. So it's possible one of these might contain a file with some data about the video settings. Highly speculative, but I'd be interested to know too!

sam_stickland

I've been wondering about this to, but given that the camera itself only displays this info (ISO, f-stop etc) with still pictures and not video I suspect it's not there.

v10tdi

Interesting thought...

Some camera settings (i.e., focal length for zoom lenses, focus, aperture, shutter, etc.) can change during a movie.

I also own a Panasonic DMC-ZS7 (it's the one with the GPS, aka TZ10). Anyway, this camera has an option to record movies with the following 3 modes:

AVCHD Lite (GPS REC)
AVCHD Lite
MOTION JPEG

I've never used it, but the in-camera explanation AVCHD Lite (GPS REC) says, in part "...GPS area information is added to AVCHD Lite files."

It sounds as if the GPS data might be static. That is, the GPS area information is recorded one time - even though it might change during the course of one take. Again, I've never used it.

askira

I did a quick look at the relevant parts of the AVCHD spec and also checked the GH2 transport streams (*.mts files) and the h264 elementary streams (because there are specified user data for it) but without success. Only recording date and time was available.
So I'm pretty sure that with current firmware such information is not present in video recordings.

jimtreats

Thanks guys. As expected this is a non-starter sadly. I'll admit it has limited use, I was hoping to do some CG camera tracking of footage and it is helpful to know the focal length for such things. I can't remember which of the two lenses i was using and i fear it was the zoom at some wide to normal focal length.

I realised that the information could change over time, i was intrigued whether any cameras record such things, its interesting to note that AVCHD has support for such data, I wonder if anyone's implemented anything to use it.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@jimtreats
You can use small voice recorder and write simple software that'll sort recorded files (according to tine and data) and place them near your MTS files, so you could click fle with same name and hear your record about conditions and focal length.

Mark_the_Harp

@jimtreats Don't know what you're using for tracking, but Syntheyes will calculate accurately the lens angle based on the movement in the video. Maybe other software does too?

Also next time you need to make a note, can you simply say out loud what your settings are at the start of the take into the GH2 mic? Depending on what you're doing that could be the easiest way, and of course being audio it's part of the MTS file!

stoney

There are iPhone/iPad apps. Movie Slate, DSLR Slate, iSlate, and more digital clapboard apps.

DSLR Slate seems ok. But $9.99? Too expensive.

karl

Using exiftool I could extract at least the original recording date/time and duration that are stored within the h.264 headers, this is useful if you copied files somewhere and did not retain the file dates.

LucidStrike

I'll be using the G6 for documentary work, and neither the audio notes nor slates seem practical for that. I was thinking that the JPEG's DO have exif data, so I'd shoot an image whenever camera settings change. Of course, it should be on video priority, so as not to disrupt recording or display. It's not like the image size is relevant anyway. It's about the information the stills would contain.

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