If Driftwood is referring to people who think 1080i is a good idea -- then, yeah, I'm on board. If Driftwood is referring to people who refuse to invest in quality memory cards and think everyone else needs to pay the price of low video quality to accommodate their cheap cards -- then, yeah, I'm on board.

I could sit here and write some fluff saying nice things about Driftwood, whom I don't know and have never met, or I could just tell the truth.

The truth is that because of the Driftwood hacks I bought a GH2 (US $900), four Sandisk 64gig 95Mbps cards (US $800), a matte box and cage rig so it looks serious enough for clients (US $1200), two 2.5 terabyte external hard drives (US $400), and next week principal photography commences on a documentary film of regional interest in which my Sony NEX-FS100 will ONLY be used for low light photography and the Driftwood GH2 for EVERYTHING else.

So, I can write fluff, or tell the truth. What's that old English expression? "Keep calm and carry on."

@onionbrain "people who refuse to invest in quality memory cards"

you don't even need the expensive 95Mbps cards. Driftwood's patches work fine on my camera with SanDisk 30MB/s cards.

Quality wise Driftwood's Intra AQ4 patches are top notch at 24H... and I am looking very forward to Driftwood's patches for fimware 1.1 with 25p!

@driftwood Nick - You're the number one - we need you

These threads need to be deleted and forgotten. Give Lpowel a thread - give Nick a thread. Fresh start.

Nobody wants to have this community busted up and tarnished over nothing.

Peace.

All hail the mighty @driftwood

instant gratification wedding vid I shot using v7, amazing quality as usually, all stills are taken from video.

@driftwood >this thread is for all low gopsters and people like bkmcwd deserve more recognition - he has taken months fine tuning his GOP3 and sharing his reports and results in this LOW GOP THREAD and IT WORKS on high detail and motion< Yes!!!

Ptools: AVCHD Research>=What are Encoder Settings?

As I have reported many times now, the encoder settings are still fairly mysterious but seem to be weighted towards 'helping' quantisation or a factor for bitrate to frame limiting. Here's what you need to look out for;-

1080p/I Enc Set 1 = default is 3 (set to 2 or 1 for i frames under GOP1 for stability) If you leave this on default (3) you will get the jerky frame recording almost like B frames going wrong with forwards/backwards motion. See example;-

(nice effect for free!)

Q. Why does it happen? A. The second frame of the GOP is a P frame, Setting 1080p/i to 1 or 2 rids itself of this 'rogue' P frame. Panasonic use this P frame for setting rate control for Long GOP. As GOP 1 is all INTRA it is not required. As it shares its setting with 1080i, GOP 1 will give you pure I frames in interlace mode, however on inspection in Elecard Streameye the Top Field is encoded with Intra macroblocks, the bottom field is encoded with Inter macroblocks and appears as a P frame slice.

720p Enc Setting 1 = 2 (default) Under Long GOP you will get I frame & P frames. However, set it to 3 to include B frames. If the GOP rate in ptools has been set to 1, set this setting to 1 for purer i frames.

Throughout all the other settings it appears that from encoder setting 2 to encoder setting 4 there is a balance of play involved - some kind of factor for LOW and HIGH bitrate & weighted Quantisation.

It has been noted from the stock values that the sum of setting x in 1080p + setting x in 720p = setting x of 1080i. It has also been noted that Encoder setting 4 could be part of a Quantisation maximum ceiling (worse quality high compression) and a factor of x is being employed. Stock settings suggest this factor could be 3. Therefore, 3 * 17 on encoder setting 4 for 1080i equals 51 (the ceiling Quantiser parameter), setting it lower can improve the quality/stability but, of course, it's also based on a factor of your bitrate setting to achieve good results & stability. We are aware of a kind of inbalance of 720p60 to 1080i60 and it here that the answer probably lies. These settings need to be tried and tested.

Similarly, Encoder Setting 3, could well be Panasonic's way of 'trimming' the bottom end (the best Quantisation quality) of the parameters. And encoder setting 2 could be some form of initialiser.

Of course all the above is pure theory and is unproven due to the large amount of other parameter settings involved in ptools. Therefore, if anyone has any opinions as to what these encoder settings mean or do, we are all quite willing to listen you.

I can tell you this, on some 720p INTRA spot tests these will fail;-

Enc1, Enc2, Enc3, Enc4

=1 =1 =1 =1 = Record Failure (no REC at all)

=1 =6 =1 =16 = Record Failure

=1 =1 =1 =9 = Record Failure

=1 =2 =1 =1 = Possible Failures

=4 =3 =4 =9 = Record Failure

And these work and report greater to worsening bitrate employment as follows;-

Enc1, Enc2, Enc3, Enc4

=1 =2 =1 >=2 = Records, Higher bitrate ceiling on streamparser (e.g.120M)

=1 =3 =1 >=2 = Records, Lower bitrate ceiling on streamparser (e.g. 107M)

=1 =4 =1 =9 = Records, even Lower bitrate ceiling on streamparser (e.g. 90M)

Finally, Messing with encoder settings too high can lead to your GH2 switching on/off, green flashing, or just cpu halting. Normally, a battery out reset is required to re-ignite the GH2. Just be careful if you are going to test your settings on the encoders.

I will be creating a list table this week of Encoder testings with results from tripod death charts shoots for evaluation across the three main REC modes.

I hope this is useful.

Nick

One thing that I have learn from this forum and site if you think someone is doing something great don't be afraid to stand by them. The patch I use most of the time are @bkmcwd patches. Really great patches. I just don't know why I havent let people know how great his patches are. I guess when I do work for my clients and when the look at it and love it, im happy. @bkmcwd, like you said before. " your silent users" im one of them :) That for the great work!

The real trill in that video are those kids on that roof!!, in snow!!, are you smoking something...

A question for @Driftwood.
Ad the moment i use "GOP1 AQ2 'AQUAMOTION' Experimental patch".
I realy enjoy this patch, never before i did have such a smooth picture when slowed down with twixtor.
Even with a lot of details in the background, twixtor still looks good
(there is still warping, but i gues i can edit that some more out off the picture, when i take some more time for it)
The question Is: is there a updated patch for Auamotion?

<

p>

I did remove some colors in th clip, so there was some more contrast for twixtor to work with.

Aquamotion v2 is an update of Aquamotion. Quantum 100 follows in the same pattern, with a slightly higher bit rate. These all span using SanDisk Extreme HD Video cards, and they support VMM80% (30p) mode.

@HillTop1 Thanks for using my patches. I know the cause with "silent" users of my patches. Probably, it is the first reason that it has my strange English. :-( Stray and driftwood explained my patch instead of me until now also. Furthermore, since I require time for reading English and require time also for writing, I feel I am sorry to everybody. But I am glad if comment can be heard. :-)