I tried out @driftwood Quantum X v2 Rocket on my GF2 last night, and am having a curious problem. The resulting files play back fine in VLC and look completely normal in Streamparser (which shows an average bitrate of 32 Mbps), but there are strange issues in Premiere Pro -- frames appear to be skipped and/or out of order. It's not a slow playback/rendering issue... the problem exists even when you step through the clip frame by frame in the timeline. I've not seen behavior like this from GH2 files, but have had this on nearly every clip shot on my GF2. I was shooting FSH (1080/30p) mode using the 14/2.5 lens and shooting in rather low light conditions, but don't know what ISO was selected (GF2 is auto-ISO no matter what you set). Memory card was a Transcend 32gb Class 10.

@driftwood I'll certainly test Rocket v3 next... you're so prolific, it's not always easy for us mere mortals to keep up with your latest versions!

Your explanation sounds reasonable, but I"m not sure why Premiere is getting these erroneous B frames. Rocket v2 is supposed to be an intra setting at 30p, and indeed, Streamparser shows all I frames... is there some procedure that needs to be followed in importing to Premiere Pro to ensure that it interprets the footage correctly and doesn't use phantom b frames like this?

@driftwood Hmmm... it's true that this is the first time I've dealt with 30 pSf in Premiere Pro (I've been spoiled with native 24p on the GH2 and 5D2), but I had assumed that manually setting each clip to conform to no fields (progressive scan) in the Interpret Footage window would do the trick. Clipwrap is not an option for me (I'm on a PC), but I wouldn't have thought something like that would be necessary.

Thanks for the advice, though. I'll be testing out Rocket v3 on GF2 next and will report back. I'm absolutely thrilled with the Quantum settings on my GH2, and am excited to see what your settings can unleash on the GF2. Thanks for all your painstaking work tuning these settings!

@raz

This is exactly what I discovered too.

This is answer to whom?

"My opinion is that the gf2 isn't really filming HD in the first place"

It's a technical spec and not an opinion, and you're wrong

@raz
Go and shoot something.

camcorderinfo.com tests are really fucked up considering many things and models.

Please stop using the word "video-ish". Those who achieved film-look carefully observed each steps and improved them.

@raz - i tested quite some different hacks with the gf2 and from what i´ve seen the results are not compareable with the gh2 - but more in the way that hq settings for the gh2 don´t lead to the same results on the gf2. In a nutshell: To my opinion we have to do more testing and not assume that the settings that work for gh2 work for gf2. If vitaly is reading this: Is the forum software homegrown? Very cool.

@videohq

Try to look at topic title.
All this "video-ish" discussion really has absolutely zero value.

@Vitaliy yes, every time I go out and shoot and then I review the movies, I feel bad that I got the gf2 instead of the gh2. Maybe more people should know not to make the mistake that I did. I though the gf2 with the hack will have almost the same details as gh2 but in a smaller package. But they are years apart, it appears the GH2 will remain the absolute king especially with the hack. I wish I could afford now also the gh2, but I already have a pentax + lots of lenses, is hard owning 2 systems :)

…hardly started the topic and there're people already dropping the towel on the Gf2, hope this is not the general feeling… How long has it been since you guys began developing the hack for the GH2, give at least a try…

What i dont understand is:
-the gh2 and the gf2 has the same color depth at 21,2 bit.
-the gh2 and the gf2 has the same pic engine (Venus-Engine FHD)
-the gh2 and the gf2 has the same sensor size (17,3*13.0)

The "only" differrence is the sensor density 16 mio.pxl. vs 12 mio.pxl.
Does this factor gives such a quality difference?

@Tungee78: The sensor is definitively not the same size on GF2 and GH2. The GH2 is somewhat larger to accommodate multiple aspect ratios, and in 16:9, it's significantly wider than the GF2.

But more crucially, the sensor on the GH2 is a couple of generations newer than on the GF2 (which, like the GF1, G2, and G10, as well as all Olympus PENs, uses the same sensor as on the original G1). The image processing hardware is also likely different.

I'm not privy to the actual hardware implementation, but there are likely significant differences in the way the two cameras handle downsampling from full sensor resolution to 1920x1080 and/or 1280x720. If the GF2's sensor and processor combination are not able to handle the much more sophisticated downsample that the GH2 uses (which is the main reason for it having superior resolution and less moire than better spec'd and more expensive cameras like 5D2), then this goes a long way to explaining why its video is inferior, even after hacking and using the same bitrates as GH2.

That said, let's get this discussion back on topic. I'm still happy with and hopeful for using my GF2 as a b-cam (the quality is not GH2 level, but it's not garbage either!), and would like to see more testing and experimentation on good, stable settings for the camera. In my experience, just slapping the latest Driftwood GH2 settings in the GF2 and shooting does NOT work well. When I tried this with Rocket v2 in 1080/30p (in 60i wrapper), I got frequent nasty skipped frames. I plan on doing more testing and will report back here if I can find something more stable.