@vicharris I am exaggerating but I was thinking of a "first review by some crazy guy" that Driftwood mentioned some pages earlier in this thread. I think people are getting a bit too carried away.

The "stuff" the patched GH2 puts out is AVCHD 4:2:0 8bit at a significantly higher quality than the standard AVCHD specs but it is incorrect to call it raw.

@cbrandin Yes, it was HBR 25p, so it was interlaced. Thanks a lot for the clarification. I think @driftwood might want to post a warning for the 25p guys to wait with using the smooth 444 settings because it would cause them severe problems when using them for an important shoot. I have not yet tested the sharp2 settings and will report as soon as I have. Anyone intending to use them for serious work better check first.

@kodakmoment I mis-spoke, not raw but untouched and CC'd

@cbrandin I understand that and one should always test the settings one is intending to use. I would not be surprised though if someone reads in the setting descriptions that everything works fine and gives great quality in HBR etc., then reads some glorifying report without any indication regarding the mode and then goes out and ruins a shot. It would be their own fault of cause, but calling for some caution would be a reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately there seems to be an ongoing competition for "who develops the greatest settings" which leads to some sort of product marketing language which can be misleading.

@vicharris The best output in 1080p24 maybe, not in 1080p25, yet. Personally I think that among all the settings that have been developed the GH2 still looks like a GH2. It looks much better than with factory firmware settings but all settings share the characteristics of the GH2 which have advantages and disadvantages. To me the differences are not revolutionary, it's not like switching to a different camera model when switching from i.e. FlowMotion to Cluster V7.

@kodakmoment thanks for info. Driftwood wrote that this matrices are for 24p but he used them for all settings to see what people thinks. What is good cos is easier mixing formats 24p-25p-50p

My apologies for stirring some controversy by posting the earlier two pictures. You are all right. Although they were both 24H using Panasonic 14-140, straight out of camera but they were shot at different days, I only have one GH2, but I will re-shoot the same scene one after another with a few minutes difference because I need to reload the second setting. However, I am sure of one thing. I have done a lot of comparisons and when I do this one too, you will find out that, Cluster v7 444 soft picture will come out more colorful and soft and other settings like FM2 will be more video-ish but sharper. By the way, I am not biased towards any particular setting or person. I am a fan of FM2, Cluster, Sanity and GOP1.

@cbrandin Ah, right you are, I edited the original post with the DC quantizer ranges.

@cbrandin My understanding is that the QP value is used as an index into the H.264 Qstep table, outlined in this pdf:

http://ce.sharif.edu/courses/87-88/2/ce342/resources/root/H264%20Standard/h264_transform.pdf

So for example, a QP of 18 produces a Qstep of 5, which is used as the quantizing divisor. Each calculated macroblock component is then mulitplied by the corresponding Scaling Table coefficient and divided by (16 * Qstep) - which normalizes the Scaling Table coefficients to 16. So in practice, you can calculate the effective quantizer of each component as (16 * Qstep) divided by the corresponding Scaling Table coefficient.

@lpowell: as i said aswell on your thread, people would be more interested to see a comparision of 24p between the two settings.

@lpowell - if you are saying the effective Q offset = QP * (Matrix_Value / 16) for each entry, then right. Or, in other words - if QP is 16, then the Q offset values used are whatever is in the matrix. Also, what I mean by QP is the value used for each frame - not in PTool (e.g. typically I frames are QP-2, P are QP and B are QP+2)

[edited - sorry Lee, I was being a little sloppy when i left out "offset"]

@cbrandin I have a working theory about HBR mode encoding which seems to account for its idiosyncracies. I picture each GOP as divided into a pair of separate video streams comprised of 1920x540 fields derived from each GOP's initial I-frame. Each GOP in the upper-field stream has an IBBPBB structure, while GOP's in the lower-field stream have a PBBPBB structure. The initial P-field in the lower-field stream is derived from the initial I-field in the upper-field stream.

What this means is that the Scaling Table matrix is applied to macroblocks comprised of alternating scanlines from each progressively-scanned frame, separated out by the interlacing algorithm. That cuts the effective vertical resolution of each 1920x540 field in half, which will likely exacerbate any vertical aliasing artifacts.

@fix - "Would love to see this Soft 444 matrix implemented in [Flow Motion v2]..."

Scaling Matrices lie at the core of the encoding engine and are not mix-and-match components that can be easily transplanted into different patches. Replacing FM2's custom Scaling Matrices with the Soft 444 matrix would convert it into a new patch that was no longer Flow Motion, and it would require its own bitrate balancing and stabilization. Judging from my comparison footage, the results would not justify the effort.

As for "fighting", since the insults and bullying have ceased, there is no longer a need to defend myself.