Encountered a strange issue with Quantum X v3b. I have two custom settings, 24p on C1, 60p on C2. I did a shoot and switched to C2 a few times, with the shutter on 1/125 and the clips are somehow 60i, not all of them, just a few. Related to the hack?

Somewhere in this thread or the previous version -- some people mentioned wanting a post v11 comparison of the GH2 picture profiles. I did this for my own purposes -- but for those of you interested…….

GH2 PICTURE PROFILE COMPARISONS WITH EMPHASIS ON NOISE CHARACTERISTICS

Standard may be the best setting. It was probably designed around the strengths of the camera.

Cinema appears to be Standard with the brightness lowered and contrast slightly increased -- designed for consumers producing major motion pictures who don’t know how to lower the brightness or increase contrast.. Noise is slightly less apparent than with Standard -- exactly what happens when you lower the brightness and increase contrast.

Dynamic appears to have saturation and contrast slightly boosted over Standard -- perhaps a kind of post produced look for consumers using Windows Movie Maker. Relative to noise -- light shadows appear better than Standard, dark shadows appear worse than Standard.

Smooth appears to have levels slightly boosted (slightly brighter). Seems to handle noise well -- almost identical to Standard.

Nature is identical to Standard in every way -- except the greens (and probably a few other shades) appear slightly more saturated.

Nostalgic is the “Cine D” of this consumer camera -- except Panasonic added an aged yellow paper tint to it -- because somehow aged yellow paper reminds you of your youth. Cine D, from the Panasonic broadcast line, is a gamma curve that was pushed up as far as they could go within reason. In theory this means extended dynamic range. In reality it means extended dynamic range with an ass-load of noise. So, nostalgic means the most dynamic range this camera can give along with the biggest ass-load of noise this camera can give -- along with that tint of aged yellow paper because it reminds you of your youth back in the 1930’s. Also, they appear to have slightly desaturated the colors to reduce chroma noise, as if that matters. Finally, blue noise appears to be worse than red noise in Nostalgic -- and this is different from every other picture profile (red is usually the nightmare on this camera).

Vibrant wins the prize for the unexpected winner in this test. Meaning, I expected crap -- and it isn’t. Vibrant is 70% Canon DSLR and 30% Sony Cinematone. Meaning -- if you need to match your GH2 to a Canon DSLR -- use Vibrant at -1 on the saturation. Normally you’d expect chroma noise to be worse with anything more saturated -- but for some reason -- Vibrant seems to handle noise very, very slightly better than Standard. Also, levels appear to be almost identical to Standard -- so they haven’t cut down on the dynamic range by spiking contrast. -1 on the saturation appears to be the sweet spot. -2 isn’t bad, and you’d have a hell of a time telling it apart from an HPX170 with 4:2:2 color.

Standard B&W appears to have the widest latitude of the black and white profiles.

Dynamic B&W is black and white with a higher contrast.

Smooth B&W wins the award for the biggest pile of crap on the GH2. I guess Panasonic thought they needed a profile that emulated Thomas Edison's film stock. It’s high contrast to an extreme that crushes details.

@onionbrain Excellent tests and analysis, many thanks for this.

Thank you @onionbrain

@onionbrain A very clear and useful analysis. Thank you !

@onionbrain

Eaven i deside profile usually acording light and some other things. This is really handy. Thanx.

You can dial a lot of the yellow out of nostalgic by using a custom WB. A few notches to blue, and a notch down for magenta as GH-X can sometimes have a slight green cast.

@workerb

Perhaps it was the colour/texture demands of the environment, as there wasn't a lot of movement with the camera or by the actors.

Unless you were shooting 720p, the amount of movement is irrelevant. Orion is an all-intra setting; it doesn’t rely on the neighboring frames for prediction. Each frame is self contained. Virtually, a series of still JPEGs. The only factor that puts additional stress on the encoder is the number of details and high-contrast areas in any given frame.

In this respect, static shots are prone to cause more write errors. Movement introduces motion blur, which reduces sharpness and the number of details in a frame, making the encoder’s job easier.

Beautiful stills, by the way. Looking forward to see a few clips from your project!

@Frame I use Cluster and it works well even with HBR 25p PAL very stable ... vs ORION it uses less resources ... (SD space)

@onionbrain your post needs its own thread. Great Job mate!

@atticusd are you shooting at 24p or PAL 25p ?

Futher Mucker Damn, that looks good.

Posterization certainly appears to have improved. As @atticusd mentioned, it's there under extreme conditions. But.... It's an improvement for sure.