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Quick 480p SD 16X9 NTSC MJpeg on GH2?
  • kaekae

    What's the quickest way to do this? For some reason there are no hack settings for the stock WVGA 16:9 480p mode in MjPEG (and I'll never understand why as a lot of us still need SD for quick projects going straight to old fashioned SD DVD - it would seem to me a simple hack setting to increase quality of the shi**y stock WVGA mode would be easy to implement, but it hasn't been) so:

    In VGA mode how to do I lay down SD 16X9 since VGA mode is 4:3? What do I set the hack frame size to?

    And no, I don't want to shoot at 720p and downsize, I just want to shoot simple 480P 16X9 mjpeg and write it to a DVD without a bunch of needless transcoding. A simple $150 camcorder can do this so our almighty hacked GH2s should be able to do this too.

    Thanks in advance.

    Edit: I corrected references to mpeg to 'mjpeg' which is what I meant. Sorry for the confusion.

  • 9 Replies sorted by
  • LPowellLPowell

    For widescreen DVD, you'd need to produce an anamorphic 720x480 MPEG2 video stream. For optimal image quality, I'd shoot in 1.5X SD resolution, using the standard HD frame size of 1280x720.

    OTOH, you could reprogram the MJPEG HD mode's frame size to 720x480 and convert that directly to MPEG2 DVD format (assuming you can manually set the anamorphic flag with your DVD encoder). For this purpose, the unhacked GH2's MJPEG bitrate settings should provide plenty of bandwidth. Since NTSC DVD video must be encoded at 29.97p, you'll also need to conform the 30p MJPEG video frame rate to 29.97p. However, DVD does support progressive video streams, which is preferable if your DVD encoder can be set to progressive rather than interlaced mode.

  • balazerbalazer

    16:9 DVD ain't anamorphic 4:3. They are the same resolution, with different, non-square pixel aspect ratios. The GH2's audio is AC3, not AAC.

    But subco is right otherwise. Transcoding is necessary. When you say quick, are you talking about the time to transcode, or the time to edit and author a project? There's plenty of simple DVD authoring software that will do everything for you automatically.

  • kaekae

    I meant to say mjpeg. So let me rephrase: mjpeg wvga mode is shooting NTSC SD 16:9 480p natively, right? And that's what I am looking for. But since mjpeg wvga mode's quality can't be adjusted by the hack, can I modify the vga mode frame size with the hack and get the same as wvga mode but with better quality?

    Example for why I'd like this.

    I want to shoot some table reads for screenplays. They'll run 2 hours. Don't need high data HD for that, wvga mjpeg is fine looks great except I'd like the quality a bit higher. If I could raise the wvga quality level a bit I'd have some decent footage that I could edit more quickly than h264 and transcode more quickly to an sd DVD than H264. Can I tweak mjpeg vga settings to get this? I realize I could use a dv camera for this but I like working with all my gh2 lenses.

  • kaekae

    The 960x720 sounds promising. Thanks, I will try. I want to leave my HD mjpeg settings at HD so I don't have to reflash to shoot with them, hence my search for a vga solution as I don't use these settings for anything else. But even with vga set to 960x720 I am still seeing 4:3 in the viewfinder, right?

    That's why I'd love a way to quality mod the wvga mjpeg settings - we'd see 16:9 in the viewfinder. In the gh2, wvga mjpeg mode seems to always set the 16:9 flag, at least that's how my Avid sees it on import.

  • LPowellLPowell

    Although PTool doesn't provide settings for resizing the MJPEG 16:9 WVGA mode, it does have settings for the MJPEG 4:3 VGA mode. If you resize the MJPEG VGA frame to 720x480, it will produce SD video that has the slightly squeezed pixel aspect ratio used in NTSC DVD format. If you conform these MJPEG files to 29.97p, you could then convert them directly to MPEG2 29.97p DVD format.

  • kaekae

    Ah, then this would be the easiest and quickest, the only drawback being the squeezed 4:3 view in the viewfinder while shooting. But I can live with that. Still, I wish we had hack settings for WVGA mode, though, then we could have 3 MJPEG settings at the ready without reflashing. Thanks.

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