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GH2 Flow Motion v2 - 100Mbps Fast Action Performance & Reliability for Class 10 SD cards
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  • yeehaanowyeehaanow

    Got to test some serious movement using flomotion last weekend. First with the hexacopter at a bike race, then this skateboard race from the cable-cam. I had to record in 30p, and was pretty happy with the results, but I did run into times where the shadows would get blocky and crushed, and they cannot be resurrected in a nice way. I miss 24p Sedna. :) The stability of flowmotion is REALLY nice though. Had no problems. This is with 2.01 and no grading.

  • mo7iesmo7ies

    @yeehaanow very cool! What did you use as "film car"?

  • yeehaanowyeehaanow

    It's a DIY Cable-cam. Wish I had a picture of it.

  • meemee

    @yeehaanow Loving that footage. I have been trying to get some good POV skate footage on some hills in tokyo using other patches, but so far have not been satisfied with my results. I just stumbled upon this thread so I will be giving Flowmotion a try soon.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @yeehaanow Great action footage and really smooth camera moves! If you can make any of the original GH2 footage available for download, I'd be very interested to examine it.

  • L1N3ARXL1N3ARX

    @LPowell First time I used a "non-driftwood" patch, it happens to be your flow motion 2.02. I don't know what to say other than I'm blown away. Every bit of detail that I'm used to getting seems to be in your patch along with the best motion cadence and rendering I've seen yet. Maybe it has something to do with the lower bitrate, but the motion is just so smooth in any kind of circumstance.

    I'm used to getting that ever so slight judder and jitter in certain types of high detail shots and sometimes for no reason at all. This is the first time the motion has appeared EVERY bit as dependable and consistent as a pro-video camera, except now I can enjoy the benefit of the more "filmic" GH2 image.

    Finally feel like this camera is unbeatable, in terms of quality, dependability and consistency. And subjectively speaking, the nicest image outside of an Alexa / F65. Thanks for your hard work!

    The video isn't really ideal, with bad reflections and added grain, but I'll probably probably take this patch for a spin outdoors sometime this week. The original looks far better than the vimeo version as well. Seriously, vimeo needs to step up their game to legitimately hang onto their "HD" banner.

  • LPowellLPowell

    I recently acquired a Panasonic Lumix 45-175mm f4-5.6 X lens with auto-focus, OIS and motorized zoom features. This lens' auto-exposure features prompted me to put additional testing time into the GH2's more consumer-friendly modes and features. A number of Flow Motion v2 users have reported reliability issues when shooting 100Mbps 720p SH video in auto-exposure modes (i.e. P, A, S, or iA exposure modes, rather than the Creative Movie M exposure mode.) In addition, the GH2 offers a number of enhanced exposure features: auto-ISO, i-Dynamic, and i-Resolution settings which can be enabled in any video mode.

    There's one hazard to using Lumix auto-focus lenses along with the GH2's auto-exposure features - in 720p SH video mode, recordings may fail sporatically and the camera may need to be restarted. To avoid this pitfall in auto-exposure modes, I recommend using Flow Motion's 60Mbps 1080i FH and 720p H video modes when using any combination of the following features:

    • P, A, or S exposure modes or when shooting in iA mode.
    • Auto-ISO mode.
    • iDynamic auto-contrast mode.
    • i.Resolution mode.
    • Motorized zoom lens operation.

    I've tested and confirmed these features to work reliably at 60Mbps in 1080i FH and 720p H video modes. In addition, all of the Gh2's automated features will work reliably at 100Mbps in 1080p 24H and HBR video modes, as well as in 80% Slow-Motion 24H modes. The 60Mbps FH and H video modes also support 4GB file-spanning on 30Mbps Class 10 SD cards, and produce excellent motion picture quality that is just a notch more compressed than Flow Motion's 100Mbps FSH and SH video modes.

  • meemee

    A bit footage from my first day using Flowmotion with an FD 50mm 1.8 lens. Please be warned their is a squeaky bicycle in the beginning, which could hurt some sensitive ears, so wait 10 seconds to turn up the volume if you have sensitive ears.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @mee Natsukashi!

  • peternappeternap

    @mee Looks real good mee (as usual). Did you color correct?

  • meemee

    @LPowell, Nostalgia? My Japanese is horrid, so I had to use the translator =) I think I remember you mentioned you used to film in Japan awhile back. Do I have that right?

    @ Peterap, Thanks, no color correction this is just a direct upload from the mts file. I did have the in camera settings on vibrant though ( I think) it was set at 0 0 0 0. Not sure what ISO was at, though it was likely very low, Film speed was either 50 or 100, and Aperture I toyed with a bit as filming as you can probably tell. I declicked the lens, so I was also testing this on this day. This was shot with a gorilla pod BTW, I was still setting it up when he started this song hence the shaking.

  • GeraldGerald

    @LPowell: I didn't had a lot of time in the last weeks. And cause i must have done some shootings i used seaquake. Its even nice. But not playable in cam. So yesterday i tried FLM2 a second time. And i figuered out the problem with the 720p SH with my 16mm. It crashed allways in seconds. But after i formatted the card 95mb/s by the sandisk formatter it works. I read the tip with the formatter here on personal-view somewhere else. Now i can use tripod, steady, even A or P settings. It works. The i Settings like iA or iD i never use. So i did not test them. But now i think Flow Motion 2 will stay on my GH2 for a long time. Thanks again.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @mee Yes, I lived in Mitaka for several years in the 90's. Looks like maybe a spot near the Shibuya train station?

  • meemee

    Cool, I wish I came here in the 90's! The spot is actually the home of Ultra Man, Soshigaya Okura, not too far from Shibuya, but a much smaller older section of Tokyo. Ultra Man is everywhere, actually on the poster behind the musician, but not quite in this shot. Even the street lamps are designed as abstract Ultraman heads ! =)

  • LPowellLPowell

    @mee Fabulous! I've lived near Seijoh at one point as well and often passed by the Ultraman HQ.

  • meemee

    Sweet, I actually do allot of video tests at Seijoh gakuen mai (have no idea on the spelling) station. I like the way the tracks curve subtly in that station, plus it just seems to have better lighting than most stations and none of the shinjuku stink =P

  • L1N3ARXL1N3ARX

    Finally got a chance to take out flow motion 2.02 outdoors. It's going to take some getting used to, all this extra space on my SD card I've never had before : )

  • LPowellLPowell

    @L1N3ARX Epic!

  • qwerty123qwerty123

    @LPowell, @cbrandin appears to have potentially great matrix in the offing that @driftwood is beta testing with his fab Canis settings. Any chance this could be incorporated into FlowMo or something like it?

    (BTW, I think I speak for the personal-view community when I say that we're really glad that there are a wealth of great, different patches to choose from, including yours and driftwoods!)

  • LPowellLPowell

    @qwerty123 In my experience, quantizing matrices are not mix-and-match ingredients that can be casually sprinkled into patches in a taste-testing manner. These matrices lie at the heart of an encoder's core compression engine and deeply affect its bitrate utilization.

    In developing Flow Motion v2, I started with a theoretical design for its quantizing matrices, and tweaked the encoder's bitrate allocation to support it. If you changed those quantizing matrices to something different, it would no longer be Flow Motion v2, and you would be effectively starting over from scratch.

  • anacrofilosotecaanacrofilosoteca

    @LPowell i hve to say u tanks for the patch, im using it in 720p and it works correctly, even amazing in 25 or 30p. U just made a greatest patch for long shooters, tanks a lot man!

  • qwerty123qwerty123

    @LPowell I figured... :) couldn't hurt to ask :) :) Thanks again for a great patch. It's currently my go-to workhorse.

  • RamboRambo

    Little test of Flowmotion GH2 720p 50 graded. I think the grain I added looks a bit too coarse, I used it to see if it might mask any posterisation in the final Vimeo conversion. Also experimented with a tilt-shift to blur the background/foreground to pop the paddler, it seems to have tamed the fast water motion some what of the 1\100 shutter.

  • peternappeternap

    @Rambo Real nice shot! FM really shines around the water.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @Rambo Steady as she goes! Great camera work as always.

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