luminescence

Hi,
    I am working in Premiere 5.5 on many .MTS files from a recent trip and at this stage just want to clean them up into various chunks of suitable footage that I will use later and/or upload to a stock footage site. The footage was shot with the 44Mbit hack for the GH2 and I am not sure what combination of settings to use in Premiere 5.5.

At the moment I have chosen Quicktime from the format box and am using the H.264  codec. This gives me about 30% larger files than the original .MTS file and they seem to play back OK.

Previous combinations to this (like Motion jpg A), yielded ridiculously large files, like 880 mb for 21 s of footage.

Can any one tell me if there is an [u]ideal combination of settings[/u] in Premiere 5.5 to use for GH2 footage, to retain the highest quality?

Other settings in Premiere are 1920x1080, square pixels, frame rate 23.976 etc. Any other boxes I need to check or uncheck or tweak?

thanks for your attention.

Hi, I am a vid newbie, really loving my GH2 and doing alot of landscape, ancient ruins video. I never realised how handy Tai Chi would be in doing these long pan sweeps and awkward tilt/pans. But in looking for a motorised pan/tilt head on B&H, I can only find two in the budget range, both with some limitations: [url=http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=motorised+pan+head&N=0&InitialSearch=yes]http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=motorised+pan+head&N=0&InitialSearch=yes[/url] The Bescor (better it seems) and the Vidpro Ebra.

Does anyone know of another brand that is better than Bescor but does not cost me an arm and a leg?
Thanks.

thanks to both. Splash trial download does seem a little better than Media Player. I wonder if there has been done a  comparative analysis somewhere of the top mts players, in terms of their technical ability?

Can anyone recommend the best MTS player to use? I have tried VLC but the earlier version skips badly, and the latest version still skips a little. At first I thought it was the head of my new tripod when panning, but it skips on zoom in and out on all three of my lenses. I have an extra big video card and 8gb ram, so I do not think it a hardware issue. I am using the basic patch for the GH2 and the files range from 17,000 kbps to about 37,000. The quality is terrific, but I cannot view on my computer optimally it seems. The skip is not apparent in movie playback on the camera, just on my PC laptop.

Another question, if I was to convert to the next best quality file (AVI, MP4?) what is the best video converter program to use? I have  trawled the net and it is a minefield to find the right one without downloading a bunch of spam or limited trial versions.

Thanks for your attention.

this is the right link: [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/7061/panasonic-gh2-hack-for-v1-11-firmware-is-out]http://www.eoshd.com/content/7061/panasonic-gh2-hack-for-v1-11-firmware-is-out[/url]

@crashandannie - thanks! this is a big help and will fill in many gaps in GH2 hack education - much appreciated!

@crashandannie. As a beginner too, I was wondering if you can load all these patches or only some? For instance, I would like to experiment with 'flowmotion', 'timebuster' and 'Quantum 9'. Although the Personal View website is a wealth of information, it does not seem to be optimally organised for beginners in a way that explains in a simple chart form what every patch does and the corresponding optimal settings on the camera. Is there something like this available on that or this site?

fixed this problem, I did not change the bitrate in the ptool program to 42, duh! sorry to waste anyone's time. I realise this is not down to EOSHD so am posting a suggestion on Ptools -  for software challenged people like me, we need to have it spelt out for us in some instructions, as those who write these things take what is obvious for them, for granted. So, one step of the instructions could read something like,

"If you check the AVCHD 24H box, don't forget to enter the bitrate value (42 etc) before you save."

Newbie here again. Followed all the instructions for updating firmware 1.1 and 3.64 to the letter. Then I shot some cinema 24H footage which all looked fine but showed 11 mbps - instead of 44 mbps in the 3.64 update checked box. (Did not check any other boxes) So instead of doubling my bitrate, it was halved.

I tried several times with different exposures and lenses, same result. So then I did a clean reinstall of firmware 1.0, same problem, likewise with firmware 1.11 and finally back to 3.64 with one check box marked against AVCHD for increase bit rate to 44. I went carefully through the entire process twice with all the firmwares, uninstalling and reinstalling so cannot figure out what happened.

I note that both 24H and 24L in cinema mode came out the same - 10-11 mbps. (Should be respectively 24 and 17 according to the manual.) On the last try after the second reinstall I got 15 mbps on cinema 24H and 12 mbps on HBR mode. The camera is a week old, working fine, the footage looks OK, so is there something I am missing with the camera settings?

I noted in another post somewhere here (cannot find it now) that someone else had a similar problem but managed to retrieve the bitrate after reverting to firmware 1.0. I am not sure if they did that working with V1.0 and 3.64 or just reverted to the factory settings of V1.0.

What should I do?

thanks Francisco!

thanks, I had already decided to go with the Leica, so good confirmation. The steadycam at 1.37 of the second vid is identical to the one I ordered. With regards to timelapse, its not clear if G13 Timelapser is incorporated into the latest patch 3.64d - as discussed at Personal View.
Where exactly did you set the "internal option of the GH2 ( 300%)" ??
cheers!

Hello,
        I am new here and a new GH2 owner, currently wading through the manual and Andrew's book. I am due to leave the states in a week for south america and wanted to ask a few questions:

1) I want to get one good fast lens to go with my Lumix 7-14 and 14-140. The choices are the Panasonic Leica 25 mm 1.4, or the Samyang 35 mm 1.4 (Rokinon here in USA). I might have preferred the new Samyang 25 mm but I guess it will take a while to come into circulation?

I wanted to check that the crop factor for a GH2 is in fact 1.8 and not 2? If so, this would make the 35mm, a 63mm, and the 25mm a 45mm - correct? Given my other lenses, what would users recommend, 45mm or 63mm?

Adapter: On B&H's website the only adapter for the Rokinon (for Olympus 4/3) I can find is the DMW-MA1 for $115 w/o tax. Is there a cheaper one?

2) After a lot of looking around for a lightweight travel-friendly steadycam, I ordered the Lensse MidX Camera Stabilizer Steady Cam ($98) - anybody had experience with this? It got a lot of good reviews on Amazon.

3) I am interested in exploring time lapse video, but could not find much in Andrew's book (except p.45) or on this forum about it. Can anyone point me to discussions or articles about this topic - in relation to the GH2? Is there a particular brand of interval timer I need to get (relatively inexpensive), and does the GH2 hack cater much for time lapse?

Apologies for so many questions and thanks for a great community!