Hanriverprod

Not terra but new review on 6k kinemax
 

It would be nice if this blog/forum became a place for hobbyists like myself to discuss the art of making a good film/video rather than a place where people bicker over gear choices. I know there's a subforum for that here already but to post there would be like posting in the Video forum at DPReview. If you're tired of gear, why not shift the focus to what you can do with it?

Sorry about the late response guys, it's been a pretty insane week following up NAB. I'll have photometrics for the COB120t lights soon. Seems like there is never enough hours in the day. 
Photometrics are posted here on the second page. Keep in mind that beam-angle is one of the biggest factors in measuring photometrics. Most LED fresnels focus in all of their output into a single point then measure. This is open-face measurements at a fully-flooded angle. Rest assured, we and plenty of other people online will do luminance comparison tests--especially when the light comes out. COB120tSpecs.pdf 
COB120tSpecs.pdf

I did the test shooting with and without bitrate hack to see if it helps to eliminate macroblocking. Yes, it goes in right direction, but not there yet, and not because of hack itself it's only about sd-cards speed limits. We can use 150-190 mbps at the time, there is no SD card which can provide more. Yet.

But still, it is a big progress. Even at 160 mbps there is a detectable visual upgrade compares to 80 mbps, but you need to know where to search. I think it's about CTU in HEVC, at larger bitrates codec is not eliminate macroblocks in picture per se, but replaces them with Coding Tree Units more efficiently than with smaller bitrates. At some point in post processing you can see when there's large blocks occur in 80 mbps file, but in 160 mbps file - only a "three" somewhat like "fractal blocks" of much smaller blocks. H265 use CTU for replacing macroblocks. So, overall quality is improve with bitrate hack, but macroblocking is not eliminated completely.

Here is the test results, two heavily destructed sequences for more visual reference, left side - 150 mbps source, right side - 80 mbps source. Both sources recorded in UHD@30 with identical setting and environment, only difference is the bitrate. Scale around 300% for better proof and to eliminate influence of export bitrate.

Forgot to mention that I did the test with NX1
 

It depends of scene that you shooting. Some scenes can't be record with small bitrate without macroblocking at all, they even close to crash with high bitrate option, but it works in far more cases than I did imagine before I start to use bitrate hack. Now I shoot only with it, but of course, if there new options appears, I'm ready to consider them in work.

Also you can shoot with pretty much close to LOG settings and even create special NX LUTs for standart situations for exact yours setup. Basically you just need a few hours and some color checker for starters

And yes, I'm also wants the real log profile and 10 or 12 bit color, for shure! But really I think that bitrate hack is just a first step in better overall quality path, bc without it I highly doubt that only 10bit color itself did all the work, like, how about beautiful 4K picture with 10bit color but H-U-G-E one helluva macroblock in the center of frame, like 480p-block? It might be the case very easily  

I'd love to get back into this soon.
I've started a thread for people to post regular summaries of the latest progress regarding the hack, since it can be time consuming to read so many posts in the dedicated forum for it, to get a general impression of where things are at. So guys, hit me with the latest news....

DR of 180Mbps footage. Great thing is there is no macroblocking in lifted shadows, just litle lack of details... but still very good result I think. 
BTW - First image is unedited 0-255, Standard, MBL +8. Second is converted to 16-235 with some grading (also added saturation becuase there was lack of colours in shadows and just a little bit sharpness to left side of image)
 

 
 
 

Mod update for NX500 users here: http://***URL removed***/forums/post/57619677
NX1 users can stay on v2.0, no change - yet ;-) - for them.
Enjoy...

OK, some advancements - namely a way to speed up applying mods as soon as the camera wakes up from sleep. See more here https://github.com/ottokiksmaler/nx500_nx1_modding/blob/master/doc/Boot_Process_and_Speeding_up_Mods.md
Also, a small poll and explanation:
If you don't want to do it from telnet, wait a few days, there will be a nicer, more automated way to do it.
If you are starting other things (bitrate hacks, whatever) - please do check if they are running already. You can use keyscan as test as it will return 0 only if it's not already running, like this /opt/usr/devel/bin/keyscan /dev/event0 /dev/event1 /opt/usr/devel/bin/ && my_program
Just to make things clear - it's not modifying the firmware.I have no intention to mess with firmware as I have no easy way to repair my camera.
We slightly tweak the "read only" rootfs (like we already do for BT hack - we just change a single line in script) and move our scripts from SD card to internal filesystem - the one mounted under /opt as "read write" by default. It's not going to brick a camera, I have even put a swap file to extend RAM on that filesystem and everything worked.
NB, I have been using and testing this for two days now - no side effects.
The main difference is that right now, when you pop out the SD card with mods and put in a clean one - your camera acts as if it was neved modded. With this it would be modded even without a SD card (ie, it would be modded with every SD card).
All modifications are fully reversible and would be reversible from aforementioned utility.
So, a small poll - do you want me to make an installer that will install mods to the camera internally in order to work faster?

Glad they are adding it finally.

In case anyone else is working with projects syncing sound with 23.98, I spoke with Adobe tech and they said this was a bug that will be addressed in the next update. To view this footage correctly in the project window and source monitor, modify the clips in timecode tab under Time Display Format to 23.976 fps Timecode.

Thanks for the heads-up!

No idea but I doubt it w/o replacing the codec. Chant might eventually be able to do something about it but don't hold your breath. At the moment I see a slight chance to get:
more resolutions (i.e. 2.5K on NX1) the high rate 2.5K on NX500 (subject to dangerous manipulations on burner cam) maybe higher res and rate MJPEG out of NX1 (although TBH I do not think it would reach the quality of 150-160 Mbps hevc) with a lot of luck disable or reduce video NR (I might take a look at this at some point in the future but this will definitely involve weeks of work so not too keen to start). Basically Chant is looking into adding true new stuff.
I have been looking more on the side of tweaking what's already in there - easier than Chant's ambitions but I already picked the low and medium hanging fruits.

Useful (I hope) for both NX1 and NX500 users: http://***URL removed***/forums/post/57583300

I agree that a very big thing for nx would be turning off the terrible nr. And when I say 'off' I mean really off, completely. Both in jpg pics and - much more important - video.

Turning "off" the Noise Reduction can only be done if somewhere in the lines of code there is a "on" or "off" data entry point. Or if there is something like a line that says "NR level = x".

If nothing like that turns up, then the noise reduction is built into the Codec and won't be removable.

Hopefully the reality is Option #1!

 
 

Ive seen portions of the fw that point to when its enabled, Bad news is its deep in the fw. Part of what ive been doing is working on how to make things like this be possible. Although the mjpeg is a different story. But I have many nots on that subject. I have priorities with my work though, and much of it is secondary to my focus, but its not an impossibility. I am looking for directions to where it may be able to be disabled or limited and enacted through scripting but as of yet nothing has come to fruition.

As Ive stated my updates are less  forthcoming as there is so much to do I am still sorting through the fw and tracking how things do what they do. But I keep finding things that are to my expectations and assumptions which is good when building something like this.
I have also spotted a few things that may allow the camera to boot from a save state off the sd so somthing like magic lantern could be possible. Yes to confirm. But again things point to it being a possibility

@Pavel MaÅ¡ek yes, I will make a usable gui in next few weeks (I first have to decide on what's best solution as it should be a single gui for everything, not just this "rooting"). 

Fine details are much better with 160mb. I guess that's a sweet spot for 8bit 420. Would be really great to see 10bit and 422, but I doubt it's feasible. 

Well well well, do 30-days for a minor felony and I come back to THIS! A bit-rate hack. Outstanding.

Now, I'd like to make very clear that in the case of the GH2 just increasing the bit-rate often caused as many new problems as it fixed. Generating a compressed image involves a whole slew of data factors that affect each other. That's why there was like 200 different hack patches folks made as they tried experimenting with the different data points.
Many of the attempts simply crashed or injected all sorts of other instability. Some made certain artifacts worse. Some fixed one thing but broke another.

The fact that this mod can double the bit-rate is amazingly promising. And remember - you often won't see any "overall" difference. Especially because this camera generates such a great image already. I would advise looking only at the areas that previously had been problems. That's really all we need anyway. Just those few problems fixed. Then this camera is much more of an all-around winner.

SD-Cards: I would not even attempt to record at these new high bit-rates without a card like the Sandisk Extreme PRO or a similar card. You're begging for heartbreak if you do.

We may very well find that there are hidden data matrices that need to work in conjunction with each other to do things like lessen macro blocking, over sharpening, and noise.
That's what there was on the GH2's. It's reasonable to expect some similar complications.

Rock-On everybody!

No problem! I just built a new machine myself. Feel free to hit me up with any other Windows questions.  

Keep in mind, if you want 4K and NR for Resolve, you can buy a dongle seperated from a Blackmagic camera kit for $200-400 on the BMC User forums. 

The bad news for Windows people is that H.265 is supported in every single version of Resolve except the free version for Windows. You'll need the paid version to work with it in Resolve for Windows at all, which makes Premiere your best bet at the moment. 

I edit in Resolve, but I run it and my 1440p monitor (as well as a 1080p and 720p monitor, for a total of 3 screens) off a GTX 970 with no issues. My system has 32 gigs of RAM, but I didn't think that affected its ability to drive hi-res monitors.

Reported.

Dude, Tommix. Could you maybe not?
How about no to you acting like bully to all of us? Just stop. Either start contributing and stop being a dick to us, or just watch what is happening or lets ask Andrew to get you banned? 


PS: This is not an invitation for you to flame spam this topic so be that kind to us, fellow cinematographers, and get better, friendlier.

For the NX1 I have done a stablity test going from 320mbs down and the 200mbs worked best on a 3 year old 32gb class 10 Sandisk extreme pro uhs 1 card. If you use constant focus it crashes the card 1/5 times, switching to manual focus and back to constant seems to work. Its a good leap on the scripting side of things! Try running the camera in manual mode and ois/dis off.