GH4 Wedding Video

[Dave Blackhurst]

Originally Posted by Clive McLaughlin

"The TV's are already in the stores, there's a 39" one for under $500..."


this is the point of the graph/chart I posted. 39" 4k tvs are a con. Its like buying a chocolate teapot!

I hate when manufacturers and consumer outlets knowingly take money off people under a false premise.

Its like selling a PC to a pensioner with 16gb ram and a 3tb hard drive so they can surf the net.

Well, a 39" 4K "monitor" seems like it might work... even with that chart!

And I'm sure whoever came up with that lovely chart wants to sell their 1080 stock while they can <wink>.

MAYBE in a casual view, most people can't tell the difference, but that's NOT scientific or a reliable "yardstick" actually it's about a 28.9357" yardstick, if you catch my drift...

My "corrected" distance vision isn't "that good", but I am VERY happy to see good quality HD on an HDTV, and can easily see when something was shot poorly and looks "SD" on an HDTV... I can see the "so called HD 32" panels that are actually only 720p a long way off... My wife on the other hand keeps putting on the SD channels on cable, and doesn't seem to notice the difference... my kids know HD and SD when THEY see it, instantly...

There are SO many variables - was 4K output put on a 1080 panel and a 4K panel for the chart testing? Or was 1080 put on both panels to be voted upon? What was the criteria and profile of the "viewers"?

Certainly here in DVi-land, we are mostly looking at 4K on 1080 panels/monitors, but it STILL looks better than footage shot with most 1080 cameras... it's subtle at first, and I wouldn't expect an "average" viewer to pick up on it at first, but to toss up a chart and proclaim that 4K isn't going to be visible to the viewer at certain distances/panel sizes is just as much "junk science", AKA "marketing" as you suggest selling a 39" 4K TV is, perhaps even moreso...

Again, CONTENT will always be the determining factor whether someone will continue to view... but 4K does provide a different experience, more like looking through a window. IF the content benefits from that is another question entirely, but to say that 4K isn't coming, and fast is rather silly...


And about those CD/DVDs - don't let the cat play with them, they'll last longer... proper care and storage does wonders! But this is just one more reason for backing up important "data" in the digital age!

[Anthony Lelli]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

And about those CD/DVDs - don't let the cat play with them, they'll last longer... proper care and storage does wonders! But this is just one more reason for backing up important "data" in the digital age!

you understand that we are talking about distribution, right? it doesn't matter if you take good loving care of your own stuff (and also with loving care they do lose data anyway). DVD-r and RW just don't work. If you backup on those I strongly suggest you to migrate to hard disks, pretty much immediately.

[Anthony Lelli]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

Then you are doing something wrong. What brand are you buying? How are you writing / verifying them? What are you using to print on them? Is your cat the main user?

I have CDs written in the 90s that still work and DVDs that are now 10 years old that still work. In fact, the only DVDs I've shipped and had back as non working are because of physical damage (scratched) or people's finger marks all over them. Once cleaned they worked perfectly.

We use only TY (Tao Yuden - now made by JVC) water shield discs bought in bulk packs of 50 or 100, and while they costs a little more, they work, they're reliable and I get zero rejects when duplicating on to them with full verification also turned on. You can't buy these at Walmart etc, you need to order them from specialist suppliers. If you're using cheap discs, I've no sympathy, but that could well be the reason.

I distribute TaoYuden only, the Fujifilm brand (made in Japan - hard to find now, never heard that JVC used the TY until now) : and still I get Clients back asking for another copy because they either skip tracks or the nasty digital artifacts and blocks take over the show now and then. But at least they keep playing , unlike other brands that won't even start in the player. So the TY are indeed a little more reliable. Still we're in the hands of some unreliable technology. I can't wait to distribute on flash cards only!
I used a batch of TY (supposed to be original) bought on ebay and they were actually no better than the staples brand. I believe that the TY for Fujifilm need to meet higher standards (and I imagine the same for the ones made for JVC -which is Panasonic actually). In any case always check if they are made in Japan (the Fujifilm sold by bestbuy are not, for example). If you can get the JVC make sure that they are made in Japan as well. As of today I only have 400 DVD's left (TY Fujifilm). After that I hope that I will never ever have to search for those again, being that technology the most unreliable and unprofessional that I can remember (second only to the microdrives (tape-microcassettes) of the Sinclair QL , back in 90's)

To the other colleague reporting about the audio CD : they are completely different animals compared to the CD-r and DVD-r (and RW). Audio CD and DVD processed by the music and video industry do last pretty much forever. Again here we are talking about our distribution (with a PC and a burner to be clear)

P.S.:
for the future Dave keep the sarcasm for yourself or somebody you know. Here I am sharing my experience, and seriously, like many others do for the good of our practice. So idiotic sarcastic remarks need to be avoided when talking to me. No exceptions. I hope that I made myself clear.

[Chip Thome]

Watched this last night and was very surprised at how indepth it is going to be to capture 4K on a GH4. For whatever reason, I was expecting it to be fed to a SD card, not all those cables etc these guys show towards the end of the vid.

Panasonic GH4 Hands-On Field Test - YouTube

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Anthony Lelli

DVD-r and RW just don't work. If you backup on those I strongly suggest you to migrate to hard disks, pretty much immediately.

I know it's not OT but just to share my own experience, over the past years I have had several usb sticks fail on me for no apparent reason with no way to retrieve the data on them, same for internal harddrives that just stopped working, otoh I do have dvd's more then 10 years old that still play fine in my pc. Every year I get phonecalls from clients saying their external harddrive died (with their wedding on it, and they had no backup) and I have yet to get a client that calls me saying their dvd stopped working.
I have burners that can burn onto m-discs which are supposed to last a lifetime, I would have much more trust that those will keep my data safe for a long time but I"d never trust any harddrive of flash drive for that.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Anthony Lelli

P.S.:
for the future Dave keep the sarcasm for yourself or somebody you know. Here I am sharing my experience, and seriously, like many others do for the good of our practice. So idiotic sarcastic remarks need to be avoided when talking to me. No exceptions. I hope that I made myself clear.

Sorry you can't take a joke Anthony, I apologise for assuming you had a sense of humour. Remember, you were the one to introduce us all to your knowledgable cat. Perhaps you should reconsider what you said in an earlier post. Should I take this as the type of sarcasm you were so quick to take offence at, or as something different?

Originally Posted by Anthony Lelli

no the CD-r and DVD-r are not reliable, they just don't last. Even my cat knows that.

Lets not get personal here, I meant nothing personal and so far I haven't taken any. Let's keep it that way shall we?

Anthony, feel free to trust your world to flash drives and hard drives. Nether can be relied upon long term, and flash drives can't even be relied upon short term either.

For "short term" backups (days, weeks, months) I use multiple copies on hard disks plus online RAID.

For long term archiving I use LTO (again, multiple copies). Hard disks will typically fail within just a fear short years. I've had around 50 fail over my time in computers.

FYI, I NEVER backup to optical media now. Why? It's simply not big enough.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

FYI, I NEVER backup to optical media now. Why? It's simply not big enough.

It's not fast enough either as it takes an age backing up even a few tens of GB to Blu-ray.

[Anthony Lelli]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

Sorry you can't take a joke Anthony, I apologise for assuming you had a sense of humour. Remember, you were the one to introduce us all to your knowledgable cat. Perhaps you should reconsider what you said in an earlier post. Should I take this as the type of sarcasm you were so quick to take offence at, or as something different?



Lets not get personal here, I meant nothing personal and so far I haven't taken any. Let's keep it that way shall we?

Anthony, feel free to trust your world to flash drives and hard drives. Nether can be relied upon long term, and flash drives can't even be relied upon short term either.

For "short term" backups (days, weeks, months) I use multiple copies on hard disks plus online RAID.

For long term archiving I use LTO (again, multiple copies). Hard disks will typically fail within just a fear short years. I've had around 50 fail over my time in computers.

FYI, I NEVER backup to optical media now. Why? It's simply not big enough.

yes, hard disks are the most reliable . after all what else can we do? cloud? on-line? I had my service (midphase) down and they lost everything ... TWICE . CDs , Blu-ray and DVDs are out of the question so our only hope are the hard disks. Flash memory are good , as long as the Clients don't use it for their own stuff: they do have a limit writing and re-writing (just like the SSD) : so for distribution (to be written once and then locked) are way better than anything else, but for our backup are expensive, and we are back to the good old hard disks. And remember that any hard disk can be put back to life even after a massive catastrophic damage . There are services capable of saving any hard disk pretty much overnight. It happened to me after burning down the main board (of the disk) creating a short with a screwdriver because I left the computer ON like an idiot. Sent it to florida , $200 job, all data back the next day. You can't do that with SSD cards, or optical.

[James Palanza]

My main concern and interest in this 4K camera is expanding my low light capabilities. I have a specific church that is popular around here, it is an old cathedral that is very dark, with only spot overhead lighting. They do not allow flash nor on camera lights there. I'm excited to the prospect of shooting with the highlights exposed correctly and being able to bring up the blacks in post. Same with dark receptions, less noise - oh yeah. Even the idea of externally recording 4:2:2 really intrigues me.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by James Palanza

Same with dark receptions, less noise - oh yeah. Even the idea of externally recording 4:2:2 really intrigues me.

One thing that may have passed a lot of people by is that the internal codecs generally include some level of noise reduction whereas the external recordings don't, so while you can gain a little extra control from the 4:2:2, which is often a lot less than people realise, you also typically get noisier footage too, which means de-noising in post and all the CPU time that goes with it!

[James Palanza]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

One thing that may have passed a lot of people by is that the internal codecs generally include some level of noise reduction whereas the external recordings don't, so while you can gain a little extra control from the 4:2:2, which is often a lot less than people realise, you also typically get noisier footage too, which means de-noising in post and all the CPU time that goes with it!

That is true, though I'm not doing enough work to have to worry too too much about the render times. If that is the price I pay for having better looking footage at the end of the project, so be it. Though "better" is subjective, it is going to have to be pretty significant. My GH2's still do just fine 99% of the time :)

[Robert Benda]

In that original video, I'm thinking the ugly carpet on the stairs during the 1st look is exactly why super shallow depth of field was invented :)

As for 4K, what's the point? I'm into tech, we dumped cable 6 years ago and stream. Even now, if I buy something, it's almost always in SD, since its so rare that HD matters to me. Rare exceptions include the "Planet Earth" blu-rays, instead of DVD, because, well, it seemed worth it. However, if I were to buy, say, the Avengers movie, what do I care?

I do wish I could deliver everything we shoot in 1080p, just for simplicity. It took a while to get all my settings right in Vegas to make sure the downscaling wasn't ugly as sin on DVD (some bad mistakes on my part, leaving the out of the box settings, 4:3 and 30fps instead of 24fps and 16:9)

[Steve Burkett]

Originally Posted by Robert Benda

As for 4K, what's the point?

Well aside from options to resize the image in an HD project, you have better quality screen grabs, something some of my brides have asked for. Filming in 4k and downsizing in post can avoid moire and other aliasing problems, like the fine detail on a brides veil or some suits too where I've seen it. Apparently there's an option to convert 4:2:0 4k to 4:4:4 HD for better grading, though no proof as yet on this. 4k is certainly far from an essential upgrade. I'd not switch to another brand for it, but in a camera I would buy anyway, I'd find a good use for the option.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Steve Burkett

Well aside from options to resize the image in an HD project

I've been playing with resizing some of the sample GH4 4K footage down to 1080p and while the resize looks nice, zooming in post to 100% for a 1080p crop has been very disappointing :(

Originally Posted by Steve Burkett

you have better quality screen grabs, something some of my brides have asked for.

Spot on. I'd love to have 4K stills.

Originally Posted by Steve Burkett

Filming in 4k and downsizing in post can avoid moire and other aliasing problems, like the fine detail on a brides veil or some suits too where I've seen it.

This is true, as long as the NLE algorithms work well. I've seen some pretty nasty downscaling over the years in NLEs, but lets hope this works out. Again, it's subject to the quality of the native pixels, which at this point (from the GH4) I've not been entirely happy with @ 100% and using it for 1080p.

Originally Posted by Steve Burkett

Apparently there's an option to convert 4:2:0 4k to 4:4:4 HD for better grading, though no proof as yet on this.

This may or may not prove to be useful for day-to-day filming. When capturing 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 from the same cameras it's hard to find enough difference most of the time. Downscaling from 4K maybe the key for extra sharpness and detail though.

Originally Posted by Steve Burkett

4k is certainly far from an essential upgrade. I'd not switch to another brand for it, but in a camera I would buy anyway, I'd find a good use for the option.

That's certainly my thinking too. Right now the C100 is proving to be awesome compared to DSLRs or camcorders and I'm concerned about the storage and computing power required fro 4K. In addition, as usual Canon are behind the curve on this stuff for video. My guess is we'll see the 5D4 with 4K sometime in the next 12 months, but video cameras.... hmmmm..... They just released the XF200 and that doesn't even have 1080/50p !!!

Having got one active 4K enquiry (not wedding related) I'm a little concerned about being rushed in to things and ending up not getting it right. I agree about not changing brands where possible because I find the different brands don't mix as easily in post.

I'm a little confused by Sony's offerings. There are the FDR-AX1 @ £3800 and PXW-Z100 @ £5400, both with tiny 1/2.3" sensors & XLRs etc, then the cheaper AX100 (£1800) with much larger 1" sensors but no XLR. What am I missing here? I want larger sensor & XLR. Aarrgghh!!

The GH4 has me interested, but I need to see more footage from production cameras, and then I have no M43 glass and would either need to invest in some or go with EF adapters, which I am sure is less than optimal.

Then there's the new BM camera which looks very interesting, but I don't think BM have yet shipped a camera on time so I'm not holding my breath.

Sigh.