Panasonic GH1 firmware will upgrade the compression rate from 17Mb/s to 24Mb/s?
I received an email from Alex which I found very interesting:
“I’ve seen on forum that the limitation to 17Mb/s compress schema is a choice from Panasonic. If you check Wikipedia, you can read that AVCHD has 2 bitstream rate 17Mb/s and 24Mb/s. The choice for the 17Mb/s rather 24Mb/s come from that the 24Mb/s has some compatibility problem with some hardware. The good news, it seem that Panasonic could update his firmware for to support the 24Mb/s, some forum related that some people from Panasonic confirm that a future firmware could be support this feature in the GH1.
Panasonic has selected AVCHD because this is a consummer format and for the compatibility you take 17Mb/s.
The problem is for the future with this codec you have a limitation to 24Mb/s and we can’t expected to see better video in GH-2 if AVCHD is the only video codec.”
I hope it is true, 17Mb/s is subject to artifacts when the image is full of detail.
Thanks Alex for sharing the news!
Edvian
4 years ago |Just a detail: Mb is Megabits, MB is MegaBytes. Mb is correct here…
Arik Drori
4 years ago |Got the GH1. Firmware 1.1.
The video is not just “subject to artifacts when the image is full of detail”. It is far worse.
Parts that are slightly shaded and I’m not saying “dark”, just slightly shaded are completely filtered out.
That means black hair looks like it used to look on second generation VHS copy. And this is NOT an exaggeration.
Within a week or two I’m planning on releasing a review of the camera on my site, you will be able to see exactly what I mean:
http://sites.google.com/site/ariktvd/
I do not think it is a problem with the 17Mbps. it’s not even the waste of bandwidth by using the 60i recording format. I’ve seen 17Mbps (of 24p in 60i format) on other cameras (canon HF20) and it looks a lot better.
Anyway, the file size I’m getting off the GH1 proves it’s not even doing 17Mbps. I’m getting about 13 to 15Mbps…
They have some sort of filter before compression or some very aggressive compression settings that make the video very disappointing!
Why take such a great camera and do such a bad job on the video?!?
I hope this is not by design (to make you buy the next model) if it is – Panasonic – you are making a big mistake.
I use to have (1988) a Panasonic NV-M7 (full size VHS camcorder) with the exact same problem – great camera coupled with a lousy recorder – even for a VHS… they filtered away all the details. I did not look at Panasonic for 22 years because of the M7, and I will not but another Panasonic ever again if they don’t fix the GH1. Firmware 1.3 is coming out – but it’s all about improving the autofocus again – forget about the focus guys – I’ll do it manually – just give me a decent picture!
Andrew
4 years ago |Arik,
Have you tried setting NR to -2 in either SMOOTH or NOSTALGIC, ditto Contrast? Increases details and prevents GH1 from making “mud”. Play with Sharpness and Saturation + or – 1 but at least dumb down Contrast and NR to achieve best results.