Hi I'm new to the NV-GS400. I was told you could manually alter the frame rate however I can't find this, not even to slow down the frame rate! Also, how do I switch to manual focus?
Thanks guys
Eddy Strickland

Try the Panasonic download centre here to get a copy of the manual if you do not already have one:
http://www.panasonic.co.uk/customer-Support/download-centre.asp

The GS400 records to the miniDV format. This is 25fps in PAL. There are no alternative frame rates. You have a choice of 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Open the lcd screen and select the button labelled Aspect/ProCinema, it is the top one in a column of four buttons. This will toggle you through normal (ie 4:3), 16:9 and ProCinema (which is 16:9 recorded at 25 frames per second). I use 16:9 all the time now; it produces a good widescreen picture. The manual warns that ProCinema will produce a strobe like effect - haven`t used it myself.

You switch between auto, AE lock and manual by pushing the small lever on the left hand side of the camera body just behind the lens. In manual mode you will see three buttons sbove this lever labelled WB, shutter/iris and focus/zoom. Use these buttons in conjunction with multi manual ring to get the adjustment you want.

thanks very much! I knew about the pro cinema etc. mode but thanks for that anyway! I'm shooting a short film using this camera in a few weeks, any tips/flaws I should know about the camera? (This isn't my first short film, I pretty much know what i'm doing, this was just a new camera you see :D)
thanks!
Eddy Strickland

It is not a good performer in low light. In bright sunlight it is worthwhile having a couple of ND filters to hand. Zebra function is useful - I leave mine on all the time.

Thanks David!
I will be shooting with lighting so there shouldn't be a problem, I use Zebras pretty much all of the time as well. I am dissapointed with this camera in that the viewfinder is not black and white, I find black and white makes it easier when sorting out the zebras :D And thanks for the tip on neutral densitys, I have a couple lying around but I think they're 49mm so i'll need a "converter" I forget what they're called but I have a few of them for different sizes also. What do you think on the use of a Polarising filter in bright sunlight?
Many thanks again David you're a great help!
Eddy Strickland

I have a polariser in my bag. Beware that if you fit more than one screw in filter you will probably get vignetting. I tend to stick with the ND unless dealing with reflections when I swap to the polariser.

Another GS400 feature that is very useful to me is the ability to capture 4MP stills to the SD card. I use this a lot for later use in my final output, either as p-i-p or imported into Imaginate to create video clips from stills using the track and zoom possible with that programme. But that is a function of some of the stuff I do and may not be relevant to you.

Couldn't the vignetting be sorted simply with a little cropping in post though? Ahh yes I have done the same as you before, use a high res picture (like from the GS400s 'photo' facility) and having it track around in post. I like premiere and final cut myself. I've never really been an avid man to be honest but I have used it. What is Imaginate used for primarily?
Thanks again David!

Imaginate is a Canopus product. It is designed to take stills (up to c200) at their original resolution and use the programme to pan, tilt, rotate, track, zoom etc across them and make an avi out them. Info can be found here:
http://www.canopus.com/products/Imaginate/index.php
Check out the link to swatches in the right hand column of the Imaginate page to get an idea of things you can do with it.

Not sure where the Avid reference came from. I am unfamiliar with Avid - I am an Edius Pro user.

Now i'm confused, are you sure it's 25p? I read on here

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Panasonic-PV-GS400-Camcorder-Review.htm

That's it fake 30p?

The frame rate is 25 FPS for PAL and 30 FPS for NTSC. The frames are interlaced at 50 fields/second in PAL and 60 fields/second in NTSC. The GS400 also has a frame mode that creates a pseudo-progressive frame at 25 and 30 FPS. Frame mode can be set manually in normal and wide aspect ratios. Frame mode is automatically set in Procinema mode. In order to set frame mode (from the menu), still picture resolution has to be set to 640x480.

So technically it's not 25 progressive. Just pseudo-progressive. Also, is it real 16:9? I am seriously thinking of buying one of these.

Panasonic prefixes NTSC cameras with PV and PAL cameras with NV. The original query was about the NV-GS-400

It is not a native 16:9 chip, as I understand it, but I think it produces a good 16:9 image. It is certainly OK for my modest purposes.

Panasonic have stopped making them now; a new one will be hard to find. The nearest replacement is the GS500 which lacks several features found in the GS400.

Frame mode creates a progressive frame. Both fields are taken simultaneously and combined in the DSP to create a full frame. The combining process does create a 480 line (NTSC) or 576 line (PAL) frame but the resolution is not the same as if the frame was truly progressive. It looks really good, however, and in some regards is better than if you deinterlaced the video using software.

Widescreen on the GS400 and GS500 is outstanding. Possibly the best widescreen on a high end consumer standard definition camcorder and much better than the widescreen on some of the Proline cams. It takes a 16:9 footprint from the 4:3 CCDs to create a true widescreen image with widened field of view. You can't do better than this unless you are using an XL2 or HDV cam, IMO.

So it is progressive? I've heard in progressive mode alot of blurring is visible.

The highest frame rate you can get from the video you take is 60fps. If I want slow motion shooting I just use normal 60i which is the only setting in the camera anyways. I import the 60i footage, deinterlace to 60p using a AE plugin I have, then alter the frame rate. If you shoot in 24p on a camera, thats all you can get. If you shoot with 60i you can at the most get 60 frames to work with which is really nice for slow motion. Once you deinterlace 60i to 60p you can alter the frame rate to just about anything. Look up the program Twixtor to find out about this. Just my quick explaination of whats possible with the 60i capabilities of the 400.

The GS400 has frame mode - 30fps. this should not be blurry if a tripod is used.

Nothing like reviving an old thread...

QUESTION: Does the GS500 do progressive? It's not 100% clear from the stuff I've read. I know what 30P means. I'm not sure what "Procinema Mode" means.

Thanks in advance...

The GS500 does frame mode, which outputs as progressive, but makes the frame from a combination of the two interlaced fields from the CCD. So, it does not have the vertical resolution of progressive. Procinema mode is a combination of frame mode and picture adjustments (cine-gamma) to make the video look more like film.

Guy,

My son and I took a look at a GS500 at a local Best Buy and have decided to buy one - but not at the $950 that BB is asking. No question that it was the best camera on the floor - including the little Sony HDV camera. That cam may be HD, but its automatic adjustments are really aggressive, and it lacks the control to override them well. The GS500 felt "right" (great optical stabilization, for instance), and it offers just enough manual control to make it workable.

Regarding the scanning...

In interlace at time A the sensor scans the odd lines, they go over the wire, and they end up on the odd lines of the TV. At time B the even lines are scanned, delivered and displayed.

In true 30P the sensor would scan all of the lines at roughly the same time. To work within the constraints of DV on 1394, the odd lines are delivered, and then the even lines are delivered, having been stored in memory. The TV displays the odd lines, then the even lines, and no motion "tearing" would occur. At time C the process starts all over again.

Looking at the picture on the LCD viewer, in the Pro Cinema mode we get a stuttering or strobing of motion, as one would expect in 30P. I wasn't able to see the full res picture on a monitor, so I'm not sure if they were just line doubling, or what.

The poor man's way to do this would be to sample the odd lines at time A and output them, and then output them again at time B, never sampling the even lines.

The next step up would do motion detection. At time B the output would be the even lines in the case of no motion, but would be the odd lines (or an average of the odd lines to avoid vertical offset) in areas of motion.

So these are three possibilities:

a) True 30P with all pixels being sampled at once
b) Poor man's 30P with only half of the lines ever sampled, or
c) The compromise of progressive where there is no motion, and half resolution in motion areas. This is about as good as you can do, if you can't get the whole image out of the CCD in one swell foop.

We will buy the camera regardless, but it will be nice to know what we're getting ourselves into.

(BTW, our plan is to get the GS500 now and to save our money for the HVX-200a, whenever that may come out. Hopefully it will get a real HD sensor, rather than the 576 line gizmo. We considered the DVX100b, but the lack of an integrated anamorphic 16:9 lense killed the deal.)

Here is an old link (ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasonic/Drivers/PBTS/papers/Progressive-WP.pdf) that has been posted here many times on how frame mode differs from progressive. It was written by Steve Mullen.

If the lack of an integrated anamorphic lens killed the DVX for you, then that lack has probably killed every other camera because I don't know of a single one that has one. There is a difference in shooting in anamorphic 16:9 and having an anamorphic lens. The DVX shoots anamorphic 16:9 (or sometimes called 'squeeze mode').

Thanks Guy! That link 'splains it all. Perfect.

Regarding the anamorphic thing, we were considering stretching the budget up to the $3k range expecting to get 24p true widescreen. (The marketing of the widescreen viewfinder led my son to think it was true wide.) When we learend that it did less than we expected, it let the air out of the balloon.

The next step up would be the XL2, which has a 16x9 sensor and doesn't need an anamorphic lens, but the price inches closer to HVX territory...

Whatever. The GS500 has everything we really need and enough of what we want at a great price. It's a keeper. The plan is to save for the HVX, and hope that there will be an improved version with cheaper P2 cards by then. The GS500 can still be useful as a "behind the scenes" camera. Had we gone with the DVX (or XL2), we would likely need to sell it to upgrade to the HVX.

Anyway, we should receive the camera from Egghead tomorrow, or the next day. Can't wait!

Thanks again for the link.

The GS500 came in today.

Quick review: The picture looks much better than any consumer camcorder that I've used before by a long shot. The camera has very little thermal (moving) noise. It mainly suffers from fixed noise. It's almost invisible - until something moves.

Lots of light helps minimize, but not fully remove the fixed noise, which is small and is almost color free. Much nicer than the typical red/blue noise that we watched all those years with VHS tapes.

The Pro-Cinema mode is quite nice. We lose less resolution than I expected. The resolution is really all we need for our 270x480 web videos.

One cool thing - connect the camera to Vegas, and it automatically recognizes the source to be 16x9 squish and 30p. Truly plug and play, er, capture.

I wouldn't recommend this little cam to anybody freelancing. You really need something bigger to impress the client. But if you want a stealthy camera, or want something inexpensive as a stop-gap before moving up to a pro-sumer cam, this is a nice little unit.