Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Here is the link to the release date for the GH4 Body and 4K Video Interface, along with the prices of each and a kit being released later:
Panasonic GH4 Pricing and ETA Update | TMSAV Blog

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Actually, this "unethical, disgusting and stomach sickening" practice has been going on for quite some time, and not only in the film industry. I used to work for a film/music company in the '90s, and back then one of our sound-for-picture editors ranged between $5,000 and $50,000 -- for the very same product! This, of course, because we intentionally limited its features. The same goes for the German sports car I own -- it too was limited intentionally so I could get it for less dough. Yeah, how dare those Germans be so disgusting and unethical that they will make such a snazzy car available for us with limited funds?! Makes me sick in the stomach.

-- peer (who wrote this on an intentionally limited laptop, that will cost less and have more features next year)

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

A hopefully simple question. I have no 4K hardware. If I have a GH4 will I be able to record 4K, use this to produce 1080p footage for my current "hardware", archiving the 4K footage for when I can acquire 4K hardware (TV and projector)?

Perhaps reasonable to assume that 4K TVs and projectors will drop on price as they become more popular. (I remember paying over £2k for a just released Pioneer 1080i telly, similar thing now would cost what, £700?)

I edit in FCPX on a 2014 iMac by the way.


Ron

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Hi

Yes you could resize in post.

However given 4K is just 24/25fps, and much more compressed comparatively to HD capture with the same camera, we may be better of in these cases to just capture HD, which should be pretty much visually lossless at 100Mbits/sec long GOP.

Regards

Phil

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

This is interesting. I have read a little bit about the G4's sensor cropped read out and I'm hoping to get some clarification. Can anybody add what they know to this....

The G4 takes a 1:1, 16x9, 4k crop from the center of it's 16 Mp sensor?

The G4 does not read the "entire" width of the sensor in a 16x9 crop and scale those pixels to 4K. (the way Sony supposedly does with the AX100/RX10)

The G4 does not over sample on read out? It's a 1:1 RGGB Bayer readout? (No over sampling would mean that it scans roughly 2 million red, 2 million blue and 4 million green pixels)

Wouldn't the best procedure be to start with a 20% "over" sample to account for the de Bayer loss and scale that down to 4k? If you start with 4k and de Bayer the RGGB, that would put you 20% "under" 4K resolution with finished.

Just some thoughts but it "seems" that Sony as already accounted for this with their full (over sampled) 16x9 crop / readout and Bionz X processor. I was just wondering how the GH4 does it.

CT

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Here's one I hadn't seen:

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Not sure if this has been mentioned here already but on vimeo, see video below (check out the 4k downloadable file) the creator of the video confirms that the screen info doesn't disappear anymore like on the gh3,

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

That is good to hear Noah. Where is the notion coming from in the Panasonic forum in the current thread, where it's being stated as fact that the GH4 has the same disappearing info problem? Did someone with a beta unit report that it had not been fixed?

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

If you go directly to the vimeo page of above video you can see where I asked the question in the comment section, there you can see the owner comment about the display.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Newsshooter interview: GH4 feature breakdown with Hotrod Camera's Illya Friedman:

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

What's interesting is that the shooter is the same guy that did the cat video with the AX100. I wonder how he gets these cameras so early from different manufacturers. I wonder if he has some kind of relationship with them.

Let me ask the group a question regarding this video. I've looked at many 4K videos from different cameras downscaled to 1080p (my monitor resolution) and quality varies of course from camera to camera. What's impressed me about the AX100 is how sharp many of the videos are even when viewed on a 1920x1080 monitor. They're like nothing I've ever been able to get out of an HD camera in terms of sharpness & resolution.

However with the few GH4 videos I've seen, I honestly don't know that I could tell them apart from 1920X1080 videos in terms of sharpness & detail. Now granted, that may change radically when viewed on a 4K monitor, but in terms of the viewing experience when watching on an HD monitor, I'm not seeing what I've seen from a few other cameras when the 4K is downscaled to 1920X1080.

So is it just me?

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

No it's not just you. But then in my opinion it's not just the GH4 either. I don't know what it is with a lot of HD clips on Youtube or Vimeo but yeah they don't look sharp at all. But I know my GH3 looks very sharp unconverted with its 1080 on my 27" Apple monitor to 2560x1440. So I make the assumption it is something else in each "soft" looking clip's display on Vimeo or wherever else that is the problem and not the cameras.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Panasonic GH4 Hands-On Field Test :

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

wow cool review, I'm glad I held out for this over the GH3, can't believe though about the need for external power on the 'brick', and also they didn't incorporate the internal image stabilization which they have on the GX7.
I guess there's only so much you can fit into a small body, so something has to go! All the 1080p options are of the most interest, 4k is nice but neither here nor there if you have to drape around with external SDI recorders, conversely I guess if you have a good shoulder mount rig then all these things are the norm anyway.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Here is an Interview with Zacuto and Panasonic's Matt Frazer

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Downloaded the source file, but it was choppy playback on my edit system (Intel i5, Vegas pro)
I have tried other 4K source files and they played smooth , is it different codecs or what ?
Footage looked soft...

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

The gx7 has only inbuilt stabilization in stills mode, not video, so that's useless for us videoshooters, the GH4 is definitely a step up from the gh3 but I"m actually not that overly excited, not for a camera that's almost twice the price of a gh3. It is still very cheap for a 4k capable camera but to me the main revolutionary feature is 4k, if you need it. All the rest is just a evolution of what was already good and made better. There are 2 things that would have made this a killer camera which are both missing 1. a build in nd filter and 2. inbuild camera stabilization, like the Olympus OMD series has, but I guess there is some kind of understanding between Panasonic and Olympus not to step on eachother turf that will make this addition impossible.

The brick will be only useful in studio environments and a 4:2:2 capable external recorder and battery solution will add a lot more in cost then what the body only will set you back + that won't be a portable solution anymore, the guys from Zacuto will probably have a blast modding this camera so at the end you"ll end up with a 10k camera all included, if you love zacuto anyway :)

What I"m most interested in is how clean it shoots at very high iso's compared to the gh3 because that has not been shown yet, if it could do a very clean 6400 iso that would be a big plus if you'd go for the body only, the copping ability when editing 4k in a 1080p project is this as well but looking at the camerastore review where they show this I get the impression you loose out on sharpness, same for the 96fps sample they showed, something did not look right there, might be the youtube compression so not sure about that.

Also the dynamic range in that first shot where he is standing in the water with the snow on the left shows a lot of blown highlights, this is ofcourse a high contrast scene most camera's will struggle with but it looks to me this has not improved over the gh3, but nevertheless is still good.

It also looks like the inbuild audio is still of the same crap level as the gh3 as there is no mention of improvement on this meaning you still need to add on an external mike.

Maybe I did not understand this right but what does he mean with "the interface disappears immediately"? : (can be found back at 12:22 on the camerastore video)

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

On my edius 7 it looked like it was playing in realtime but I could hear the audio stuttering so it wasn't.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Noa, I noticed the same thing when I dropped the Paris video in to Edius 7. But when I looked closer, the audio stuttering was also accompanied by a more subtle stuttering in the video. It does seem to be taxing the computer.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

After some reading i suspect different compression is the cause , All-I vs IPB.
All-I is less compressed and needs less processor power for smooth playback i have read.
Can anyone confirm this ?

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

What's interesting about the Zacuto video is that between roughly 9:50 and 10:00 he claims the camera can output 4K though the mini-hdmi port on the camera. I hadn't hear this before now.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Now they still to develop a recorder that can deal with that, but yeah, if that will be the case you could bypass that brick and go straight to a external recorder.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

i'm actually more excited about this zacuto zoom control handle mentioned in the video than anything else..

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

I would expect a price on that that would surpass the gh4 body price.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

wow, really? i was hoping for something in the neighborhood of 300 USD..

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Well, i m Just guessing, bit if you know zacuto you know it won't be cheap

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Hi

Yes All Intra is essentially a series of stand alone jpeg images, and each frame is independent and so much easier for editing.

The problem is All Intra is much less efficient when compressing. For example if the GH4 was all Intra frames at 100Mbits/sec at 24fps in 4K, that means each frame has to be compressed to around 500KBytes. Take a photograph that is around 4K resolution and compress it down to a Jpeg at 500KBytes, it is going to lose a lot of detail! So you need much higher data-rates for all Intra frames. The GH4 will compress at 200Mbits/sec for 60fps HD in all Intra, so each frame has to be compressed to around 410KBytes, but of course for an image of 1920x1080 pixels, that isn't too bad. Each frame is also very consistent in quality with all Intra.

What these cameras are recording though is long GOP in 4K to achieve better compression, so essentially you start with one Intra frame with a much healthier file size and image quality, and each frame after is described based on the differences from that first frame, in other words, a description of what has changed only, this tends to work well as each frame is often not that different from the one before. It can be like Chinese whispers though, so by the time 24 frames have gone past, frame 24 may not look that good and quality can be inconsistent between frames. Fast action is very challenging and quality can quickly take a dive.

For even better compression efficiency, the encoder can not only describe the differences from the past frame, but from a future frame as well. This makes editing quite a challenge for an editor as when we select a frame, it will need to read back and forward in time to collect up all the data to recreate the single frame we've selected.

The other issue is hardware acceleration, this may be available from the graphics card/driver for HD resolutions, but not supported for 4K resolutions.

Regards

Phil

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Hi

I think it is how it has been encoded, also it is 25fps so depending on your project settings Vegas may be frame doubling to 50fps which will be stressing it some more. It plays well though in VLC.

Unfortunately I find the clip lacks detail, looks good downscaled to 1080P (as all 4K does) but at 4K it lacks any real detail, however this isn't a file directly from the camera, and is only encoded at 47Mbits/sec average bit rate, so here is hoping the original footage has a lot more detail befitting of its 4K status.

Regards

Phil

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Thank's for clarifying !

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Yes, that isn't a native file and I heard he shot it at f/16! You're not going to get the best 4K quality possible with that setting. Perhaps he should have increased the shutter a little bit more and it would have looked better. One thing for sure is that he didn't use an ND filter which would have allowed you to use the best Shutter and Aperture setting.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Supposedly the video stream to the YAGH audio/video interface unit is sent via the mini-HDMI, which has a locking mechanism.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

The 4K output via the mini-hdmi has been mentioned earlier, I think. It will be one interesting options of the GH4 to use external recorders for both HD but also 4K - even with the mini-hdmi what is not great really but what is possible.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Here is the best low light 4096 4K GH4 video I have seen yet, download the 1GB file and view on the biggest display you have. It looks fantastic on my 30" 2560x1600 monitor using VLC player on Windows 8.1.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Joe, yes, indeed it is very nice. Probably the sharpest GH4 example we've seen yet.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

I just read an article where they are testing the camera and there is stated that the info on the screen first dims after a few seconds and then disappears like on the gh3, so nothing changed it appears. I just asked the shooter of that video I referred to earlier if there is a setting in camera to control this, so lets see what that other shooter has to say about it.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

It looked absolutely amazing via my AppleTV at 1080p.

Except for workflow issues for myself, not being able to play it back and edit the footage smoothly on my aging computer and long(er) rendering times, this camera is incredibly compelling.

The debate for me is if and when Canon might offer 4K video recording in a future DSLR for the enthusiast and hobbyist at near this price point.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

And if Canon doesn't respond, they will be left in the dust...as they should be if they don't give shooters 4K options.

The benefits of 4K are impossible to deny now that we've seen what cameras like the AX1, AX100 and GH4 can do.

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

Hi

But they can't do anymore than low YouTube frame-rates currently.

4K needs to be 60fps, and these current models will be replaced with true UHD models just as soon as new silicon comes off the production lines.

Caveat emptor, these are not UHD camcorders, they are 4K capturing a fast moving slide show, not all footage will suit them. Most consumers used to video frame-rates are going to be disappointed.

Regards

Phil

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

FDR-AX1 is true QFHD, 60P at 150Mbps. Of course it can also shoot 30P at 60Mbps or 100Mbps if you like the slow frame rates.

Ron Evans

Re: Press Release: Panasonic Announces 4K Mirrorless DMC-GH4
 

The target audience that is buying these early 4K camcorders like the AX100 (and they are that despite the frame rate), are video enthusiasts and prosumers and contrary to what a postet said, they're delighted.

A test that was just conducted on anothet site showed the AX00 was more resolved and sharper than the BMC 4K camera. There was detail visible in these A/Bs on the AX100 that wasn't visible on the BM. The tester was shocked. He was also surprised that by softening detail on the 100, he could successfully grade and mix the two cameras. Now to be fair, he felt the BM was a 'stronger' camera, but it's also twice the price when you factor in a lens.

BTW, the tester is keeping the AX100 and using it for his persoonal use.

So, disappointed? Hardly! :)