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Panasonic Lumix G9 Mark II Overheating Test Results (and workarounds)

Posted by Trixter on October 17, 2024

Amendments after additional tests:

With a dummy battery, the screen flipped out, no active cooling, and a normal ambient room temperature, a 4k60 4:2:0 10-bit recording overheated the camera sometime after 3 hours.

The same setup WITH Ulanzi active cooling, a 4k60 4:2:0 10-bit recording ran indefinitely with no heat warning.

TL;DR

I spent a week performing a lot of G9 II overheating tests, and am presenting the results here. The quick summary: There are some things you can do to prevent the G9 II from overheating, but they have their own pros and cons. Ultimately, if you want to record tons of video without any overheating, you should not buy a G9 II, and should instead spend the extra cash on a GH7.

Full test parameters and results are below. Before continuing, a disclaimer: A few links in this blog post are affiliate links to the exact products I actually purchased and tested with. Clicking on these links don’t cost you any extra money, but may earn me a small commission.

Background

I shoot primarily long-form video: Product photography, talking heads, and events. I am invested in the micro four thirds (M43) lens system, and bought a Panasonic Lumix G9 Mark II as soon as I was able to afford one, because I really wanted the first Panasonic M43 camera with phase-detect autofocus. It works great, and the autofocus is finally fantastic — however, it overheats during longer video shoots, shutting down video recording functions for 13 minutes to recover.

What’s worse, I bought it at the worst possible time: 35 days before they announced the Panasonic Lumix GH7, which doesn’t overheat. 5 days past the return policy, it was too late to return my G9 II for a refund. If I try to sell it on ebay, I can expect a $600 loss. So I guess I’m stuck with it.

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I decided to see what the overheating limits are, so I let the video recording run as long as it could in different resolutions, framerates, colorspaces, and codecs. The results are below, and I hope they are helpful to someone.

Test Setup

Almost all my shots are locked down on a tripod, so that’s what I used for these tests. I have been shooting 4k exclusively since 2016, so I didn’t bother with smaller resolutions. I didn’t test any ALL-I modes because I haven’t used them since Panasonic added h.265 to their cameras (and ProRes to the G9 II). I also didn’t test true DCI 4K (4096×2160) modes, as I felt UHD 4K (3840×2160) was the more common use case.

Here are the test parameters I adhered to:

  • Indoors at room temperature (roughly 70F/21C)
  • On tripod
  • Screen was flipped OUT. (Very important!! This exposes the back of the camera to release more heat!)
  • Used “dummy” battery connected to mains/wall power
  • Heat management was set to “high”
  • Recorded to 2 x 128G v90 SD cards mirrored (128G total storage). Cards were reformatted between each test.
  • 1/60 shutter (to match room lighting frequency) for all 60p/30p/24p modes
  • Waited until back of camera was cool to the touch before starting a new test
  • All recording formats were h.265 (LongGOP). Colorspace was 4:2:0, as I didn’t notice any significant heat differences between 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 during initial testing.
  • Times reported are the lengths of the resulting footage files, truncated to the nearest minute
  • All recording modes were the full readout of the sensor, with the exception of the 4.4k modes which are a 1:1 pixel crop
  • All tests were performed three times, and the median value chosen as the result

128GB Mirrored v90 SD Card Results

ResolutionFramerateBehaviorLengthNotes
HD (1080p)240pOK1h27m240p not a typo; this high-framerate mode is used to shoot slow-motion footage
UHD 4K24pOK1h54m
UHD 4K30pOK1h54m
UHD 4K60pOK1h27mFlashed heat warning after 50 minutes, but did not stop recording
UHD 4K120poverheated23m
4.4K (4:3)60poverheated41mThis is a 1:1 pixel readout/crop
5.7K (17:9)24pOK1h27m
5.7K (17:9)30poverheated45m
5.7K (17:9)60poverheated33m
5.8K (4:3)24pOK1h27mFull sensor readout / “open gate”
5.8K (4:3)30pOK1h27mFull sensor readout / “open gate”

I was very surprised the 5.7k 17:9 (5728×3024) 30p mode overheated much faster than the 5.8k 4:3 (5760×4320) 30p open gate mode, as the full-res open gate mode processes more information per frame. I have neither explanation nor theories for this behavior.

Do larger/slower SD cards help with overheating?

To see if shooting long-form events were possible, or if slower cards caused more (or less) issues, I used larger+slower SD cards to see how far I could push the camera. I saw no significant differences in overheating performance doing this. Modes that overheated still overheated at roughly the same length. Modes that previously worked continued to work.

For example, recording to UHD 4K 60p filled a 512G V30 SD card with 5+ hours of video. As in the previous test, this also flashed a heat warning around the 50 minute mark, but it kept going and filled up the card.

Does an ULANZI Camera Cooling Fan help with the overheating?

Yes. Mini-review:

The ULANZI Camera Cooling Fan is a $40 battery-powered add-on fan with two speeds and a temperature display that attaches to most mirrorless cameras designed with a flip-out screen. I bought one and connected it to continuous power (only fair, since my camera was on dummy battery continuous power as well), set it to high speed, and re-tested the modes that previously shut off due to overheating. Results:

ResolutionFramerateBehavior with fanOld limitNew limit with fan
UHD 4K120poverheated23m23m
4.4K (4:3)60pOK41m58m
5.7K (17:9)30pOK45m1h27m
5.7K (17:9)60pOK33m58m

So, the Ulanzi fan definitely helped extend the recording times in most modes that had overheat shutoff issues.

That said, there are some caveats to using it:

  • Mine did not stay connected to the G9 II very well; it kept sliding down, then flying off at great velocity because of the spring-loaded nature of how it attaches to the back of the camera. I added four small adhesive rubber “bumps” to all four corners to permanently solve this issue.
  • The fan is not silent, and raises the noise floor picked up by the camera’s microphones to -30dB. (That said, nobody uses the built-in camera audio for anything serious.)

Does writing ProRes to an SSD help with overheating?

Not really. The only video mode that overheated that also had a ProRes equivalent was 5.7K (17:9) 30p, so “prores as a way to generate less heat” is only useful in one recording scenario. Not only is this a very narrow limited scenario, it still overheated. Writing to an SSD led to a max recording time of 64m (prores) vs. 51m (h.265).

For SSD testing, I used a cheap but fast M.2 USB-C enclosure with an older 256G M.2 NVME card I had lying around.

Does using an external recording monitor help with overheating?

Yes. I used an Atomos Ninja (newer version, not the Ninja V) as the monitor + recorder for the G9 II, as I had purchased it earlier in the year for an unrelated project. In all recording scenarios, I was surprised to see the G9 II heat up, even though it wasn’t recording! But despite that, it never fully overheated and stopped, even when displaying the flashing heat warning.

The highest RAW resolution and framerate I could achieve with my Ninja (the Ninja Ultra can go higher) was 5.7K 30p. Where the native camera overheats and shuts off at 45m using that resolution and framerate, using the Ninja resulted in no overheating and filled a 2TB SSD with over 3.5 hours of ProRes RAW footage.

Recommendations and Conclusions

While I’m stuck with my G9 II, I was happy to see that some demanding modes such as UHD 4K 60p and 5.8K 30p can record nearly indefinitely at normal room temperature. For other demanding modes that overheat, at least I now know what they are and can plan accordingly.

Please keep in mind that these numbers were the result of optimal indoor shooting conditions. If you’re shooting outdoors with direct sunlight hitting the camera, or you shoot with the flip-out screen in the closed position against the back of the camera, you can probably expect 1/3rd (or less!) of these runtimes, and should buy a GH7 instead.

Posted in Digital Video, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

How to transcode UHD 4K HDR rips for lower bandwidth to an LG C8 OLED via Plex

Posted by Trixter on April 29, 2022

(This post has been edited with new information)

The LG Cx series of OLED TVs have terrible network chipsets in them: They can do more than 100mbps over 5GHz wifi, but can only do 100mbit/s over ethernet (my experiments with a USB-to-ethernet adapter were mixed). So what happens if you want to stream to your TV over ethernet because you can’t use wi-fi?

Included below is an ffmpeg script I’ve used to transcode UHD 4k blu-ray rips down to a bandwidth that can be handled without trouble using my LG C8’s ethernet connection, which I used during a period when I was unable to use the TV over 5GHz wifi (since corrected, thankfully). It leverages a modern nvidia card to do the transcode without any CPU usage, and preserves the HDR10 information. The end result is worse than the source if you pixel-peep, but if you’re sitting 10 feet away from your projector, it’s perfectly fine — and it’s certainly better than a blu-ray rip of the same material. Here’s the script:

REM This creates a Plex Versions proxy that preserves as much quality
REM as possible without exceeding an LG C8's ethernet 100mbit/s capabilities.
REM Call this batch file from the plex directory containing your main movie.
REM
REM The 120M bufsize represents a 3-second window @ 40M vbr that a max of 60M
REM can be sustained.
REM

mkdir "Plex Versions\LG C8"

for %%a in ("*.*") do ffmpeg -find_stream_info -hwaccel auto -i "%%a" -map 0 -c copy -c:v hevc_nvenc -pix_fmt p010le -tune:v hq -preset:v p7 -color_primaries bt2020 -color_trc smpte2084 -colorspace bt2020nc -spatial_aq:v 1 -temporal_aq:v 1 -b_ref_mode middle -profile:v main10 -tier:v high -b:v 40M -maxrate:v 60M -bufsize:v 120M "Plex Versions\LG C8\%%~na.mkv"

Posted in Digital Video, Entertainment, Technology | Leave a Comment »

It’s been fun

Posted by Trixter on December 26, 2018

My vote for the most subtle-yet-cruel entry in the category of brain mis-wirings is Imposter’s Syndrome. (It is also a first-world problem; apologies if this offends you.) I have it fairly bad, and it’s gotten worse as I age. It has prevented me from starting projects, finishing projects, and having normal levels of self-confidence. I am, thankfully, able to praise and mentor other people as necessary, but I cannot provide that for myself. Combine this with yearly instances of FOMO and you end up with someone who goes through waves of trying to join the party, only to feel sheepish once they get there.

This must end. Not in the manner in which my friends and fans might have hoped, but it simply has to end if I’m going to be available for the people who matter (including, most importantly, myself). So, it ends today. It ends with a list of things I’ve achieved in my life by my own skill, intelligence, and volition. I’m granting myself permission to be proud of everything on this list.

And, most importantly:

  • Met my wife, became a better person for her, and started a family

That is truly my greatest accomplishment. It has directly touched hundreds of lives, contributed something positive to the world, and will outlive me by many decades, if not centuries.

But this person is going away, and this is the third-last post I will be writing on this blog.

Posted in Demoscene, Digital Video, Gaming, MindCandy, MobyGames, Programming, Vintage Computing | 3 Comments »

How to make better YouTube videos

Posted by Trixter on July 4, 2017

(updated 6/22/2020)

I’ve been dabbling with making content-specific videos for YouTube for many years.  Some of my videos have gotten a respectable amount of views and are full of nice comments, while other well-meaning content has forever fallen into the unwatched abyss.  It’s been fun, but I have been giving thought to producing slightly more polished and professional work to see if I can attract a larger audience and get them interested in retrocomputing and personal computing history.

It is easy to get carried away with investing a lot of time and money into making better videos, so I felt some research was warranted before barreling ahead.  I reached out to a few friends and acquaintances, some with podcasting or YouTube careers (ie. they earn their living making media) for some advice.  I also scoured several “How I make my YouTube content” videos from a few channels that make content similar to what I want to produce.  The advice and research was so helpful that I felt it could benefit anyone else in a similar position, so I’ve reproduced the best tips here.

Before reading on, be aware that these are all tips for you to make better videos that you are happier with.  This is not the same thing as making videos that get more views or are more easily monetized (which usually involves pressure to make videos you are unhappy with).

Don’t be afraid to write a script

It may seem daunting to watch some of your favorite YouTube presenters and see them rattling off perfect copy directly to the camera, and wonder how you could ever get that polished.  Some of them really are good at improvising in front of a camera, but it may surprise you to learn that some of them are actually reading from a teleprompter.  This isn’t a sign of weakness, but rather a way to speed everything up while ensuring accuracy: You can put notes in a script for any cutaways or graphics you want to use, which can help during video editing.  It also ensures you won’t forget anything you want to say or stumble over your words.

On a related note:

Don’t be afraid to put yourself in front of the camera

The only drawback to using a script is that you may find yourself with something you really want to say, but have no graphics or cutaways to illustrate what you’re presenting.  David Murray (aka The 8-Bit Guy) gave me the helpful advice that he uses himself talking on-camera as a fallback when he needs to fill video with something he lacks assets for.  (What a brilliant idea!)

There is another benefit to putting yourself on camera:  It may surprise you to learn that some of your potential audience is actually more interested in you than the material you’re presenting.  Content is king, but what gives a YouTube channel a personal feel is you, a unique person, with a unique viewpoint.  There is a portion of your audience that wants community more than information; they are already familiar with your video’s basic content, but they want to hear other opinions and viewpoints.  It reminds me of Douglas Adams’ quote about nerds:

“…a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.”

Nerds want to commune with other nerds, so no matter how awkward you feel, see if putting yourself in front of the camera feels right.  If you can show off who you are at the same time you present content, you win twice.

If you are worried about remembering what you want to say, or being awkward on camera, a cheap teleprompter can help reduce performance anxiety.

Background music is a quick way to add polish

If you think your videos feel “stale”, a quick way to add some production value is adding background music, as long as it isn’t distracting or makes the narration/talent hard to hear.  That’s obvious, but you can’t use any music you like because it might be copyrighted and/or not licensed for YouTube videos.  Luckily, there are repositories and catalogs of music you can use that are either public domain, Creative Commons-licensed, or otherwise free for non-commercial use:

YouTube Audio Library: The most obvious choice, and a good starting point.  Everything there can be used even if you monetize your videos, although a short credit/text in your video’s description may be required.  I like starting here because they allow filtering by duration.

Epidemic Sound: A very generous license (as of this writing, $15 a month) and even if you cancel the service your previous videos are still licensed.

Free Music Archive: A searchable catalog of tons of music with various licenses.  However, be sure to read the fine print, as not all music on the site is licensed for video.

Artist.io: A very cheap option, a yearly subscription gets you access to their entire library and you can download as many as you can use. If your subscription lapses, the music you’ve already used is still licensed.

uppbeat.io is the free/freemium version of Music Vine, and is worth checking out if you don’t mind getting free music in exchange for putting the music credits in your video’s description.

bensound: Filterable, and free for youtube use as long as credit is given.

There are many others, as well as multiple resources for finding them, but the above should get you started.

Poor audio recording is WAY worse than poor video

Most people who watch YouTube are forgiving of poorly-created video because of cell phones:  Almost everyone has shot a shaky or poorly-lit cell phone video, and for most people, that kind of quality is “good enough” for getting the point across.  Humans are pretty good at filtering the signal from the noise when it comes to visual content.  Poor audio, however, is more jarring and requires more concentration to listen to.  Unlike bad video, poor audio is much more difficult (or impossible) to fix later in post-production.  If you recorded outside and wind noise completely drowned your voice out, or if you recorded inside in an empty or harsh room and your voice is echoing, there’s no way to fix that.  The only solution is to record decent audio in the first place.  That means:

  • Use the right tool for the right job:  Don’t use an omnidirectional microphone for recording just your voice, but instead use a cardioid mic for close vocal sources, or a shotgun mic for farther-away vocal sources.
  • Don’t record in a harsh room (bare walls, no carpet, etc.) no matter what the situation is.  If you have no choice, hang heavy blankets on the walls to try to stop sound from echoing.

If recording voiceover and podcasts, Jeremy Williams of tested.com swears by this combination:

  • Audio-Technica AT2020USB Cardioid Condenser USB Microphone: You don’t need a functional sound card to use this; it is powered by and transmits data over a single USB cable.  (Any cardioid condenser mic is acceptable, if you don’t want to use USB, but this specific model comes highly recommended.)
  • An AT2020 Foam Windscreen Pop Filter: To protect against plosives from ruining your audio.  Most windscreens and pop filters are cheap, so there’s no reason to skimp on this.
  • RODE PSA1 Swivel Mount Studio Microphone Boom Arm: Good voiceover means being able to record comfortably and consistently while reading copy, and a boom arm facilitates this.  It also makes it easy to store the mic out of the way when not in use.

Some people are wary of getting a dedicated microphone that is only good for picking up voice, and want something more versatile.  A lavaliere microphone of sufficient quality and placement can make a big difference in recording your voice if you are in front of the camera (or even off-camera) and lets you move around while you present your content.  You may also be able to use a field recorder, such as the Zoom H4n, for multiple scenarios.  Corey from My Life In Gaming uses a Zoom H4n for his narration, and it sounds very good, I came up to this site http://epicgifts.net/15-pokemon-gifts-for-true-fans where I was able to find the best gifts for gamers online, specially for those who love pokemon go. Corey was playing this new castle escape game, it seem very addicting so check it out first. And because it’s a field recorder, he can record his voice as well as two other audio tracks and mix them in the recorder to save time, or store them individually for flexibility in the video editor. Recently My friend bought this Zockersessel and he loves it, it’s really comfortable. .

Good lighting can drastically improve any shooting situation

All cameras record light bouncing off of objects.  The more light that hits a digital camera sensor, the less work the camera has to do.  To illustrate this for yourself, shoot some video outside on a sunny day, then shoot some video inside at night with all the lights on.  Even though your electric lights are bright enough for you to see comfortably at night, you’ll notice that the inside footage will have more noise and grain than the footage shot outdoors.  This isn’t limited to high-end cameras; it’s a general principle that works for any camera, including the camera on your cell phone.  More light — as long as it isn’t a harsh spotlight or casting visible shadows — makes all video footage better.

The best compromise to getting better light in your shots is to use at least two bright photography/videography lights with some softboxes to diffuse the light so it doesn’t cast harsh shadows.  Clint of Lazy Game Reviews was kind enough to let me know what he currently uses, and also used previously when his budget was tighter:

  • For those on a budget, Cowboy Studio makes some affordable lighting kits appropriate for video production.  They’re on the cheap side, but they perform admirably.
  • Clint currently uses LED Panels.  These are more expensive, but give more much more flexibility in how you can use them:  Some panels can run off of batteries, some have adjustable color temperature, and overall they generate less heat.

He concluded with the following:

I typically use at least three lights when I’m filming. Usually 2 LED panels in front/side and then something overhead, like another LED light or even just the light in my room.

Practical advice.

Use manual focus and tripods wherever possible (even cell phones)

Autofocus isn’t perfect; it can have a hard time tracking a moving subject, or “refocus” randomly for seemingly no reason when both the camera and subject are completely still.  If you are shooting a stationary (or mostly-stationary) subject, use a tripod, and use manual focus on your camera.  You’ll get consistent results every time.  Amazon makes a cheap, perfectly functional tripod that is great bang for the buck.

“But I shoot everything with my cell phone!”, you cry?  Not to worry, there are cheap cell-phone tripod adapters available from just about everywhere.  And any smartphone made in the last 3 years allows you to fix the focus while shooting, usually by tapping or long-pressing the area of the shot you want to keep focus-locked.

If you have more money than skill, shoot in 4k

If you have a camera or cell phone capable of 4k recording, try shooting everything in 4k even if you are making a 1080p video.  Why?  Because the extra resolution of 4k allows you do fix all sorts of errors in post-production.  Didn’t zoom in enough?  Is your subject framed a little left of center?  Was the camera rotated slightly on the tripod?  Forgot to film a quick close-up shot?  You can fix all of this in the video editor, and even though the 4k footage is manipulated, it still has more resolution than your 1080p target as long as you don’t zoom past a 1:1 ratio (ie. 100%) of the original footage.

Putting it all together

Armed with the above advice, I decided to revisit making videos, and came up with this on a whim:

While the result is far from optimal, it represents a quality baseline that I am happy with and that I feel can steadily improve on.  Here’s how the video was produced, from complete start to finish:

  1. Thought about what I was going to do and how I could make sure I could get video and photos while doing it: 20 minutes
  2. Performed the activity, gathering media along the way: 6 hours (much of it spent waiting for the chemical process to happen)
  3. Wrote a script that contained everything I wanted to say in the narration: 90 minutes
  4. Recorded the narration: 60 minutes (I needed several takes before I felt I sounded like I wanted to, which was a balance between formal, informal, and natural)
  5. Imported all assets into a video editor, laid down the audio track, cut video to the narration, researched license-free images from the web to fill in the gaps for areas I didn’t have original footage for, and researched license-free music to use as a background audio bed: 4 hours
  6. Export + encode + upload the result: 1 hour

So yes, it took ~14 hours to produce a 5-minute video, but that was because I was inexperienced, and I also could have cut the time down by doing some production tasks while I was waiting for the chemical reaction to finish, like researching the background audio beds, writing parts of the narration, or tracking down graphics I needed.  Before you think that’s crazy, a lot of top-notch YouTube content does indeed take 10+ hours to produce a 10-minute video, even when people are experienced.  It all depends on whether or not you require a script to stay focused, or whether you are capable of winging it.

The most important advice multiple people gave me was this:  Make sure you’re having fun.  If it stops being fun, then you’ve turned your hobby into a depressing chore and ruined it, so back off or change direction if you start hating what you’re doing.

For more tips and inspiration, here’s some leisure viewing:

https://youtu.be/2ZETMw53hi4

Posted in Digital Video | Leave a Comment »

An informal comparison of intermediate editing codecs for Windows platforms

Posted by Trixter on April 2, 2017

Last year I volunteered to record an entire weekend’s worth of vintage computer talks.  Unsurprisingly, this also involved editing an entire weekend’s worth of vintage computer talks.  All of the footage was 1080p60, and was shot or delivered compressed (a mixture of AVCHD and H.264 MP4).  While this saves space, it is not always fluid to edit with, as compressed codecs arrange frames into groups that are highly dependent on each other.  The end result is that seeking around and cutting highly-compressed footage can feel sluggish even on extremely powerful systems.  My system was beefy for 2012, and can still surprisingly hold its own in 2017:  A 6-core/12-thread Core i7-980X with 24G of RAM, and 4TB of spinning-disk storage made up of 3x2TB disks in a RAID-5 array (capable of delivering up to 700MB/s sustained read speeds at the outer edges of the platter) with a 4th hot spare.  Despite the high specs, editing 1080p60 H.264 footage last year was sluggish to the point where I considered using an intermediate codec.

A quick primer on intermediate codecs

Intermediate codecs are used when you want to transcode your footage to something that is much easier for the computer to decompress, making it much faster to edit with.  There are two basic types, lossless, and lossy:

Lossless codecs exactly represent each original pixel in the source, and can be used interchangeably with the original footage through any number of processing or compression passes.  (Think of them as running the footage through PKZIP or 7-ZIP, but using more lightweight algorithms more suitable for decompression speed.)

Lossy codecs throw more information away, but do so in a manner that looks the same to human eyes.  They don’t match up with the original source pixel for pixel, but most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.  The resulting file sizes are much smaller than lossless codecs, but because some information is thrown away during the compression phase, you have to be careful running such footage through multiple processing or compression generations as the image could degrade unacceptably.  (For the old-timers: This is like what happens when you make a copy of a copy of a copy of a videotape: The end result is noisy, washed out, and barely watchable.)

Compressing into an intermediate codec takes time, so it is usually done during the ingestion process (such as with DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Prelude), or in a batch process overnight, or both.

Our test case

I decided at the time to pick a 10-minute piece of 1080p60 footage and transcode it to every intermediate codec that met the following criteria:

  1. Worked in Windows without Quicktime (Quicktime for Windows was discontinued in 2016 due to security flaws).  This eliminated ProRes and Avid’s DNxHD.
  2. Over 5 years old, compatible with Windows 7 or above, and relatively battle-tested
  3. Evidence of recommendation online by video content producers (ie. something more professional than, say, people doing anime music videos)
  4. Worked in Premiere Pro without crashing or odd behavior
  5. Didn’t demand more than 200MB/s out of the I/O subsystem to maintain 60fps playback (this was more to keep filesizes down than anything else)

Additionally, since my source footage was not high enough quality to require HDR-level processing, I was realistic and considered codecs that had a YUV 4:2:2 configuration (and eliminated codecs that could only do 4:2:0).  This led to the following codec list:

To provide some interesting comparisons, I also included the following:

  • YUV 4:2:2 8-bit uncompressed, to see what was possible given a fast I/O subsystem
  • Cinepak (1991), possibly the fastest useful single-core decompression codec ever made
  • HuffYUV (2000), the first popular free lossless codec for Windows

After my 10-minute 1080p60 sample was compressed into these codecs, I then defragmented my RAID array using mydefrag with a script that put all of the codec comparison files at the fastest area of the array (the beginning).  I then measured decompression speed using VirtualDub’s File->Run Video Analysis Pass feature, then measured I/O and CPU usage using Windows 7’s Resource Monitor.

Before reading on, I want to stress that the above criteria were the only factors considered.  There are many other things to consider if you have different production targets or workflow needs, such as 10-bit or 12-bit color depth, or iterative recompression stability.  These vary from codec to codec and are not discussed here.

The results

Here are the raw results (you might need a non-mobile browser to see this table correctly):

Codec Size in bytes Percent size of uncompressed Data loss Visual quality loss Decompression Frames Per Second MB read per second Decompression %CPU usage (6-core 12-thread i7 980X)
UTCodec 4:2:2 8-bit 35,859,227,004 24% lossless 1 164 367 39
Cinepak 8,951,457,910 6% lossy 3 129 57 9
Cineform (Medium HD) 11,872,682,448 8% lossy 2 64 51 12
Cineform (High HD) 13,293,520,304 9% lossy 2 62 57 12
Newtek SpeedHQ 4:2:2 9,763,299,366 7% lossy 2 55 24 8
Blackmagic Design MJPEG 10,146,513,708 7% lossy 2 38 28 16
YUV 4:2:2 8-bit uncompressed 149,270,431,900 100% lossless 1 85 704 4
Lagarith 28,375,743,340 19% lossless 1 29 41 11
Grass Valley HQX Lossless 35,888,010,830 24% lossless 1 33 75 9
Grass Valley HQX Offline 3,988,818,666 3% lossy 3 90 19 8
Grass Valley HQX Online Standard 7,854,558,164 5% lossy 2 74 38 8
Grass Valley HQX Online Fine 9,833,655,952 7% lossy 2 69 45 8
Grass Valley HQX Online Superfine 27,810,744,334 19% lossy 2 48 86 9
HuffYUV (FFmpeg variant, left, adaptive huffman) 35,918,114,616 24% lossless 1 44 99 12

From this data, I eliminated codecs that were not capable of playing back 1080p60 footage at the bare minimum requirement of 60 frames per second.  I also eliminated Cinepak (which was only included for teh lolz) and Grass Valley HQX Offline, since the visual quality of these were unacceptable and I did not want to edit with proxies (I was not in the field on a laptop, but was on my actual editing desktop system).  I also eliminated YUV 4:2:2 uncompressed, because the storage requirements of transcoding everything to an uncompressed format was not practical.

From the remaining data, I concluded the following:

Playback performance (best to worst)

  1. UTCodec 4:2:2 8-bit
  2. Grass Valley HQX Online Standard
  3. Grass Valley HQX Online Fine
  4. Cineform (Medium HD)
  5. Cineform (High HD)

File size (best to worst)

  1. Grass Valley HQX Online Standard
  2. Grass Valley HQX Online Fine
  3. Cineform (Medium HD)
  4. Cineform (High HD)
  5. UTCodec 4:2:2 8-bit

Conclusion

For over a decade, I assumed that Cineform was the gold standard of intermediates, and was indeed the codec I used whenever I needed an intermediate workflow.  Recently in an online discussion, a colleague who is a professional cameraman and editor extolled the virtues of Grass Valley HQX.  HQX was not in my original comparison, so I added it and re-ran all of these tests in the same hardware configuration.  I was surprised to see that Grass Valley HQX was a hair better than Cineform in all areas.  I will definitely give it a spin for my next project.

To be absolutely fair, Cineform is (still) no slouch, and has served me very well over the years.  You could do much worse than either Cineform or Grass Valley HQX; either of them should suit your needs for an intermediate codec on Windows.

If you have a multi-core processor and lots of free disk storage, UT Codec remains the fastest lossless codec available on modern hardware.  However, evaluate your project needs before committing to it, as not every project needs 100% lossless compression.

Finally, if you only work with 24p/30p material, just about any of these codecs will serve you well.

Update: I’ve recently found that Cineform performs much faster if you can handle the quality the “Medium HD” preset provides, which can exceed the playback rate of GV HQX.  But they’re both good to use.

Update 2:  There is a wonderful, filterable list of intermediate codecs made available by David Kong.

Update 3: Cineform was open-sourced (woohoo!) and Virtualdub-filtermod already supports creating it using the official SDK.

Posted in Digital Video | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

BASIC Memories

Posted by Trixter on March 15, 2017

I contributed a few segments to The 8-Bit Guy‘s retrospective on BASIC that covered my thoughts and memories on growing up with BASIC during the home computer revolution.

Making quality video is difficult!  I had to perform several different takes before I was comfortable, and I screwed up the focus, and I needed better lighting.  And I’m fat.  But overall it went ok.  Except for being fat.

I envy those who can do YouTube videos full time, since it seems like a lot of fun.  I’ve collected over a hundred topic ideas for videos I’d like to do someday, but if I’m being realistic with myself, I won’t have the time.

Posted in Digital Video, Entertainment, Programming, Vintage Computing | Leave a Comment »

Sony Xperia Z3v impressions and workarounds

Posted by Trixter on January 10, 2015

The Xperia Z3v is a very odd hybrid of a phone that is being marketed as a flagship for the current generation of smartphones; it was released in October 2014 and is a Verizon exclusive (other carriers have the older Z2 or Z3).  There is a nearly criminal lack of coverage in the media for this phone, so I thought I’d rectify that with my thoughts on the phone after two months of use.  First, some background:

We switched the entire family over from Sprint to Verizon (more expensive, but you get what you pay for) and part of the terms of the switch was that we all get new phones.  As I was a long-time Samsung customer (Epic 4G, Galaxy S4) I was planning on going with the S5, but wanted a few things the S5 couldn’t give me, like stereo front-facing speakers.  After reviewing everything Verizon offered that met my requirements, I decided to try the Xperia Z3v under the agreement that I could return it after 14 days if I wanted to switch to another phone.  Because the phone is best-in-class in a few areas, I’ve decided to keep it, accepting that a few aspects of the phone need workarounds.

The Z3v is a combination of the Z2 (larger, thicker body; slower CPU) and the Z3 (camera, screen).  It’s a frankenphone that only Verizon offers.  Let’s start by describing the basic features of the phone that drew me to it:

  • 20 megapixel camera sensor
  • 1080@60p and 4K@30 video recording
  • IP65/68 rating (dustproof, waterproof up to 5 feet for up to 30 minutes)
  • Front-facing stereo speakers
  • Dedicated physical camera shutter button
  • Wireless charging

(It has more features than these obviously, like remote PS4 playing, but these are the only ones that interested me.)  Sounds awesome right?  Well, it mostly is.  Based on my experience, here’s what “mostly awesome” means:

Pros

The camera.  As a point’n’shoot, the Z3v is one of the best I’ve ever had.  The 20mp sensor, coupled with firmware borrowed from the Sonty CyberShot line of cameras means that it shoots great automatic pictures, they look like the stock photos of EyeEm.  In default “auto” mode, which is what you get if you press the camera shutter button to wake up the phone and go straight to the camera app, it uses the 20MP sensor to oversample the scene and provide both free HDR shots and stabilization.  It is smart enough to turn off stabilization if it notices the camera is on a tripod, and tells you it is doing so with a small status indicator.  Actually, it’s smart enough to do all sorts of things that I won’t bother mentioning here — just know that the Z3v is good enough that I don’t carry a dedicated camera any more.  Is it a replacement for a DSLR?  No, of course not.  But it is definitely a replacement for a sub-$300 point’n’shoot.  The shutter button even performs a press-half-to-focus-lock, press-full-to-shoot function.

4k video.  Being able to shoot this is not terribly practical, but it does work, and you do see some additional fine detail that you don’t see in 1080p mode.  4K mode is useful if you can’t decide on the framing of a 1080p shot and you want the ability to crop without losing detail.  It works best outdoors; there’s no point in using it in low light.

It’s waterproof.  Will I be shooting underwater?  No.  Will I be secretly grateful that my accidental fumble of the phone into the toilet won’t completely destroy it?  Absolutely.

Active noise-canceling for free.  This feature isn’t advertised heavily, but if you purchase the custom “Sony Digital Noise Cancelling Headset (MDR-NC31EM)” earbuds for $45 and stick them in the phone, the Z3v will 1. recognize they are in, and 2. enable active noise-cancelling.  This works because the earbuds have little microphones on them that sample the environment, which the phone then generates the inverse waveform for in certain bands and mixes that into the output.  While the earbuds aren’t the most comfortable things to have in for more than an hour, the features does work well — better than noise-isolation earbuds which I’ve used for a decade — and I’m thankful to have them on my commute.  I haven’t noticed any distortion, but I listen to mostly spoken material on my commute.

Wireless charging.  With a cheap Qi charger, this simply works, which is great because the USB/charging port is normally behind a waterproof door you have to keep opening and closing when connecting via that port.

Battery life.  The battery life on this phone is simply amazing given what the phone is capable of.  I can go two days on a single charge, and that includes 3-4 hours of screen-on time per day.  If that’s not good enough for you, there are two classes of power-saving modes with multiple levels of customization, the latter of which shuts down everything except calling and texting and can stretch a single charge up to seven days.  Geezus.

Sounds too good to be true?  Well…

Cons

The 20MP mode is disappointing.  The camera normally shoots everything at 8MP.  If you want the true resolution of the sensor, you can enable 20MP in “manual mode”.  It works, and you have some customization over the shot, but it’s disappointing because the sensor and lens are small enough that there is no appreciable extra detail captured in the 20MP shot.  I’ve done comparisons with the phone on a tripod in a lot of light and there was just no advantage: I scaled the 20MP shot down to 8MP in photoshop and it didn’t look any better; I did a 100% crop of a few locations in both images and the 20MP didn’t have any more detail, mostly just fuzzier larger sections.  So, it’s sort-of useless, and I don’t use it.

The phone is slippery.  The front and back are glass, and the edges are a rougher plastic material.  The edges aren’t enough for me to keep a good grip on the phone at all times.

The native camera apps offer little customization.  If you want to shoot video under odd circumstances, or use the camera on a tripod to take nice stills, the native camera app — even in manual mode —  lacks a few things that make it difficult.  There’s no true manual focus or manual white balance.  You can pick focus “types” and white balance “types” but the focus and exposure are always auto-adjusting.  And the 4K video mode offers no customization whatsoever; it’s 100% auto-adjust.

60p isn’t really 60p.  For some inexplicable reason, the camera shoots video slightly slower than 59.94 or 60fps which are the only framerates considered 60p broadcast standard.  Out of several tests, the resulting videos had variable framerates, all nonstandard, like 59.32 and 58.86.  This leads to slightly jerky video over longer lengths of time, and can cause issues editing in post.  One video I shot and uploaded directly to YouTube without editing shows up as “1080p59”.  (The 30p video modes were all 29.97 like they’re supposed to be, so that’s good at least.)

4k video mode overheats the phone.  Seriously.  The first time you use it, you’ll get a pop-up saying that if the camera overheats, your video will be stopped, saved, and then the camera will shut down to cool off.  Sure enough, it does all that after about 5-7 minutes of 4K video shooting.  This, coupled with the 60p framerate issue noted above, seems very bubblegum-and-shoestring to me.  But, good luck getting those fixed, because:

Frankenphone = orphan.  The Z3v was the result of a partnership between Verizon and Sony; it is a hybrid of the Z2 and Z3.  As a result, neither company will fully support the phone.  I’ve tried to report the firmware bugs noted above to both companies, and both companies tell me to contact the other company.  Sony tells me that Verizon supports the phone exclusively, and Verizon tells me that any firmware bugs in the camera are the responsibility of the manufacturer.  Which really sucks, because:

Playing with the alarm volume can lock up the phone.  If you adjust the volume of an individual alarm a few times, then this hilarious thing happens: When the alarm time comes, it does not make noise but instead locks up the phone.  You have to mash and/or hold down the power button to get out of this state until the phone eventually reboots.  I was late to work one day because of this.  It would be nice to be able to report this bug to someone, but oh well.

The front-facing speakers aren’t as loud or clear as they could be.  My son used to have an HTC One M7 and his audio was louder and clearer than on the Z2v despite the hardware being almost 2 years older.  It’s not bad; just don’t assume it’s a replacement for good headphones.

The Stock youtube app doesn’t allow pre-downloading.  This feature was removed by YouTube at some point, angering hundreds of thousands of commuters, myself included.  I used the stock YouTube app on my Galaxy S4 for a full year for this reason so I could predownload videos in my “Watch Later” list to view on the train, and the Z3v app is fully updated and doesn’t allow caching of videos.

These were initially very big disappointments and I almost returned the phone because of them.  After some research, here’s how I mitigated them:

Workarounds

Slippery: The Verizon store had a $20 cheap flexible plastic case that I put on it just to make it less slippery until I found something else.  I haven’t found anything else, so it’s still on there.  I tried carbon fiber stickers; while they looked nice, all they did was make it more slippery.  Trying to search Amazon or other stores for “Xperia Z3v case” doesn’t work well because you keep getting results for the Z2 or Z3, both of which have different dimensions than the Z3v.

Lack of manual camera options:  I found that OpenCamera works with my phone and supports locking focus, white balance, and exposure.  This allows me to shoot videos in very odd conditions, such as a reflective glass computer CRT that emits colored light.  It doesn’t support the 60p or 4k modes of the phone because those are manufacturer-specific and have no exposed API.

Odd 60p videos:  moveyourmoneyproject.org created this script to “fix” 60p videos so that they can be edited in post-production without causing problems:

A = FFAudioSource("MOV_0001.mp4")
V = FFVideoSource("MOV_0001.mp4")
AudioDub(V, A)

# Force compliant framerate (will adjust audio rate to match)
AssumeFPS("ntsc_double", true)

# Resample adjusted audio rate back to 48KHz
SSRC(48000) #if crashes, use ResampleAudio() instead

Inability to pre-download YouTube videos:  TubeMate now provides that function.  It’s clunky and buggy, but it works well enough to keep my commutes from becoming too boring.

Alarm volume adjustments lock up phone:  Adjust the alarm volume using the Settings->Alarm path instead.  Whatever you set it to, all new alarms will inherit, and you can adjust that all you like without consequences.

Conclusion

I think it’s a great phone if the above Cons don’t affect you and you’re looking to join Verizon and get a new phone before April 2015.  (After April, I believe the new Samsung is coming out, and it remains to be seen how that compares.)

Most people will use the phone on full auto, and it is very, very good at that.  Just don’t expect manual fine-tuning of a few things.

Posted in Digital Video, Technology | 1 Comment »

Cyberpunx

Posted by Trixter on October 5, 2014

October is “National Cyber Security Awareness Month”, whatever the hell that means.  In recognition of this dubious designation, I’ve made an HD remaster of the 1990 documentary Cyberpunk available.  Consisting of interviews with William Gibson, Jaron Lanier, Timothy Leary, Vernon Reid (from Living Color), and Michael Synergy, and briefly featuring a few industrial bands such as Front 242, Manufacture, and Front Line Assembly, the documentary provides a look at what the cyberpunk movement was circa 1990.  Subjects such as cyber-terrorism, cybernetic implants/enhancement, virtual reality/telepresence, and general counterculture rebellion against “The System” are touched upon.  Inevitable comparisons with Akira are made.

Here Be Dragons

While the producer and director did an admirable job making the source material interesting and presentable to the public, there are a lot of flaws with the documentary.  Some are minor and can be overlooked, such as the 1990s trend of inserting faux computer graphic overlays (to try to make the material more similar to the world Gibson painted in Neuromancer).  Many of the problems are with pacing; there are entire sections that focus on a particular subject for too long, sometimes without impact.  One section in particular goes so long that different digital effects start to fade in and out after a few minutes, almost as if the editor was bored and resorted to doing something with the image to keep the viewer’s interest.

There are also some very misrepresented facts and predictions, but it’s not really fair to criticize a documentary for failing to predict the future correctly.  That being said, there are some real howlers in here, from the supposed power hackers wield(ed) against governments, to the silly, amateur computer graphics that obscure hackers’ identities, to the heavily hinted-at concept that Neuromancer itself was responsible for shaping technology and history.  The most egregious is equating hacker with cracker (although, to be fair, that’s happened multiple times before and since).

A special mention must be given to Michael Synergy, who perfectly embodies the huckster who started believing his own bullshit.  Some of his claims in the documentary are so utterly, patently ridiculous, so incredibly pretentious, that it takes a great deal of willpower not to scream at him when he’s talking (especially when he mispronounces the word “genre”).  Were I him, I would have wanted this stage in my life to disappear, and it seems as if that wish has come true: His moniker disappeared with the 1990s.  My personal wild speculation is that once the real, actual revolution of the web occurred and it was able to finally call him out, he quietly exited stage left.  (Last I heard, he worked for Autodesk in the mid-1990s, was going by his birth name again, living in Hawaii, working in IT; if anyone has a real update, I would love to know what actually happened to him.)

Most depressingly, there is a real missed opportunity with how Jaron Lanier’s involvement was portrayed.  In the documentary, he comes across as a stoner who only mentions VR, which is a shame because — then and now — he’s the most relevant and accurate representation of a hacker that the documentary includes.  Of everybody interviewed, Jaron is the only person who is still exploring these concepts and ideas, and more importantly their unintended fallout, which you can read about in his most recent book Who Owns The Future?.  (Even if you don’t buy the book, follow that link and read the Q&A to get a feeling for his concerns.)

Worth watching?

While it may be hard to sit through, the documentary retains glimpses of the innocent, wildly-optimistic, techno-hippie idealism that grew with the rise of personal computing and networking.  For that nostalgia factor alone — the time when the Internet existed but the World-Wide Web did not — it’s worth an hour of your time.  It’s also worth watching to catch which ideas were especially prescient, such as:

  • Whoever holds the most information holds the most power
  • Every device will be interconnected
  • Physical boundaries will not impede meaningful communication
  • People will be individual, mobile, uncensored “broadcast stations” (considering I can post to youtube from my phone, I’d call this a reality)
  • The “matrix” as a concept and/or allegory for God (later realized almost to the letter in The Matrix movie trilogy)

…and so on.  You could make an interesting drinking game out of catching which ideas succeeded (although you’d get more drunk, quickly, by catching all of the stupid and inaccurate comments).

Cyberpunk: The Documentary is now available at archive.org.  Grab the MPEG-TS file if able; it’s 60p, Blu-ray compliant, and won’t take up too much space in your memory implant.

Posted in Digital Video, Entertainment, Technology | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

8088 Domination Source and Encoder Released

Posted by Trixter on August 11, 2014

I’ve formally released the source and binaries for the 8088 Domination encoding system under its original working title: XDC (stands for X86 Delta Compiler).  Head on over to x86dc.wordpress.com to browse the github source, grab some example videos, browse the documentation, or watch a screencast where I encode a video from farm to table in under 30 minutes.

Now you too can impress your friends with your own custom videos that run on a 4.77 MHz CPU with 16K of video memory!

Posted in Demoscene, Digital Video, Programming, Vintage Computing | Leave a Comment »

Out, damned bug! out, I say!

Posted by Trixter on July 29, 2014

The response to 8088 Domination was warm, wonderful, and widespread. To everyone who dropped me a note via twitter, email, or youtube — and there were thousands of you — I want to thank you for the kind and encouraging words.

Even before I finished the design, I knew that I was going to release all of the source, so that others could make their own videos for their own vintage systems. I was careful to design the system to be easy to understand, so that it could be easy to port to other languages or extend with new features. I have a lot of comments in the code, some fairly verbose, so that there is no confusion why something is designed a particular way, or why one operation happens before another. I want this to be representative of the quality of code I usually write.

So, why am I overdue in releasing the code? Bugs! Or, more accurately, edge cases. To ensure that the encoder works properly in the real world, I’ve been testing it with vastly different sources: Animations, music videos, cartoons, even a full-length movie. And almost every time, I encounter a new edge case that needs fixing. Oh, don’t worry — The code isn’t full of special cases or bubblegum-and-shoestring workarounds. It just takes time to address each issue that crops up, and determine if it’s a true bug that needs fixing, or an issue that can be safely ignored.

“Ignore issues in code? Impossabru!” Actually, here’s an example of what I mean: I discovered a few weeks ago that I could improve the efficiency of the output a few percent by re-running some optimization phases before final compilation. However, doing this will sometimes create a small “empty” 1-byte delta that actually isn’t a delta (ie. the locations contains the same data in the previous and next video frames). It’s a bug, but is it worth fixing? I could spend days rewriting the optimization phase into a gigantic, monolithic procedure where all parts coordinate… or, I can throw these 1-byte non-changes away at the end of the existing optimization phase. You can guess which path I chose.

Some bugs are indeed bugs, and they must be fixed before I put my name on the code. For example, the bug that forced the encoding loop into a deadlock, or the bug that randomly produces black flashes in the output (still working on this one), or the bug whose generated code forgot to set a single register which prevented videos from being played without a soundcard present.

So, I hope everyone understands why the code release is late. Well… one of the reasons it is late. The other reason is that making your own videos will require some documentation (some user-directed preprocessing of the source video is necessary — sorry!), and a video showing the steps involved couldn’t hurt either, so that will require a few days by itself.

While you’re waiting, why not help me decide what movie to convert and release with the final distribution? In keeping with the spirit of the time period, I’m going to convert an entire full-length movie using the system, and ensure that it will fit onto a single CD-ROM so that users without homebrew XTIDE controllers can hook up a SCSI CDROM drive and enjoy the flick (ironically). The defacto example for this kind of thing is Star Wars, although I’m partial to TRON, as it was released after the IBM PC itself was and has its own share of iconic sequences. But, I’ve already done TRON to death, so what would you like to see? Vote in this handy poll, and if the movie you want to see isn’t there, please write your choice in the comments.

Posted in Demoscene, Digital Video, Entertainment, Programming, Vintage Computing | 6 Comments »

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