[William Carr]

OK. It’s all a brain twister for me until I give it a go!

[William Carr]

Media Manager process… but if I reconnect the original 1080 clips, won’t they lose their extra bigness relative to how they were in the 720 timeline?

The original idea is to use a 720 sequence to add “lossless” zooms and moves with 1080 clips (never scaling them above 100%), layering them with still images.

Then I’d have to strip out the still images and do the upscale, and in the 1080 sequence add back the still images so they are “fresh” and sharp because they have not been upscaled. I was looking for a way to ad them back without having to 1) lose all the multi-track layering positioning of the clips, and 2) re-applying all the parameters of the stills movements and scaling.

[William Carr]

Thanks so much for the info, now I know this is as good as it gets with my laptop.

[William Carr]

Ah, the luxury of real time conversions! I will research that option and its cost.

[William Carr]

Excellent info, thanks so much. I will try this. The schedule may allow “best” settings rendering time, so it is worth it if there’s a difference.

[William Carr]

Actually FCP itself did a decent job of it, but I will also try Compressor– but is the rendering “engine” different though?

Everything is progressive ProRes, so would the idea be to crank up the quality settings, if any are applicable?

[William Carr]

Yes, alas, but the original clips were for another purpose. Oh well, we’ll see a) how the quality holds up as the stills+clips layers are upscaled, and b) if there are cuts-only transitions from the stills to the clips, as least those can be easily replaced in the 1080 sequence.

Thanks for input!

[William Carr]

Thank you Andrew and Shane– I forgot to add a main concern is the quality of the archival stills through the workflow.

They look pretty fabulous in a 1920 sequence, and slightly less fabulous when scaled from their render in a 720 sequence.

I wanted to “reconnect” the stills to their source file in the 1080 sequence so their impressive sharpness is maximized.
Is that possible without redoing everything?– meaning, stripping out the layering to only upscale the clips, then re-applying all the interpolation of the stills “by eye” so to speak?

[William Carr]

I once had a similar issue with a wide shot and was told that very high (small) f stops result in a loss of sharpness due to a mathematical certainty. I’m sorry I have no further memory as to the particulars, but from then on I rarely ever stopped all the way down to within a couple of stops from the extreme, instead using NDs or lower ISO or when appropriate, higher shutter speed.

[William Carr]

As I just posted also in the fourthirds-user site where I had started a similar thread on this experience:

FOLLOWUP RESULTS:

The camera was turned around pleasingly fast by Panasonic’s McCallen Service Center, with good customer updates. This is the opposite of my experience last year with the broadcast service center in New Jersey and an HVX-200.

The Invoice (no charge, under 1-year warranty) stated–

Service performed: PART REPLD ELECTRICL,ELECT.ADJ,INSTALL FIRMWARE

Technician’s Comments: REPLACED MAIN PCB.,UP[DATED FIRMWARE.,PERFORMED ELECTRICAL ADJUSTMENTS

There is a single part number listed, for a “MAIN PCB”.

The camera works fine after an abbreviated test. Although it looks like the firmware brings it up to a level ahead of the new GH2 body I just bought a month ago. I’ll have to take a focused moment to figure that out and get them both on the same page.

So FYI, a bricked GH2 seemed to be fixed by a new MAIN PCB, whatever that
is.

I’d like to have understood what caused the issue so I can be specifically careful in some way in the future with my two GH2s out in the field.