Panasonic DMC-GH2 Review – 1080p/720p MTS Video | Camera and Camcorder AVCHD Video Converter

Panasonic DMC-GH2 Review – 1080p/720p MTS Video

Posted by admin on March 20, 2011 Leave a comment Go to comments

As a photographic lover, I always do some camcorder research and comparison. The camera I prefer to use is DSLR series. Before I just took some photos with my DSLR camcorder and now I would like to be off to video recording. I’m very new to DSLR filmmaking – technology has come on leaps and bounds since I was shooting at uni on a Canon XL1S, so please forgive me if I sound like a complete FNG when I describe this.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2 is the first paragraph of my non-Canon DSLR. For this camera: some people think it’s not a DSLR, others thought it was. For me, it is !!

I use GH2 to shoot videos . In my sight, the higher quality of GH2 recorded video can be comparable with HD CAM. The DMC-GH2 can record high-resolution full-HD 1,920 x 1,080 movies in astonishing smooth 60i , doubling the sensor output from 24p / 25p to 60p / 50p. Therefore I compare the video files of GH2 two models with my TM700 generated 1080/60p footages.

I respectively recorded1080/60i AVCHD video and 720/60p AVCHD Lite video with Panasonic GH2. But when I imported videos to my Mac. I found that my Mac can’t be compatible with those videos. And when I use the Log and transfer using Apple ProRes 422 I get a bit rate of approximately half the original clip (My clips were originally 24mb/s and they converted to approximately 11mb/s). This Bitrate loss is really a distracting and annoying issue for my absolute HD video playing. (This is a big problem for me. I would like to get one effective solution as soon as possible so that I can play and edit my camcorder footages on Mac properly.)

My Mac Running System Version: Mac OS X 10.6.6
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

In order to solve the problem, I searched the App Store and found Aunsoft MTS/M2TS Converter for Mac which can convert these videos to MOV with keeping its original parameters.（http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/aunsoft-mts-converter/id422249152?mt=12）

When I imported GH2 videos to this Mac MTS converter, I recorded the parameter information before importing,

I Set 1920*1080 /1208*720 from the video size drop-down box to keep the original HD resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. Click the drop-down box for bitrate and frame rate, and I chose original. After this conversion was completed, the output video parameters were the same with its original ones.
Ok, here have a look at the comparison between video files of GH2 two models and TM700 generated videos.

DMC-GH2 1920*1080 1080i AVCHD video :
video codec :h264
video fps:60fps
video size:1920*1080
audio codec:ac3
audio bitrate:256000bps
audio sample:48000hz
audio channel:stereo

DMC-GH2 1280*720 720p AVCHD video :
video codec :h264
video fps:59.94fps
video size:1280*720
audio codec:ac3
audio bitrate:192000bps
audio sample:48000hz
audio channel:stereo

TM700 1920*1080 60p AVCHD video :
video codec : h264
video fps:60(fps)
video size:1920*1080
audio codec:ac3
audio bitrate:384000(bps)
audio sample:48000(hz)
audio channel:5.1 channels

Therefore, I think the converted video can be equal to the original one.

I have converted my three video files to playable video formats for their playing on the MAC. The players I use include Quicktime Player, VLC, RealPlayer. In my sight, the GH2 1080p video has the same sharper image with TM700 1080p recordings. The GH2 1920 * 1080 videos and TM700 are almost the same, but the 720p quality is not very good. But, as a DSLR camera, GH2 can produce of HD CAM videos. Judging from this point, Panasonic GH2 is worth buying.