Panasonic GH 5 super slow

[weakmap]

Hi.

I'm using Wifibooth on an iPad mini with ios 12. I bought the selfie package a while ago when I used wifibooth with my previous camera. Now I got a new camera, the Panasonic GH 5.
The live view is not lagging, but when I took a picture, it takes roughly 30 seconds to show it. As you can imaging, this is pretty unusable.

I'm, using a class 10 card, so this should not be the issue. I'm connecting the the ipad directly to the wifi of the camera. The initial connection also takes long (roughly 20 seconds, and sometimes it doesn't work at all)

I've tried to set the image quality to the lowest setting, but this has no effect at all.

Anything you are aware of what I can try to do?

[tim]

Do you have any other iOS devices you can try to eliminate the ipad mini as the issue? Like an iphone?
Panasonic cameras are very slow at notifying that a new photo is available so it can be that it just takes a long time before the photo even starts downloading.
It may help to do the following on the camera BEFORE connecting wifibooth: format the memory card then take one photo.

[weakmap]

I now have:

- formatted the sd card -> did not help
- used my iphone X instead of the ipad mini. There the issue is even worst. Live video is nearly unusable, transferring a photo takes roughly 45 secs.
- used the original panasonic image app. There taking a photo and viewing it is very fast...

After doing all of this, I played around with the settings -> Wifibooth on the ipad (slow camera, fast camera), but it did not help at all.

[tim]

Sorry to hear this. At the moment I have no suggestions.
The core issue is that the camera takes ages to notify the app that a photo is available. So 30 seconds to get a photo isn’t surprising.
One thing to check with settings app -> wifibooth -> “faster camera”: make sure you kill wifibooth and restart it after changing any settings in settings app. Don’t try anything in there other than “faster camera”

[weakmap]

will try this asap when I'm back home. thing that makes me wonder is, why is the "original app" not that slow? The panasonic app takes only ~2 seconds.

[tim]

Can you please clarify - what in the original panasonic app takes only 2 seconds? Does that include taking the photo and then downloading the full size image? Are you sure it isn't just showing a preview instead of the full resolution?

If they ARE previews you're seeing in the original app, you might be able to get Wifibooth to use them: kill Wifibooth if it is running, go to Settings app -> wifibooth -> turn on "Disable cam filesystem access" (and make sure all other switches are OFF), start Wifibooth again.
Let me know if that worked

[weakmap]

Trying to turn on the "Disable Cam Filesystem" or enabling "Faster Camera" causes this:
https://www.dropbox.com/transfer/AAAAAA ... 4xI86X6CKs

Doing it without all these options, a photo takes ~20 secs to be loaded.

Using the original app "Panasonic Image App" loading the images takes 2 secs. When clicking on a photo, I see it is a bit blurred at first but after ~500ms, it is a good quality.

[weakmap]

by the way. the app is unusable on an iphone using the gh 5. It's slow, the live view doesn't work and it is loosing the connection to the camera every ~10 seconds.

[tim]

Hi weakmap

I just tested a brand new Panasonic GH5 (unboxed it, set up its home region etc) and had no problems.
I tested with an iPad Pro 10.5" with iOS 13.3, the full size default JPG (approx 7MB) transferred in 10 seconds after the ring/progress indicator was initially shown.
I tested with an iPad Air 1 with iOS 12, the full size default JPG (approx 7MB) transferred in 10 seconds after the ring/progress indicator was initially shown.
My guess is that the full-sized iPads have much better antennas than the ipad mini / iphone Xr. I'm not sure why wifibooth would be more affected by this but i'm unable to reproduce the issue you're facing.

Any chance you can get access to a full-sized ipad (not a mini) to try?
Also you might try resetting the camera to default settings -- not sure that would help, but, the GH5 I tested was at default settings

[weakmap]

Did you also test with any iPhone?

[tim]

Unfortunately no, I did not have time to.
Any chance you can get access to a full-sized ipad (not a mini) to try?

[weakmap]

I tried to find ppl with a full sized iPad, but didn’t find any. The ones with an iPad are as old as mine. (Ios9).

Nowadays mobiles became so huge, buying an iPad is most likely a waste of money..


Anyways, I did a hard factory reset of my gh 5, tried it again with the iPad mini and iPhone and saw exactly the same. iPhone-> unusable, ipad-> extremely slow. (

[tim]

OK. Any chance your iPad is in a case of some kind? Perhaps the case is interfering with the wifi signal.

[weakmap]

I've factory-resetted the ipad and it's "caseless".

with the ipad, I've measured it takes ~15 seconds to transfer 2 photos shot in a row. Honestly if I imagine ppl standing in front of the photobooth, taking those 2 photos.. not many ppl will wait until this is done. most will think there's something broken.

General question, is it really necessary to transfer the full blown picture? Can't you transfer a reduced quality to showcase it on an ipad? I mean the resolution of an ipad doesn't justify a 7mb jpg does it?

[tim]

You're correct - most people set the camera NOT to take a 7mb JPG. Personally I set my camera to take small JPGs and no one has complained. My small JPGs are 1mb each, not 7. I also set my camera to RAW+JPG, so that although the JPGs are small, the RAWs are there for later editing if I need. Wifibooth doesn't download the RAW files.

Transferring 14mb in 15 seconds seems perfectly reasonable to me: your camera is maintaining 1MB a second including changing modes, answering queries from Wifibooth about its storage media, and a bunch of other things.

[weakmap]

I honestly don't see a setting to reduce the image size. Only thing I can do is changing the Megapixel size to low. Changing this to the minimum value however doesn't change the timing...

[weakmap]

I set the quality now as low as possible.

See screenshot for size: https://www.dropbox.com/transfer/AAAAAO ... iwJQdzW0U8

Both are ~360kb. It took 15 seconds to transfer them.

[weakmap]

Any news, or rather can I expect any news in the future or is the silence meant to be a ‚it is how it is‘?

Because as I said, I turned down the quality, the image is now only 360 kB and still it takes 16 seconds to show.

And yes, I’ve taken the afford to borough a full size iPad with iOS 13 and still it is this slow.

[tim]

Hi Weakmap
Thanks for the update - which ipad were you using with iOS 13?
I wish I had regular access to a Pansonic GH 5 unfortunately I have to travel quite some distance to get to one, they are quite rare in this country

[weakmap]

ipad pro, latest version, ios 13
I'm up for helping in any way I can. Wireshark, dancing.. whatever it takes.

[tim]

OK, I will prep a beta build with logging enabled and get you to send me the logs. Perf-related issues are very difficult to see in logs so i'm not super hopeful, but it is definitely worth checking if there's something obviously unexpected reported. Apple has to approve beta builds (sigh) so please give me a couple of days for that

[weakmap]

Looking forward to this.

[tim]

Thanks - apple just approved the beta. Sent you an email.

[weakmap]

Yep. Shot a video, did all the debugging and send you all necessary infos.

Hope it helps

[tim]

Hi weakmap,
Thanks for the video you sent, it's super clear. I appreciate the time you took to make this.
There are two separate things happening here, i'll start with the iPhone.

iPhone
Your iPhone's wifi connection to your camera is not good. There are 2 main reasons for this: your camera and phone are right next to each other. Try with about a meter of separation. Also, your phone's antenna is lying flat on the table, and the plane of your camera's antenna is 90 degrees (vertical) from your phone. That's pretty much the worst it can be: try with your phone standing up. Finally, please take your phone out of its case. Cases decrease wifi performance. Cameras have teeny tiny antennas so they are far more sensitive to wifi issues than many other devices. The reason your iPhone's wifibooth performance is so much worse than your iPad, is because your iPad's wifi antenna is far, far bigger.

iPad
What I see in the video is what I expect the optimal performance of the iPad to be with the GH5. As you stated in the video, it takes 15 seconds after the photos are taken for them to finish downloading and be shown in the gallery. Here are the things the app does in that 15 seconds, after telling the camera to take the last photo:

1. wait for camera to be ready to process the next command
2. switch from shooting mode to filesystem mode
3. wait for camera to be ready to process the next command
4. discover new files on the storage card (since the last time it was checked)
5. wait for the camera to be ready to process the next command
6. begin streaming the new photos
7. process the photos on the ipad (includes applying watermarks, resizing, saving to camera roll, etc)

The actual streaming of the photos (small, 650kB as you said) is actually only #6: you can see when this actually happens -- it's when the pink circle actually moves / shows progress. This is very quick: only about 2-4 seconds or so.
In other words, the actual downloading of your photos is taking 2-4 seconds, and the rest of the 11s is the other parts.

Now let me explain why the other parts are taking so long: because it's a Panasonic/Fuji/Olympus camera. Specifically, Panasonic cameras take a long time for the "wait for camera to be ready to process the next command". Worse still, although the GH5 is one of the best Panasonic cameras, Wifibooth has to perform more or less to the lowest common denominator, ie. the *worst* Panasonic cameras (which are much slower, like the popular FZ80); for this reason Wifibooth has logic like "If this is a Panasonic camera, wait extra long here". Finally, the speed of the SD card makes a big difference in Pansonic cameras, so Wifibooth has to be careful that it doesn't only function correctly if you have a good/fast card, but also if you're using an older/slower card too.

The extra delays for Panasonic cameras are all bypassed by turning on "Faster Camera" in Setings App -> Wifibooth, but as you mentioned earlier in this thread this causes your camera to stop functioning with Wifibooth, because it actually needs the delays to function correctly. The extra delays are, specifically:
a) 3s between stopping live-view and going to filesystem access mode
b) 3s after switch to filesystem mode
c) 1s after discovering new files
... that's at least 7s already.

Assuming "faster camera" (which bypasses these delays) does not work for you, then the only thing I can think of is to make these delays configurable, and let you play with them. You might be able to get down from 15s to about 10s or so.

Keep in mind that after guests take the photos, it takes them some seconds to walk from where they are standing, to where the iPad is. So a lot of these 15 seconds are not noticed by the guests, because by the time they walk up to the iPad it is often already loading the photos.