How many of you have hacked your GH2?

[Jim Snow]

Does anyone have a link to the hacked firmware?

[Henry Olonga]

PTool 3.61d topic - Personal View Talks

[Joe Ogiba]

Here are the two latest GH2 hack videos I looked at that looked great on my 1080p 47" HDTV using the downloaded files:

Scary Eye - 110mb AVCHD GH2 Hacked sample on Vimeo

GH2 110 mbps hack on Vimeo

PTool v3.62d released

http://www.gh1-hack.info/wiki/PToolSoftware

GH2:
- Improved bitrate patches
- Improved GOP patches.
- Improved MJPEG size patches.
- Added quantizer patches.
- Added few other encoder related patches.
- Few fixes, including 24L behaviour.

[Philip R. Coltart]

Just so everyone is aware, this hack is not stable. I hacked my GH2 42 mbit high and I shot a wedding (foolish lover of quality that I am) and it worked fine all day EXCEPT for long clips. I reached about 10 minutes and it just suddenly stopped recording. Then I went to play back and it lost ALL my clips. I panicked, shut the camera off and then SOME of the clips came back. I had about 70 short ones in there. When I got the card home EVERYTHING was there. Thank God!!! But I would warn everyone, it is not stable on longer clips. The camera gets tired and craps the bed. I may test lower settings but it makes me nervous for weddings because normally I just let the cam run for an hour or so. I have still yet to do back to back testing. Who has the damn time????? I need to do that though. Just wanted to warn you quality lovers out there :0)

[Ethan Cooper]

Just so everyone is aware, this hack is not stable.

As with any hack, personal experiences vary. I shot some interviews this weekend at 66mbit that didn't stop at the 4GB limit. The longest single clip I recorded was almost 30 minutes. If you read through the forums over on personal-view some people are having trouble with spanning, some aren't & as far as I know there's no consensus as to why yet.

I was running a Lexar Professional 32GB class10 133x

Then I went to play back and it lost ALL my clips. I panicked, shut the camera off and then SOME of the clips came back. I had about 70 short ones in there. When I got the card home EVERYTHING was there. Thank God!!!

Another known issue with changing the bit rates, sometimes playback freaks out & simply requires a restart of the camera. That happened to me this weekend & I almost freaked out when the screen said, "no files" or whatever it says but then I remembered the restart trick.

To reiterate, there is no bug that causes files to disappear from the card. Just don't want people getting the wrong impression.

The important thing to remember is to test any hack before taking it out into the field. If you know you're going to be running long takes then test long takes, if you know you'll be doing high detail shots or low light then test those before you go.

[Steven Thomas]

Originally Posted by Philip R. Coltart

Just so everyone is aware, this hack is not stable. I hacked my GH2 42 mbit high and I shot a wedding (foolish lover of quality that I am) and it worked fine all day EXCEPT for long clips. I reached about 10 minutes and it just suddenly stopped recording. :0)

Yes,
It's a good idea for anyone considering the hack to read through the posts to determine possible issues.

Version 3.62d improves on image quality with the auto quantizer function. As Chris Brandon mentions on VK's forum "If you go towards "detail" more of the extra bandwidth is allocated to using less quantization of macroblocks - which means better shadow detail and smoother detail all around."

Also, file spanning "can be" an issue with above 32Mb/s with v3.62d. I believe with version 3.61d 42Mb/s spanned without issues.

I'm currently using v3.62d at 66Mb/s AQ4 and the image quality is excellent!
It does not span past 4GB files, but it won't be long before VK / Chris and others figure this issue out.

I've attached a high ISO (2500) comparison image.
This image compares stock 24Mb/s 1080P to 3.62d 1080P 66Mb/s AQ4.
This is an extreme test, but it certainly shows that the hack is able to resolve more image detail than the stock firmware.

Noise removal programs such as Neat Video will now be able to model the noise more accurately which will offer a better more detailed image in the end.
Simply amazing for the $$$

[Terry Wall]

Good morning, all! I searched through this thread and while there was a lot of commentary about hacking in general, I don't think I saw any specific instructions on HOW to do it. Ethan pointed out that we needn't be computer geniuses, but I'm a bit dyslexic and would want to be careful and not "brick" my camera! So if there is a link or links to instructions, I'd be grateful!

I am shooting our 10th annual "kazoo fest," where a bunch of us meander the neighborhood playing Christmas carols on--you guessed it--kazoos!! It's a blast and all the neighbors we visit get a kick out of it! It will be at night, so I will need to shoot fairly wide open, at a high ISO. I saw John @ Workstation's incredible clip at a 10,000 ISO, shot with a hacked GH2 and a Voigtlander 0.95 glass, and wondered what I might be able to pull off with the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens. Any feedback would be wildly appreciated!

~TRW

[Evan Lloyd]

I'm ready for the hack. Is there step by step directs and links available? I'm on a Mac if that makes a difference.

Thanks
Evan

[Bruce Foreman]

Originally Posted by Terry Wall

I saw John @ Workstation's incredible clip at a 10,000 ISO, shot with a hacked GH2 and a Voigtlander 0.95 glass, and wondered what I might be able to pull off with the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens. Any feedback would be wildly appreciated!

~TRW

You should be able to come fairly close. I wouldn't go higher than ISO 10,000, 12,800 looks pretty bad but that footage at 10,000 looks pretty good. Get out and test under conditions similar to what you will be shooting under. In most cases you should look for lighting situations where you can see the light from fixtures and windows illuminating faces.

On a lot of night street video I've done with f1.8 lenses, I found I often had to stop down to f2.8 to keep from overexposing and that was at ISO 3200 and 6400. So you should be fine with the 20mm f1.7.

The stock firmware GH2 has an upper ISO limit of 3200 in motion picture mode and all things considered it may be a sensible limit. The "patches" generally allow you to remove that limit but as I almost said above, 12,800 looks like "trash".

Looking forward to the GH3!

[Bruce Foreman]

Oh, to answer the question posed in this thread:

I've applied firmware patches to the GH2 body I purchased used. I first ran the Sanity 5 patch and recently changed to Flowmotion 2.02. With both I saw some improvement in rendition of motion.

The GH2 I purchased new remains "stock". If I run into "unpredictable" behavior on a project with the "hacked" body I can simply call a 2 minute break and reach for the "stock" camera. I've had no problems so far but I don't cover events where I have to leave the camera running, I work mostly in short "takes" and have no need for "spanning".

[Bill Bruner]

Terry - Please see the personal-view ptool faq page for source files: ptool:ptool-faq [Personal View FAQs Wiki]

See Chapter 3 of the OSG Films GH2 Guide for Filmmakers for the best written explanation (consider making a donation for all the work that went into this free online book): The Panasonic GH2 Guide for Filmmakers | OSGFilms

See this video for a great explanation of the OSG GH2 Guide's written instructions:

DSLR Video - Advanced - Hacking the Panasonic GH2 - YouTube

Hope this is helpful,

Bill
Hybrid Camera Revolution

[Floris van Eck]

With the Sanity settings file, you won't run into any problems. I am using it over a year and it is as reliable as stock, with two - three times the quality. There simply is no risk.

I am using Intravenus V2 now with Sanity as my safe back-up.

[Chris Duczynski]

Overated - unless you're shooting commercials/docos to be screened/streamed/broadcast in HD. Really !!
For the rest, it's amazing out of the box with good fast glass on the front.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Chris Duczynski

Overated - unless you're shooting commercials/docos to be screened/streamed/broadcast in HD. Really !!
For the rest, it's amazing out of the box with good fast glass on the front.

I totally agree. There is a large element of the Emperor's New Clothes about all the 'awesome' clips that people post online that have been shot with the latest mega-bitrate hack. There is possibly some improvement in rendering fast motion but for most of us the standard 24Mbps AVCHD recording is perfectly adequate. The one useful feature of the hack is the ability to remove the 30 minute recording limit on PAL cameras.

[Kevin McRoberts]

I've shot extensively with stock bitrate, FlowMotion (50 & 100Mbps IPB), and a bit with "Apocalypse Now" (150+ I-frame). FlowMotion is dead reliable, everything works, plays back in camera, and yields less macroblocking, reduced black crushing, and thus significantly finer detail than the stock firmware. I've compared the two in enough situations to know this as truth. If it weren't true, I wouldn't bother using up more hard drive space because I am inherently cheap. AN and other ultra-high I-frame hacks have less appeal to me due to their fragility and diminishing returns.

That said, the stock firmware does fine for simple jobs. I don't bother with any hack on, say, a talking head or family outing. If I'm using it (as I usually do) for B-roll on corp and doc shoots, I go with FlowMotion. In post, you can lift a significant amount of detail from the shadows that is simply obliterated in the stock firmware.

Another benefit the hacks can yield is removal of the video ISO cap, allowing rolling video at 12800ISO. Quality is significantly degraded at high ISO, but in some doc situations where it's a matter of "get a crappy shot, or get no shot," I'll opt for the crappy shot. With a f0.95 prime it's as effective as some consumer cams' "night vision" mode.

As to switching out hacks, I keep a small SD card case in my shoot bag, with three ~2-4GB SD cards, pre-loaded with stock, FlowMotion, and AN settings, and write-protected. Switching firmware is thus only a matter of having a fully charged battery and two spare minutes.