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Olympus hacks
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  • I just wonder why these people do this hoax.

  • @shahdoni We're working on it. It takes time. To all the complainers: donations are not a guarantee for success, they're just a motivation to continue.

  • @invaders and to motivate donations, you would need to deliver something that others could replicate.

  • @invaders: So you are working together with XThunder? Some transparency would be a good thing to keep people involved and supportive.

  • @shahdoni XThunder is working on the EM-5 and two other hackers are working on the EM-10 Among them, a guy who has contributed to the hacked firmware for Nikon in the past. Work is progressing. Dissasembly and code analysis is underway. Long way to go still. Details will not be posted to this forum, for legal and other reasons. But I will post general updates now and then.

  • @invaders So E-M1 is out? I thought this one was the most videographic friendly due to weather sealing and good size and hand grip.

  • Hopefully, by now most people here have found out and seen through all the bull shit. those who followed Nabil and others on this forum. Some are well intentioned but full of bull shit none the less

  • While we thought at least for a few days that Sony's A7II would be our holy grail, it turned out they did a bad job implementing IBIS for video purposes. Still, Olympus OM-D E-M1 has the only IBIS that works really well for video.

    I am really curious what will happen next: Will Sony address the IBIS issues in video mode via firmware upgrade? Will we have to wait for Olympus to publish the successor of the E-M1? Hacking the E-M1 seems to be no option anymore as nothing happened within one year.

  • The EM 5 successor is coming, and I'm reliably informed to expect some really cool stuff. the news will slowly leak over the next few weeks.

  • Anything else than what was noticed by 43rumours?

  • Can't say as I personally don't know any details, just told that some cool stuff is coming. And If I knew I wouldn't tell anyway. I love the EM 5, and like all of you hope the new one addresses some of the video spec wishlist

  • I guess Sony did it. With the A7II 1.10 firmware.

  • So the E-M5 Mark II seems to have all the video features I wanted to have on my E-M5. Could someone hack the Mark II firmware and perhaps bring some of those features to E-M5, or is anyone interested anymore?

  • Is it possible to add upside down display mode on EM5 or EM1 , just like on Magic Lantern ?

  • Hi there,

    I have made a set of modified firmwares for E-M1, E-M1ii, E-M5ii, E-M10ii and Pen-F. They are based on the latest official firmware versions, and in all of them the video time limitation is removed (in fact, it's just changed from 29:59 minuted to about 59 years which is enough for the most practical purposes ;) Also for the cameras with the Focus Stacking support (i.e. E-M1, E-M1ii and E-M5ii), the stacking now works with arbitrary autofocus lenses, instead of 8 Oly Pros and macro lenses.

    Here are the links for the corresponding cameras with some additional comments:

    • E-M1 - e-m1_v44.rar, not tested yet! Waiting for the tester's report.
    • E-M1ii - e-m1ii_v21.rar, video duration limit removed for FHD and 4k video, but not for C4k; focus stacking works.
    • E-M5ii - e-m5ii_v4.rar, video duration limit removed, focus stacking works.
    • E-M10ii - e-m10ii_v13.rar, video duration limit removed.
    • Pen-F - pen_f_v3.rar, video duration limit removed.

    To install the firmware, you'll need to:

    • Make sure the battery is fully charged.
    • Extract the firmware file from archive into a folder called "DCOLYMP" on your SD-Card.
    • Put the SD-Card into your camera. Start the camera while holding the OK button pressed. The focus assist LED should turn on - this means the firmware is installing, and you can release the OK button.
    • When the installation ends, the focus assist LED will start to blink. Now you can switch the camera off, and then on again. That's all.

    It's also possible to revert to the original firmware. The files and the instructions can be found here.

    The discussion and users' reports are here and here in Russian.


    Some technical info in case anyone needs it.

    To load a firmware in IDA, you need to specify the following values as "ROM start address" and "Loading address":

    • E-M1 - 0x6DAF1020.
    • E-M5ii, E-M1ii, Pen-F - 0x60021020.


    Oly_fw_manip tool available from Lightsnowdev.com contains a bug preventing from correct packing the firmwares 4.4 for E-M1. The bug can easily be corrected by changing

           if (hasXmlAttrib(block, "unknown3"))
                getHexSequenceFromXmlAttrib(blkHeadUnscrambled->zeroPadding2, 6, block, "unknown3");

    in OlympusFwManipMain.cxx file to

           if (hasXmlAttrib(block, "unknown3"))
                getHexSequenceFromXmlAttrib(blkHeadUnscrambled->zeroPadding3, 6, block, "unknown3");


    Please bear in mind this post doesn't resurrect the Olympus firmwares hacking. I'm just sharing my findings so some more experienced researcher could continue the work.

  • First of all thank you for the hack.

    Focus stacking
    I installed it to my M5.II and it seems like in camera focus stacking works with every lens but I have one issue: in fockus BKT submenu the maximum number of shots option is greyed out. Is that normal, for a hacked camera of course?

    Video limit
    I'm like you in PAL, so I use ALL-I 25p mode and it seems like every 7m:15s camera splits recording to next file. Total it created 5 files, so nowhere near 57 years :) Currently testing FHD SF 50p mode

    Batteries are Olympus, fully charged, card is Lexar 64GB, 2000x, IBIS is turned off, focus is manual.

    Would be great if you could tweak it further with stable "fill up whole card" video hack.

    Ps. Why does NOT Olympus make flashing cameras as easy as you?! :)

  • Splits recording must be due file size reaching 4Gb.

  • Camera formats the card as ex-FAT. Anyway thanks Grimor.
    FHD SF 50p mode gives no more than 5 files 10m46s each.

  • @gietrzy In focus stacking mode, the camera always makes 8 consecutive shots. It's possible to specify number of frames in normal focus bracketing only.

    I'm re-testing the video time with my E-M5ii.

    Just made a FHD SF 24p movie. Had to stop at 1:59:37 because of the battery drain.

    After the recharge I'm going to repeat the tests with FHD SF 60p, and then with FHD All-I.

  • I've checked the recorder video files, and it looks I've selected HD instead of FDH by mistake :(

  • Thanks ABel for your reply.
    Anyone knows some cheap DC coupler solution for M5.II?
    Later I'm gonna check if unlocked in camera focus stacking works with FT 150 macro Sigma
    According to BH US model also has 29:59 minutes :( Maybe it shutdown itself like Sonys to prevent overheating? The card is nowhere hot like Sandisks from hacked GH2 :)

  • @gietrzy You were right. I've tried to record FHD SF 24p and 60p movies, and they both stopped at 53 minutes and several seconds.

    There are some other limitations in the firmwares, and they seem to depend on the video parameters. I'm trying to figure them out, but this will take some time.

  • Fantastic work ABe1. I posted the hacking instructions on this forum six years ago and didn't expect anyone to use them anymore. You did an amazing job.

    Would you be able to share some details on how you figured out the structure and content of the firmware? Others may be able to learn from that and improve things or find new hacks.

  • @ABe1 Great work! Nice to see that someone does something instead of just talking.

  • Some preliminary results of making long video with my E-M5.2.

    The camera has split the long videos into smaller "chapters", the length of these chapters depends on the video quality as follows:

    • For FHD All-I max chapter length is 00:07:15.935.
    • FHD SF - 00:10:45.144.
    • FHD F - 00:18:49.628.
    • FHD N - 00:31:44.402.

    And here comes an additional limitation - the camera doesn't allow for having more than 5 chapters per movie, which essentially limits the total recording time to:

    • FHD All-I - 0:36:14.
    • FHD SF - 0:53:49.
    • FHD F - 1:34:09.
    • FHD N - 2:38:49.

    It's quite possible that other camera models have different max number of chapters for different video quality settings.