Greetings!

I have a couple of questions about workflow.

So far, my workflow has been to shoot 1080p24, offload footage onto mac g5, convert footage via clipwrap to prores 1080p24, convert with compressor to 720p24 dvcprohd, and edit.

Recently, I've hacked my camera to the Sanity 4.1 patch. It's quality has improved; file sizes are much larger / record time has decreased, but all in all, I'm happy with the results.

My question is: going from .mts file to .mov (prores), do I lose quality? That is to say, if I were able to edit / grade raw files, would I have higher quality results than if I transcode to prores (and ultimately dvcpro). Clearly, downrezing to a 720 frame I lose resolution, but as far as color grading goes, what is the trade off to transcoding to prores and editing / grading in that format?

I've seen several references in hack tooltips and forum comments to a 1080p60 mode available through some (or all?) hacks. What is this? My understanding was that for 60 fps we were stuck with 720p?

Thanks for sharing this safari, was very helpful to me !

Is there a way to merge to patch in one ? i mean, having for example Sanity in 720p then sedna AQ1 in 1080p ? I really like those two patches, but both on the same machine will made it perfect.

Hi Guys,

Loving the GH2 hack, but I've had a few issues with certain versions crashing the camera.

I'm looking for an absolutely stable, spanning and good for 25p 1080 version. I can't have the camera crashing in front of clients or heaven forbid losing footage. Any advice?

I've got Sandisk 30mb/s 8GB cards.

Thanks a lot, Jon

I have seen many reports here that the Sandisk 95MB/s 64GB card is the most reliable at demanding settings. I think I have also read that another size Sandisk 95MB/s card is slower or less reliable even though it is rated 95MB/s.

For short clips, and very limited storage needs (ie long record times not needed), would an 8GB Sandisk 95MB/s card be likely as fast/reliable for demanding settings as the 64GB card?

eyebox, ProRes is a lossy format, so yes, you do lose something by converting to ProRes. If the bit rate is high, you won't lose much. You'd lose nothing by staying in MTS format or working uncompressed video. But I doubt you'll notice the difference.

sangye, the GH2 can't do 1080/60p.

bechou, merging settings for different modes is possible in some cases for which the patch parameters are completely separate or identical. It's not for the faint of heart. 720p and 24p is one pair for which all of the settings are separate.

Intertia, a GOP is a group of pictures. It's a series of consecutive frames, where the first frame in the GOP is encoded in a self-contained way, without referencing any other frames (like the way a JPEG file is self contained). The self-contained frames are intra-coded - I-frames. Other frames in the GOP are coded with references to earlier or later frames, so that they can be coded more efficiently by taking advantage of the similarity between frames. They're called predicted frames - P-frames and B-frames. Generally, you needn't be concerned with GOP length, except to know that longer GOPs are more efficient (that is, greater image quality for a given bit rate, or a lower bit rate for the same quality), the difference in efficiency being greater when the frames are more similar. On the GH2, the choice of GOP length affects the highest bit rate that the encoder settings will span with. Also, due to the way the GH2's encoder works, B-frames and P-frames won't be encoded in exactly the same way as I-frames, leading to some frame-to-frame inconsistently. Intra-only settings (GOP length of 1) avoid that inconsistency.

I'm glossing over the fact that technically in h.264 I-frames can reference previously coded frames, and IDR frames can't, and really the h.264 spec defines I P & B for slices, not for frames, and that there are sub-types of all of these, and that a frame is not always a picture.

Vitaliy hacked the GH2 by breaking the firmware encryption and reverse engineering the firmware code. He has not made the encryption algorithm nor the decrypted code public. If you want to dig into his work, you better be as smart as he is.

stevenjulien, card speed does not matter for flashing the camera.

john2323, go through the Hacks category and see what people have come up with. Some guys claim high reliability for their settings. Some settings live up to the claims. Just look at the user reports. http://personal-view.com/talks/categories/hacks

Bressonftw, the GH2's default GOP length depends on the mode. It's not 6. It's 2 GOPs per second in most modes, or 50/24 GOPs per second in PAL modes. In 24p, the default GOP length is 12 frames. Every frame is an I-, P-, or B-frame.

bmcent1, the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s 64-GB card is the fastest card in the GH2 with respect to stability and spanning. The 95 MB/s 32-GB card is the second fastest. If you don't care about spanning, all SanDisk Extreme cards will perform similarly in the GH2. There is little reason to buy a 95 MB/s card smaller than 32 GB.

You know what they say about assuming.

Also, are there generally accepted settings on the LCD light & color? I've noticed the screen on the LCD is darker, has less shadow detail than perhaps the image really has.

Hi,

I wanted to go back to the original Panasonic 1.1 firmware just for comparison, but wasn't able to. I was told that I had to downgrade to Panasonic 1.0 first and then 1.1 and it would work. But, I can't find 1.0 online anywhere.

Vitaly says that downgrading to 1.0 first is idiotic. So, now I'm confused. How does one go back to 1.1? I just want it for safe keeping!

for some reason when i put my camera in c3, c2 or c1 i can change the appature like when its in M movie mode like in the 2nd video also my mic only works sometimes

hello im having a problem with the |GH2 Setup guide| im attaching this video so someone can see what im having a problem on.

Hello, I am having some trouble with hacking my cameras. It seems even though the hack is successful, the encoder still chooses to encode the video at a really low bitrate - which introduces artifacts. I have posted this question before, but I was directed to post it here with example.

The video looks fine, but as soon as I try to key out the green ( or do other stuff like grading, color correction ++) I see some horrid artifacts. Upon investigating I found that the bitrate for the video was only 9mbit - not the 75mbit that I hacked it with. This clip used the 75mbit peak reliability patch. It is filmed in 720p50 AVCHD. I used standard film mode -2,-2, 0,-2. The card used was a 16GB Sandisk Extreme HD Video Class 10 30MB/S. It is shot on a GH1.

As you can see in the picture, the key I get from the screen shows how awful the artifacts are. In this example I need the semi transparent key to preserve the reflection on the window. I used the same technique described by Andrew Kramer on his car tutorial on videocopilot.net. He used a Canon 5d and did not experience this kind of artifacts.

I hacked the camera using the procedures described in the documentation provided on this site. The procedure seems to have been done successfully. I also checked the footage in streamparser software and it to reports the low bitrate.

Any help would be appreciated.

From the different scenes I have shot with this hack, the most I have gotten out of it was a landscape scene, with a lot of windy leaves. This scene I got 19mbit. Also I added a grab from a 1080p25 scene that also got 19mbit. Both of these scenes I experienced freezes and crashes, and they took a lot of takes to get down. It seems that once the encoder pushes 20mbit both my cameras start to get unstable. But as you can see in the last example the MJPEG mode has no problem giving me high bitrates. I would use that if I could get by with 30p - but I cannot.