A little bit confused "gh2 hacks"

disease8

Hi there I wanted to try out the driftwood hack and I am totally confused. I installed what should be the 176mb version and the footage looks so bad its worse than before the hack. It has terrible aliasing everywhere and looks much more compressed than default. I then looked to try and download it again but after looking through all the pages and hacks I am totally confused.

What is the quantum x patch? Is that the same?

I just want the highest possible quality but also I need it to be stable as I intend to shoot some b roll for my documentary with it. I also wanted to have the audio patch on there and I tried to add the mjpeg one to. I blended the different patches with ptool on my macbook (you have to press CMD instead of alt). I thought maybe the patches were somehow conflicting with eachother but I checked in ptool and it seemed not.

Am I missing something obvious?

I have attached a clip from my apparently driftwood hacked gh2, as you can see it looks very compressed with really back aliasing and mud.

disease8

So I thought ok I will find the 176mb patch and redownload it but I cannot find it anywhere. I found his more recent patches are they usable or experimental? What is this Soviet 444 one? What is the best hack to use today in 2018.

I kinda wanted the highest quality in mjpeg and also avchd, with the audio patch I use.

Is MJPEG 422 in the GH2? I read it is not? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to using the MJPEG mode?

What happened to being able to set the FPS for MJPEG mode? I cannot see that in ptool anymore?

My mac has serious issues with MTS but MOV is fine. So if it is decent quality I may use MJPEG.

Thanks I hope someone can answer a few questions and save me hours of sifting through old threads! :)

disease8

I mean what is all this? It is so complicated and confusing lol

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/3454/driftwood-settings-series-5-cluster-v6-ultra-reliable-mysteron-crossfire-quantum-9b-sedna...

What do I use? :(

disease8

No I put the driftwood DREWnet patch on here and it looked a little better but massive moire on the roof top there:

disease8

oh dear I put the sanity hack on it and it still looks weird am I missing something? Have I damaged my camera? :(

Hmmm put the sanity hack back on and no improvement.

disease8

Well I am so confused it seems that in other modes the aliasing is not there but in HBR it is. Well at least in MJPEG it is gone.

disease8

It seems that in 24fps mode I am able to play back the files on my computer but in HBR I am not. It doesn't seem to matter how I apply the hack HBR is always bad and the bitrates never get high on anything.

Have I broken my GH2?

Was it faulty before I started hacking it?

I am so confused.

I immediately had problems with it when I tried playing mts files back on my macbook and thought it was just a apple issue with this codec but it appears the cinema mode (24fps) plays back just fine and looks much cleaner with no moire and aliasing.

This is all pretty weird I never had any issues with my gh2's in the past and always got great footage out of them.

I hope someone can help me untangle this cluster fudge?

I will try just putting an unhacked firmware on there first I guess?

Really this has taken my whole day of testing and scratching my head. I do not know. I want that driftwood hack on there with great bitrates but it just seems to all be doing the opposite.

disease8

I reset all settings and formatted card I re installed driftwood DREWnet. And it still has issues with playback and aliasing on my macbook. Why is HBR mode so different? Maybe its a faulty cam. I don't know but it's very frustrating.

balazer

HBR mode recordings are PsF interlaced. Some players handle PsF footage improperly. The right way to treat PsF is to not de-interlace it (or de-interlace by weaving). Try VLC as your player and see if the video looks any better that way. Properly treated, HBR footage looks just as good as Cinema 24p. The problem you saw in the roof is caused by improper handling of PsF.

Also, not all GH2 hack settings have good bit rates and stability in HBR mode.

disease8

Hi I really appreciate the reply. Did you see what the driftwood hack did to HBR though? It is a muddy mess. Is this then more an issue with my computer? I used Premiere to play back and get those stills, premiere plays back the HBR footage the best out of anything everything else struggles and basically freezes including VLC. But even in premiere it looks like crap. I never had any of these problems before :( I was using PC before.

The reason I want HBR mode to work so much is because it shoots in 1080 25p all the other modes do not. I live in the UK so I want 25fps. :(

MJPEG looks pretty darn nice TBH but it only shoots in 30p :(

I may have to give up on this camera, I had not idea about this problem, I always remembered the footage really clean and crisp with no aliasing or moire.

Here is a clip from the shot with driftwood:

disease8

I guess the title of this topic should be different like: "aliasing in HBR on mac". Or: "compressed look in HBR".

balazer

In Premiere for HBR make sure the project is set to 1920 x 1080 at 25 fps progressive. Disable de-interlacing on your HBR clips in Premiere and/or set the clips' properties to progressive. (Not exactly sure which it is in Premiere) That should fix the aliasing. As for the compression, try different hack settings. The ones you're using might not be doing anything for HBR. Look for hack settings specifically for 25p HBR mode. Stuttering playback will be fixed with a faster computer or different software.

Why do you want 25p? Are you planning to sell your footage to the BBC? If YouTube is your target, 30p or 60p is better.

disease8

I am suprised that the highest quality mode has aliasing. That makes no sense. I shall try playback on a windows machine.

disease8

In the uk we have 50hz electrical system you need multiples of 25 to eliminate flicker under electrical lighting. And I don't like the way 30p looks.

I will try what you said but I am sure I already have that set up.

disease8

The timeline was actually not set up right but even after setting to all intra progressive it is still looking really bad.

Grimor

1/50 shutter speed eliminate the flicker, not 25p.

disease8

I still had problems with 50 shutter or not even being able to set 50 shutter in 30p mode as it will only sec in increments of 30ish

disease8

I mean in the past with various cameras not just this on in particular.

disease8

Well due to this camera being crippled in 25p mode I am forgetting about it and goin to use the eos m with magic lantern. Shame it has such bad aliasing and moire and RGB noise but there are advantages to. I just need a stable codec that plays and edits well on my pc.

disease8

Ok after rigorous testing I have decided that the GH2 is better than the EOS M in nearly every aspect. Even with the slight aliasing and bad playback with the HBR MTE files I can live with that, as I prefer the image quality and it doesn't have as much moire or RGB noise which plagues the Canon's.

I am still confused what happened with the driftwood hack above guys?? You seen how shitty that is? Very strange, I mean that's the highest quality hack and why did it come out like that for me? :(

Grimor

Usually driftwood patches are consider the best quality for GH2. Did you follow the hacking tutorial? Have you checked the files with stream parser? Your sample video don't look so bad to me, beside those rolling shutter when you move the camera.

brudney

disease8 - I never ever had any flicker problems when shooting 24p, 1/50. And yes, 25p hbr mode isn't very good one so basically no one ever uses it. BTW, try apefos' patches, personally I like them better than those from driftwood.

disease8

Here is the video again with magnification x 3

Hi thanks for the replies no there was definitely something terribly wrong with the HBR mode after the driftwood hack. I know it is meant to be the highest quality, so I am very confused. Really I would like to use it and shoot at 25p HBR seems ok now anyway. TBH I AM hoping to sell this documentary or at least there might be the possibility of it being broadcast one day. I wanted to use a combination of my BMPCC and the GH2. Using the gh2 for risky situations where I wouldn't want to be carrying a £700 camera around (lot of money for me!). So 25p is a must.

I actually decided to keep the panasonic gh2 and return the Canon EOS M. After many tests I decided it was better image quality in every way even for stills which I was shocked about. The amount of detail, low light capabilities, colour rendition and dynamic range are all better on the gh2. Plus articulated display, better sounding audio recording (even though its compressed vs PCM on eos m!? EVF eye piece, more buttons on the body, built in flash, better battery life (by a long way!) it is just a more practical camera. ALso I already have all the lenses and a focal reducer. SO even if I use it to shoot only 720 50p I prefer it to the eos m, which is like a 720 camcorder in 1080 mode as it lacks detail and the gh2 is super sharp.

After a break from getting so stressed out by it all I looked at HBR mode again and it is ok. It was just driftwood that messed things up. Now I am using Sanity 5.1 and all is well.

disease8

Actually this guy clarified a lot but also clarified how un clear panasonics video mode settings are. Really wtf is SH??? Why cant they simply allow you to just select frame rate and codec lol. Much simpler on the eos m just select 1080 25p and guess what it is shooting 25p no cryptic symbols or strange terminology. GH2 still a better cam. :)

endotoxic

Dear @disease8

When making the hack patches several issues had to be ignored to achive such grate quality on gh2. So compromised was gh2 stability, that lots of it's features had to be Taken away to achive extra encoding performance. The color matrixes and quantification process, where heavily modified, so a lot of its modes, where altered, just like HBR.

Driftwood moon t7 is one hell of a patch. Once you grab the triks of gh2 you will see literally, how well implemented, the códecs áre, and how the límits of it's, we're suprassed, youll be amazed.

Goodyear luck.

disease8

Hi thanks for the reply I never thought of it like that. Unfortunately I had no luck with the driftwood hack it really degraded the image quality for some reason. I have no idea why. I am having luck with the sanity 5.1 with lpowel 100mbps mjpeg and the audio hack. I might try more extreme patches again still getting used to this camera again. I hate how cryptic they were with describing what its actually shooting. Great image quality. I actually seem to be prefering the image quality in MJPEG mode it seems sharper and cleaner. Well impressed so far.

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