I have to start with the little GH1 history here:
Hacking GH1's firmware and creation of the Ptool was Vitaliy's really big score and made his work internationally well-known. At that time, Vitaliy was still known under name "Tester 13". This hack has changed the world: many people saw from this moment on that not all hacks definitely have to mean something negative. Among many hackers who try to achieve good things with their work, there are unfortunatelly also some, who cause damages in the PC systems and data lost. Vitaliy's hack was not made to cause any harm or devostation- just in contrary, it has opened the possibility for countless small-budget-film producers to fullfill their dreams without ruining their financial future with bank loans for expensive cameras. Without injury of copyrights or any other laws, Vitaliy's hack of the GH1's firmware was the most elegant way in the newer history and example how firmware manipulation of a camera can produce creativity. In its way, it was poverty eradication deed in the world of videography.

Hacked GH1 can't hold as high bitrates as the hacked GH2 can, due to limited speed of its SD card writer. Also, the GH1 isn't featuring highly effective B-frames like the GH2 does. Our p-v mate @LPowell has made the biggest and most honourable work in development of the patches for the GH1, especially after Vitaliy's release of Ptool versions of newer generations. So although it is great pity that very productive people like @driftwood or @bkmcwd didn't contribute so much to explore the GH1 until its utterly limits, the fact remains that there is no so much space for developing the patches for the GH1 due to the hardware limitations of this camera. LPowell's excellent patches cover needs for many situations and most of people who use the GH1 can be well-served with one of his patches.

Regarding some specific film situations in the recording situations I am constantly confronted with- and due to the fact that none of the existing patches covers my own needs completely well, I was forced to work on my own patch which would do it all. It is one single patch I needed and it has been developed in small steps over many months so my GH1s perfectly serves me now. Specificly spoken, I often record concert performances of classical music. All seen happens only once, at least 5-6 cameras must run all the time and reliably record whole the performance. I can maintain in the silence only one single camera (if at all) and have no access to any of other cameras during whole the performance (save for during the break which is middle in the concert) and those cameras are positioned all over balconies, sometimes quite difficult to reach anyway. So the cameras just must reliably do their work in absolute silence, with one button push on the beginning to start- and second push to stop the recording after several hours. The other function I need is the timelapse, mostly in the nature, and it is less tricky situation- only very frequently used in my case.

As this patch was specially designed to give maximal performance and reliability in FHD 24p and in timelapse recordings (which are set to MJPEG), this patch has been optimized to give maximum there. In terms of the GH1 it means that the costs will likely be carried in all other settings. Due to its creation idea and unequally distributed priorities, it is not an universal patch although it should actually work in all modes. Therefore there is also huge gap between bitrates and GOP number of its NTSC mode (where the priority is set) and PAL modes, which is the weak part of this patch.

The "Varigop" patch is now in beta-stage. After the recording modes it was designed for worked really good, I've started fixing many smaller bugs in all other modes until this point, where they also seem to work just fine. But mind you, this patch will need more tests and it is likely that smaller bugs in other modes outside 24p and timelapse could occur. Besides my real life job, I have really little time left for additional testings (I am happy every time when I can go shooting at all), so it would make me very happy and it would help in the development of this patch to get any feedbacks about its functionality. That's why please feel welcome to try this patch and let me know your impressions.
Known strange behaviour: after flashing the patch for the first time, on some cameras "S" mode will seem to not work well (the value can only increase). Change the mode and try after that "S" mode again, on some GH1's where I tried it, this strange behaviour appeared only once and returned never again. So it didn't turn to be an issue sofar. Stabilizing of the "S" mode was BTW the greatest difficulty in development of this patch and the reason why I didn't release it long ago. In all first versions of the "Varigop", "S" mode was fully broken.

Special thanks to @cbrandin and @LPowell for some valuable advices which helped me recently to bring the "Varigop" to beta-stage and to @GH13Timelapser, Jordan Noblet who was the developer of this timelapse settings as well as his rendering software. My biggest thanks goes to @Vitaliy_Kiselev who will make me possible to make superpatch out of this if shutter speed in AVCHD could be set to minimum of 1/25s (instead of 1/30s right now) which would bring incredible benefits for all of us who live in PAL countries and where 1/30s can be problematic for causing the flickering under fluorescent lightings. I hope that the next version of Ptool will contain this possibility.

@ tetakpatak

Thanks for releasing this patch!

I was hoping for a definitive low GOP patch to use with my GH1. I really appreciate you keeping the patch development for the GH1 moving forward. And of course thanks to Vitaliy, LPowell, Rigs, GH13Timelapser and others for there contributions as well.

All the best,

Mark

What are the high bitrates, exactly? It may be useful to show at least some number

@Fool4UAnyway Check my 3rd post quite on its beginning. I can not give you other numbers in this moment, the bitrate is anyway variable and it will strongly depend on your subjects, lighting and lenses. I will update soon first three posts with more facts.

720p60 mode wasn't priority target of this patch, although the GH1 produces files with highest bitrates in this mode. It needs much more testing. I've uploaded screenshot with strange looking P-frames just to demonstrate the problems from the early stages of the patch in "S" mode. 720p60 seems to be meanwhile under control, but it does need much more testings- this is beta version. I will try to improve this mode if it won't be on costs of 1080p24.

Here are freshly done StreamParser analysis of 30s real-life testshots in 720p60 mode:

@zcream No, I'm sorry but I really doubt I'll be able to improve 25p- this patch rocks in 1080p24 on costs of all other modes. I am surprized how good actually 720p60 looks meanwhile "on paper" after fixing some bugs. But it also definitely needs more testing.

For 1080p25 I strongly recommend @LPowell's patches "Blackout" and "Latitude" which work great in PAL modes.

Here you can get impression of the integrated timelapse in "Varigop":

Hey, mate- don`t worry. I indeed have uploaded Parser screenshot of an old and solved S-mode problem in wrong post.... I attended to upload it after second post where I described it, not after third post.

@Aria The reliability+spanning+quality in 1920x1080 24p was my motivation for developing this patch. There are indeed great patches for the GH1 existing, but out of my experience, this SD card was a key to success, no matter which patch we talk about:

@mmband
The setting you've uploaded in your post is my file with saved 3GOP settings by our mate @rigs, I uploaded this file with his settings on his topic in December 2012 for the reason he never did it himself (old Ptool couldn't extract and save settings.... :-)
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/100765#Comment_100765

Besides, you are spreading wrong information here:
* rigs 3GOP has slightly lower bitrates in 24p mode, definitely not higher than "Varigop"
* it does not work better, as his "S" mode (shutter priority) is broken
* rigs' patch is not fully stable, it freezes on the dead charts with extremely high details (all in focus / well lit / sharp lens) sometimes it freezes even with fastest cards and after only several seconds, what "Varigop" doesn't. That was the reason why I added 95MB/s card as recommendation, I think these cards didn't even exist yet when rigs released the setting.

Rigs' 3GOP was my big inspiration for developing "Varigop", I desired to unify its high bitrates in 24p with the reliability of @LPowell's fast action 3GOP patch. So speaking about 24p mode only: "Varigop" is the most improved low GOP patch for the GH1 I was able to achieve.

And please read carefully my first posts: 25p was not target of this patch, there are better patches for that mode. The "Varigop" only accomplishes already developed well-working GH1 patches done earlier by our other p-v mates and improves its AVCHD 1920x1080 24p mode.

So, after all I really don't understand your motivation to upload someone else's settings here without mentioning the source (maybe you would notice it was uploaded by me) and why do you post simply wrong information without testing both patches very carefully as first?

@rigs
mate, I am very honoured to get your response, as you with your 3GOP patch was my biggest inspiration to develop this patch.

I am also happy to see day after day how stable it seems to work, sofar without any crashes. The bitrates are higher than we dared to expect from the GH1 and so far without stability problems.

I think both the latest Ptool version with its new options in "patch for testers" as well as the rapidly fast 95MB/s Sandisk card were very important factors to provide "Varigop" the reliability, so not only the settings were the key for success here.

Well, who cares now anymore, important is that old good GH1 rocks again ;-)

@tetakpatak Is there a 40-50mbps version of your patch?

First of all well done! But I have a question.. I have a 45mb/s SD Card (Sandisk Class 10, 16GB), do you think i can use the hack or it might be dangerous?

I love this patch It's given me only 1 heart attack and that is because I didn't format the card in the camera before shooting photos, I just used a card that had been in my GoPro and I recorded video but erased my photos. User Error in my book. I Love This Patch!!!

@yyeah which recording mode did you use and on which value did you set in-camera sharpening?

Dunno if any one using 95MB/s 64gb Sandisk Extreme Pro had memory card reader error in GH1. I had no problems at all in GH2 with same card. GH1 with 45MB/s patched with this setting Varigop showed errors after 15seconds or so.

I wondered if GH1 can't read 64gb_95MB/s card? or just mine ?