GH1 firmware research volunteers required

[Kholi]

I'm telling you, either Panasonic is going to hire Tester13 or they're going to have him killed hehehe. His progress is nothing short of spectacular.

Haha. I know you're joking, but I agree with what tester said earlier about conspiracies.

What I'm seeing here is MAYBE there's no such thing as crippling. I'd be confident enough to say that Engineers at Panasonic are not crazy, stupid, or anything like that. Consider this: We're all now having to worry more so about what SDHC cards we have to match the compression that we want to get. Well, what does the average consumer do? They go and buy the cheapest and then have issues, blame the camera, not the card.

So, engineers would be creating a massive problem for the BRAND by rolling out a camera like this. Customers would have no one to blame but manufacturer on ignorance, which they are rightfully entitled to.

What Tester here is doing isn't for the average user of the GH1, but for us geeks and filmmakers that want the best for nothing.

It'll be interested to see the response, but I'm happy for what's happened so far and am looking forward to more.

[e-steve]

If I had an HDMI TV/Monitor I'd be all over the testing for the Live Out...If Tester13 can figure that one out, there could be a whole lot of 5DMKII and 7D's going on ebay.

Seems like in the last few days amazing progress is made every time I check back here. Amazing work Tester13.

Perhaps if there's nothing else needed to be purchased for the development efforts, we can start looking at getting Tester13 and some of the really active testers some equipment for their GH1 rigs? Lenses, external monitors, etc? If we cannot compensate them with $ we might as well give them everything they need to test with the best quality gear.

Newcomers make sure you donate something, even if it's small... this is an incredible effort.
If you have downloaded the ptool and haven't donated yet, shame on you!! There is no reason the donation account shouldn't be in the 5 figures by now. C'mon guys.

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

[Oedipax]

Also, I've noticed something, or maybe it's in my head. In mjpeg mode, my cards are lasting longer if I'm tele. When I go wide I get 2 seconds. Also when I'm on the kit lens it 'feels' like it's making my camera do more work. IS makes a difference too I get more with same card same settings same position even on a tripod with IS turned off.

Am I tripping in saying the the kit lens is making the camera do more work cause it's made to interact with it way more than a manually adapted mechanical manual lens? Or are they two completely different processes that don't eat up each other's processing power?

I'm sooooooo sorry if this question is moronic.

Wide shots contain more detail generally, so there's more information for the camera to handle - easier to get overwhelmed with data.

As for the second part, it's long been speculated (maybe it was even proven?) that the kit lens invokes some special features on the camera end that were causing compression artifacts to show up easier (under the old 17mbps bitrate) than with, say, a 'dumb' Nikon lens mounted to an adapter and working full-manual. So it doesn't surprise me this continues to happen in the enhanced firmware now.

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

Perhaps if there's nothing else needed to be purchased for the development efforts, we can start looking at getting Tester13 and some of the really active testers some equipment for their GH1 rigs? Lenses, external monitors, etc? If we cannot compensate them with $ we might as well give them everything they need to test with the best quality gear.

We are going lens way today, just it happened that I don't have any wide lens, plus audio gear for upcoming project can be useful.

I also hope to have special sponsor place in next interface remake. So, if anyone selling some gear want to provide it as donation, we could place his advertisment. This is very effective way to get info to potential customers.

[greymog]

Yes. Really. Yeah dude. Without doubt. Yup.
Looks like I answered all five.
Patch will be coming, some more testing is required.



You must ask Car3o about this, use PM, please.



It is ok to have playing it back in camera, bitrate is too much.
We'll move to this problem later.

Oh my god I just read that again, forgive me, but this has been received with a lot of excitement here. Thank you so much for all your efforts.

Will pm car3o tonight, Am trying with several brands of card, and several classes, and different amounts of detail to see if there's a pattern to the cut of recording time, or which card works best. I had no trouble with a class 6 16gb, a class 4 1gb (can't believe it) but i bought another brand of class 6 today and nothing lasted more than 5 sec.

Again, thank you so much for your work sir, it's a pleasure to follow this thread, a bit intimidating (in the good way ) but a pleasure.

Thank you for my new camera

T

[e-steve]

We are going lens way today, just it happened that I don't have any wide lens, plus audio gear for upcoming project can be useful.

I also hope to have special sponsor place in next interface remake. So, if anyone selling some gear want to provide it as donation, we could place his advertisment. This is very effective way to get info to potential customers.

This is a great idea. Hot Rod Cameras? Zacuto? Redrock Micro? Anyone have good contacts at these companies to see if they might be interested in donating some gear to Tester13?

[Slice]

Tester13, I love you!

When I saw that you changed 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 I think I wet myself a little.

Is it possible to push it to 4:4:4 or do you think bandwidth is to low for that?

Thanks so much!!!

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

This is a great idea. Hot Rod Cameras? Zacuto? Redrock Micro? Anyone have good contacts at these companies to see if they might be interested in donating some gear to Tester13?

No, I won't accept anything from Zacuto, Redrock, Hot Rod.
But from smaller and cheaper brands for normal people, yes, we must give them a chance to be more widely known. So, even if you small one man company doing some innovative things, it could be your chance.

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

I need some info from testers.

Download this tool:
http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/jpeg-snoop.html

Open JPEG file created for each MJPEG movie.
Report Quantization tables, your settings MJPEG Quality settings.
All reports must go to MJPEG Encoder research thread.

[AKED]

4:2:2 for AVCHD too?

Hi tester13,

great work, on the 4:2:2

Do you think it will be possible, to implement the 4:2:2 also for AVCHD sometimes?

[IanB]

Tester, what frame rate should we use to give you results for MJPEG? I currently have some settings loaded, but need to know what frame-rate you want us to use, or does it matter?

Thanks
IB

Also testing 5 FPS mjpeg with no other settings changed for mjpeg (so standard mjpeg except for FPSX set to 5) the camera appeared to be recording 5fps, but then after I stopped recording, camera froze, and then when I tried to bring the footage off the SDHC card onto my computer, the card shows a file, but the file has 0 bytes, I guess the camera didn't actually send anything to the SD card, even though it appeared to be recording.

I will update my firmware to test MJPEG with higher bit-rate and 30p and report on the jpeg-snoop app. (hopefully)

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

Tester, what frame rate should we use to give you results for MJPEG? I currently have some settings loaded, but need to know what frame-rate you want us to use, or does it matter?
IB

Any you like.

[lcruz]

How to guide for developers?

Tester13 thanks for your dedication to this project. I was wondering if a how to guide is in the works to aid programmers get up to speed on this. I have access to Visual Studio and a G1 at this time. Let me know if I can contribute, thanks

[svecher]

I haven't patched the GH1 yet, so here are some results on stock version. GH1 doesn't report anything while in TV Output mode, so info is limited by what TV is showing, which in this case we will call Pana Brevia as only line resolution is reported, not refresh rates.
Regular HDMI playback mode.
1) Pictures, all aspects - 720p.
2) AVCHD FHD - 1080i.
3) AVCHD SHD - 720p

Viera-link on -- everything shows as 720p.

I can run patched tests on a Sony TV later, which does show both resolution and refresh rates.

Patched using 1) version increment, 2) native playback 3) simplified AVHCD bitrate patches. When pressing record button (shutter priority mode at 1/50th) cam switches to record mode, but red Rec icon is not showing up, also unable to stop or cancel recording. On off button doesn't work either, have to pull the battery.

When using non-simplified patches (settings as detailed here http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.p...&postcount=373) footage gets recorded at avg bitrate around 24 Mbit. Confirmed native 24p in StreamEye. When played back on GH1 it actually goes out to TV as 1080i, same as original 24p-in-60i-wrapper.

Hope this helps. Let me know if any additional tests are necessary. Thanks!

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

This thread is not for emotions and wide discussion, ok?