Driftwood Hack, AF100 Samurai ADVICE, please

Bfi gave me help with some legal matters around copyright and got advice email from a solicitor. Golden...and free
Give em a call...Dont have number but based in Norwich I think.

Craig
 
TomLenham said:
Don't want to bring you down, but being a London based broadcast producer I can tell you you'll be getting a few phone calls when the film is released and the BFI and BBFC see it, especially if you try and shoot in any of the Royal Parks. Like the one surrounding Buckingham Palace for instance. Your synopsis isn't bad, try and get some more funding and do it right.
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London is a PITA to shoot in, every security guard is now on your back... I used to work for a major broadcaster, when in London instructions were , "shoot what you can until your stopped then walk away".
 
Once again, make the best film you can. Geurilla-style if needs be. If your film is good then your distributor will help with legal issues. However, if your film is a legal nightmare they might pass you over.

I'm not saying "to hell with health and safety". Stay safe and use common sense. And it's never a good idea to portray any recognised organisation, company, corporation or location in a bad light. They won't appreciate it (i.e. - nowadays it's not a good idea to show a car crash where the airbags don't deploy - car manufacturers have to show that their cars are safe and they will try and stop your film being released).
 
BTW, the HD-SDI out of the AF100 is 8-bit 4:2:2, which when recorded by an outboard deck like the Samurai is much higher quality than anything from the GH2. Recording to 10-bit ProRes doesn't give you more data, but if you manipulate the image in a 10-bit space, the interpolation and calculations done to the footage will degrade and band less than 8-bit.
 
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Remember DC we have two AFs and two GH2s to work with. I think we should go 24p with the AFs and only use the GH2s if we really have to.

It has to be said though, the image out of the hacked GH2 right now is fantastic and it is Intra frame Shooter
 
CraftyClown said:
....It has to be said though, the image out of the hacked GH2 right now is fantastic and it is Intra frame Shooter
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You are confirming that it is ... "AVC" Intra?

Do you have a link to the hack? I am now interested in considering a hack for my GH2.
 
CraftyClown said:
Remember DC we have two AFs and two GH2s to work with. I think we should go 24p with the AFs and only use the GH2s if we really have to.

It has to be said though, the image out of the hacked GH2 right now is fantastic and it is Intra frame Shooter
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Yip, yip, Rich. Right on.
 
Shooter said:
You are confirming that it is ... "AVC" Intra?
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The Driftwood 176Mbps patch doesn't give the GH2 an AVC-Intra encoder as documented here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVC-Intra

What the patch does is run the GH2's 1080p24 AVCHD codec in I-frame only mode at bitrates up to 176Mbps. That produces extremely large MTS files that are only slightly compressed. Since there are no P or B-frames, it could be called an AVCHD-Intra encoder.
 
dtzfilms said:
Tom, are you serious???? You're not having me on are you? A phone call. Flipping hell, really? Easier to ask for forgiveness notwithstanding, okay, forget about the Royal Parks, what about the underground? Shots of talent exiting the train, then exiting the tube station at the Equinox Leceister Square station or Covent Garden? Shots of a fight in one of those dark alley's in Chinatown and Soho area? I'd still get a call for that? Thing is, I haven't the foggiest idea on how to get funding for something like this. I thought self-fund this first feature for $10K, then with that on my resume push for funding on my SciFi project.

I'm sure you saw ONCE, that Irish Busker film. Shots like that require permits, too?? Those public shots were long lens and hidden mic shots.
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Of course I'm serious. Why do you think feature films cost so much to make? Too many people fall into the trap of thinking that a cheap large sensor camera means they can make a film for free - I'm sure you already know that the camera kit is a tiny fraction of the overall production cost on a movie. 'Once' is a good example - it was shot on an absolutely miniscule budget using the classic 'first feature' rules - tiny cast, as few locations as possible, simple but good story. It cost $160,000 to make, a staggeringly small amount. You'll get away with lots of shots in London if you stay handheld - you should get away with it in Chinatown and Soho, but if you use a tripod you're likely to get stopped. I used to run a channel called London TV, made for the Mayor's office and official tourist authority, and we still had loads of trouble shooting in London. We were the only people to get a blanket filming license for shooting in the Royal Parks. Ever. I'm not trying to shoot your project down - if it wasn't for people like you, great films like 'Once' would never get made - so go for it, but be realistic - the bigger the cast and the more locations you use, the bigger the cost. Shooting in London costs money; annoying I know, but it's a fact.
 
Shooter said:
You are confirming that it is ... "AVC" Intra?

Do you have a link to the hack? I am now interested in considering a hack for my GH2.
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As Ipowell says it's not proper AVC-Intra, however it is using the AVCHD codec to produce an all intra file with up to a whopping 176mbps. It is a huge improvement on the stock GH2 settings and definitely worth doing if you have a GH2
 
176mbps seems like overkill to me when the 17-25mbps seems fine for most people. Doesn't that mean the camera is working 10x as hard. With 10x as much heat? And 10x as much storage being used? And 10x as much battery being used?

Okay, I know that's not quite how the maths works... but you also don't get an image 10x as good.
 
It isn't actually 176mbps all the time, it is variable. I haven't seen any samples that have gone that high yet, it just has the ability to go that high if needed. Over on the personal view forums where the hack originated, there are lots of posts with people showing screencaps of a program showing the bitrates of the video they captured.

Also, this particular one is called the Driftwood hack, but the hack was actually done by Vitaliy Kiselev, he hacked the firmware and wrote a program, PTool, that changes the settings, all the subsequent "hacks" are just people changing the settings and releasing a saved file, for PTool, so other people can load them into their GH2s. I wish he would hack the AF100, but he seems to have some anger against the broadcast division of Panasonic and doesn't want to do it, although I believe he did release the firmware in case anyone else wants to give it a whirl, not sure about that though.

Also, it supposedly has been shown that the GH2 can output 1080p24 4:2:2 8bit from its HDMI port. It is captured at 23.97p, packaged in a 59.94i stream, and then when output to HDMI extra frames are added to get to 60i. There is a fix here on dvxuser so if you use the Atomos Ninja, you can have a clean ProRES 422 1080p24 file.

I made a post about it in the Gh2 section with the appropriate links to threads and external websites on the matter if you want to check it out, you can read it here > http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...t-on-the-GH2&p=2477993&highlight=#post2477993
 
Gary Askham said:
176mbps seems like overkill... Doesn't that mean the camera is working 10x as hard. With 10x as much heat? And 10x as much storage being used? And 10x as much battery being used?

Okay, I know that's not quite how the maths works... but you also don't get an image 10x as good.
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As you suspect, the math does not work linearly, and the quality improvement is subject to diminishing returns. However, your speculations about "10x" heat generation and battery drain are completely unfounded. To my knowledge, there are no confirmed reports of the GH2, either hacked or unhacked, ever malfunctioning from internal overheating or premature battery exhaustion.

Intra-frame codecs always require significantly higher bitrates than long-GOP IPB-frame AVC codecs. In my experience, typically 3-4 times as much to maintain comparable image quality. Among GH2 patches, cbrandin's 66Mbps 12-frame GOP patch produces 1080p static image quality with perceptibly finer details than the stock GH2. The Driftwood 176Mbps Intra Patch produces comparable results at about three times the bitrate and storage requirements.
 
lpowell said:
Among GH2 patches, cbrandin's 66Mbps 12-frame GOP patch produces 1080p static image quality with perceptibly finer details than the stock GH2. The Driftwood 176Mbps Intra Patch produces comparable results at about three times the bitrate and storage requirements.
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lpowell,

Does Driftwood's hack produces better motion rendering than cbrandin's? Do either play back in-camera? I have a no budget shot coming up soon that will involve some complex movement that I might re-hack the GH2 for.

And is it possible to load either of these higher bit hacks, & also a lower, completely stable version at the same time in order to switch back, & forth, at will? For most of my GH2 usage short record times would be fine, but I often pass it off to a crew member to shoot BTS footage, & would need longer takes. I know about loading different hacks onto separate SD cards, but rarely have the time on set to deal with the process, so would need it to be a simple menu adjustment.

And one last question. When a clip fails to span does the camera indicate that it's stopped recording? I used to know but it's been awhile since I've tested, & have forgotten.

Thanks,
Bern
 
Since Driftwood's 176Mbps patch records nothing but Intra frames, it produces no AVCHD motion artifacts between frames. While cbrandin's 66Mbps 12-frame GOP patch uses both P and B-frames, for filming rapid motion you can set its AQ patch to favor motion over static image quality. The advantage there is that you can set the 1080p 24L video mode to a lower bitrate to guarantee reliable file spanning. Although some have reported successful file spanning with the 176Mbps patch on ultra-fast SD cards, I'd want to test this thoroughly before taking the risk of using it on a video shoot.

When file spanning fails, the GH2 stops recording and reverts back to Live View mode. The 4GB MTS file that contains the footage is not corrupted. The 66Mbps videos I've taken played back normally in-camera, the 176Mbps footage did not. I was able to edit both in Premiere CS5.5 without trouble.
 
My 02 - have you decided if you're delivering for a theatrical release, or for television? If it's theatrical, shoot at 24fps in both countries, but I'd shoot with a 1/50th shutter in the UK and a 1/60th in the US (shutter at native mains frequency to minimise flicker from street lights etc). Strangely, today I was cutting footage from an AF101 and a hacked GH1 today (lpowell's 75mbps patch) and they looked very good against each other..
 
I don't know about some of you but I've seen a number of people (Red camera owners) claim to shoot with the hacked GH-2 and Red cameras on the same project (in 1080p) and couldn't really tell them apart. So I wonder why some of you discourage the OP to not use it as a "B-Cam" with the AF. I understand the difficulty in matching the GH-2 to the AF100...but one should be able to do the opposite with a lot less problems. If you don't like the hack's flavor of 4:2:0 8bit Intra Frame (which is superb) then like atarijedi suggested go out of the HDMI to a Ninja and use the well documented fix located here in this forum and get a 4:2:2 8bit image. That's if you don't mind the workaround.
 
Why I would not recommend it "practically" as a B-Cam on a feature shoot is...audio input and control limitations, exposure control (ie no waveform) , fixed scene setting and control, variable frame rate limitations, clunky user interface that comes from its menus and form factor....

The GH2 is a stills camera (DSLR) that can shoot moving footage ...but it aint a movie camera in any true movie making practical sense.

In saying that ...it definitely could have still its uses in getting footage for a film but 2 Af100s would be my choiceany day.

BTW - a "B" Cam can bring its own issues. I have shot a lot of B cam ( Second unit D.P / Director stuff ) but then I also had an entire "B" unit to support the camera. The B camera always matched the A camera media BTW.
 
atarijedi said:
Also, it supposedly has been shown that the GH2 can output 1080p24 4:2:2 8bit from its HDMI port. It is captured at 23.97p, packaged in a 59.94i stream, and then when output to HDMI extra frames are added to get to 60i. There is a fix here on dvxuser so if you use the Atomos Ninja, you can have a clean ProRES 422 1080p24 file.

I made a post about it in the Gh2 section with the appropriate links to threads and external websites on the matter if you want to check it out, you can read it here > http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...t-on-the-GH2&p=2477993&highlight=#post2477993
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I read elsewhere from a Panny source that the 4:2:2 HDMI from the GH2 is derived from the compressed 4:2:0, rather than coming directly off the sensor before the compressor, like the AF100. So recording to a Ninja is no better than transcoding the memory card files to ProRes. FWIW.
 
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