FINALLY!! AF100 HACK Pledge

owaltec said:
YES... Definitely I would consider putting up the 3,000 but no one has answered my question. I want to know what would the difference be between the hack and an atomos samurai??? AND, Is the hack really doable or is it just some guajiro dream???
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I promise you someone smarter and more qualified will respond to you, but for now let me say this: I have no idea what a guajiro dream is, but I'll make an educated guess and extrapolate thus:

I think only Vitaly can answer this fully, but the difference might be not needing to add extra weight and inconvenient cables with the samurai. If I'm not mistaken, the Samurai records ProRes422 and I'm not sure what that bit rate is. Vitaly says he CAN hack the AF100. We've been going back and forth on this here on this forum. Barry Green chimed in and said it was unhackable (as per Panny) and in most cases if Barry says something, I take it as gospel, but in this case being a former STi Street racer, I still follow turbo charged imports and whatnot and I used the analogy of the Nissan GTR 35 claimed to be unhackable (as per Nissan) but the mod shops hacked the ECU Computer and now that thing churns out 1000bhp+ nigh double the stock output. Binary is binary, code is code, algorithms... so guajiro dream? I don't think so. The good thing is that, you don't have to put up the $3000 unless Vitaly says yes, he'll hack the AF100.


GTR 35 1370hp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gXRl4O5-98&feature=related

GTR 35 1500hp Beats Bugatti Veyron, beats? nay whoooooops!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5zD3nlnDZM&feature=related

and Nissan said the GTR couldn't be hacked.
 
mcgeedigital said:
All of the newer ones are 4:2:2 10-bit, although the 10-bit output of the AF-100 is 8 bits padded out to 10.
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Please clarify for all of us. All of the newer AF100s are 4:2:2 10-bit as opposed to 4:2:0 on the earlier batch of AF100s? Or are you talking about recorders?
 
Thanks for the answer. Thats part of what I was looking for... Here is my dilemma... If investing 1.600 dlls for a samurai, gives me what the hack would for 3,000, its a no brainer. I practically would be interested if the Hack offered more than what the samurai can offer. The reason Im willing to invest 3,000 dlls in this hack is because Im tempted to buy the C300 (15,000) but I wouldn't need to if the hack or the samurai give me better quality than that... so, also a No brainer... I guess my question still stands... What would be the main difference between the hack and the Samurai???
dtzfilms said:
I promise you someone smarter and more qualified will respond to you, but for now let me say this: I have no idea what a guajiro dream is, but I'll make an educated guess and extrapolate thus:

I think only Vitaly can answer this fully, but the difference might be not needing to add extra weight and inconvenient cables with the samurai. If I'm not mistaken, the Samurai records ProRes422 and I'm not sure what that bit rate is. Vitaly says he CAN hack the AF100. We've been going back and forth on this here on this forum. Barry Green chimed in and said it was unhackable (as per Panny) and in most cases if Barry says something, I take it as gospel, but in this case being a former STi Street racer, I still follow turbo charged imports and whatnot and I used the analogy of the Nissan GTR 35 claimed to be unhackable (as per Nissan) but the mod shops hacked the ECU Computer and now that thing churns out 1000bhp+ nigh double the stock output. Binary is binary, code is code, algorithms... so guajiro dream? I don't think so. The good thing is that, you don't have to put up the $3000 unless Vitaly says yes, he'll hack the AF100.


GTR 35 1370hp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gXRl4O5-98&feature=related

GTR 35 1500hp Beats Bugatti Veyron, beats? nay whoooooops!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5zD3nlnDZM&feature=related

and Nissan said the GTR couldn't be hacked.
Click to expand...
 
owaltec said:
Thanks for the answer. Thats part of what I was looking for... Here is my dilemma... If investing 1.600 dlls for a samurai, gives me what the hack would for 3,000, its a no brainer. I practically would be interested if the Hack offered more than what the samurai can offer. The reason Im willing to invest 3,000 dlls in this hack is because Im tempted to buy the C300 (15,000) but I wouldn't need to if the hack or the samurai give me better quality than that... so, also a No brainer... I guess my question still stands... What would be the main difference between the hack and the Samurai???
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Well, I'd love to be in such a quandary, C300 or AF100. Look at personal view, (the home of the driftwood hacks for the GH2) and you'll see there are various hacks, 44Mbs to 176Mbs - the details of these hacks, I'm not aware of, but they all have their flavors and strengths. So the first hack, should it ever come to light would only be the beginning, the vanilla, more hacks will come, pushing the limits bit by bit. I'm quite sure, but welcome any correction on this: I'd say an AF100 with a hack or a Samurai takes my money any day over a C300. But don't listen to me. That's just impecunious me looking at the extra dollars I can use to shoot a feature. After buying the Samurai and AF100, assuming I have all my other accouterments in place, lens, tripods etc, I'll have nearly 9K left, and people have been known to shoot features for 10K. Wasn't Paranormal Activity shot for $15K? Went on to gross $300 million plus, www.boxofficemojo.com. I don't know what your objectives are - gun for hire, independent film maker. Dunno, but as an aspiring filmmaker, I don't think a C300 will give me any advantage over an AF100 + Hack/Samurai. But that's just me, so don't take it from me. There are plenty of scary knowledgeable individuals on here who can break this pro and cons game down for you penny per pixel. Moi? I don't really care what's really out there, if it's not making my bed and cooking me some serious weetabix, I'm in the AF100 camp till an Alexa/Film budget do us part.
 
Hahahaha... ALL GREAT INFORMATION... but... My question still stands... What would be the main difference between the hack and the Samurai??? Anybody out there that can answer this???
 
I'm also ready to chip in 2 or 3 Bob Borden (our 100$ buck here in Canada), maybe more, if the hack gets me something more than what I currently get from the Ninja on the AF100. Yeah it's kinda clunky but it's a great little device.
 
owaltec said:
Hahahaha... ALL GREAT INFORMATION... but... My question still stands... What would be the main difference between the hack and the Samurai??? Anybody out there that can answer this???
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For me it would be things like being able to alter the highlight handling, to have it roll off a bit more gracefully (at the expense of detail).
 
Marvelous, the pot now stands unofficially at $4800 in specific amounts pledged, not counting the conditional $3000 pledge and two other non-specified pledges.
 
tacotim said:
For me it would be things like being able to alter the highlight handling, to have it roll off a bit more gracefully (at the expense of detail).
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I thought DRS takes care of highlights already, but probably not enough for your liking? I mean DRS works wonders on Hawaiian beach weddings when the sun turns the ocean and sky white.
Well, on the HPX170, dunno how it is on the AF100. Never had the occasion to use it on the AF100.

The hack is an unknown. It doesn't exist yet and cannot be compared to something that does. Even Vitaly himself can only speculate what he can do with it at this point. But if the GH2 hack, as chronicled on personal view, is any indication, we might be in for a good ride.
 
I guess I have to go for the Samurai... But If you guys start that kickstarter, well, Ill pitch in a couple of hundred...
 
owaltec said:
Hahahaha... ALL GREAT INFORMATION... but... My question still stands... What would be the main difference between the hack and the Samurai??? Anybody out there that can answer this???
Click to expand...

It's a rhetorical question until someone actually hacks it.
 
I'm in for $200 and would be fine with smaller "pledge" amount upfront. I really want to see 1 to 1 and 720p / 1080p 30 out of the sdi... I love my ki pro but need to record normal frame rates and not interlaced...
 
owaltec said:
Hahahaha... ALL GREAT INFORMATION... but... My question still stands... What would be the main difference between the hack and the Samurai??? Anybody out there that can answer this???
Click to expand...

In theory this could be demonstrated by testing hacked GH2 material against AF100 external recorder material, but as many people have pointed out in the past, the sensors in the two cameras are not identical. So 2 or 3 things I will toss out here:


  1. Is anyone even remotely concerned about voiding the warranty on their AF100? No one really cares about the warranty on a GH2 but bricking an AF100 might be a little different.
  2. What are the goals of an AF100 hack? Better line resolution? Less noise? Higher ISO? Greater dynamic range? Improved color space?
  3. Which of the goals I have listed above have seen real improvement in the GH2 hacks?
  4. How much does it cost today to get into an external recorder for an AF100?

I would toss $100 into this for the sake of science. I would do this fully realizing that it is silly and I could put the $100 towards another 128gb ssd for my hyperdrive. But what-the-hell, I dropped more than this on the hockey pool last year.

In the end I think that the biggest benefit of a reliable AF100 hack is that maybe you could match GH2 hacked material a little better when using both cameras.
 
Anyone considering using a hack in their AF100 (should it becomes possible and viable) may want to take a look at the process involoved in doing so.

Do some research into how one hacks the GH2 for example.

Hacking your camera is not as simple as just saying " I want to hack my camera"
 
Something with slightly higher bitrates, 1:1 monitoring and a few other surprises would be well worth a $200 investment. Not sure if 10bit would be possible, but that would probably double what it's worth IMHO. If this happens, count me in.
 
Pot now stands at $5500 and counting.

Yes, Owaltec, like I said, it's purely hypothetical. Best wishes with the Samurai.

Letzring,you bring up quite an intelligent outlook to this.
Let's assume this beloved AF100 of ours had come out from Panasonic with 4:2:2, 10-bit, 50Mbs, I'm quite sure we wouldn't be having this conversation because we'd have all bases covered and if you still wanted to get better footage, you'd get the clunky external solutions. Some folk are even happy with it as is! Including yours truly. I've hacked my GH2 and ran Driftwood 176Mbs using 64GB 95MBs UHS-1 cards. So really, the AF100 and its successors needn't really be P2 or anything else, especially if it records AVC-Intra 50-100 to an SD card. (Yes, I digress) Had to slip that in there, but the point is, one of the things we're testing is to see if the camera can be reverted to initial factory settings as it can be with the GH2.

$4000 camera. Dear me! As Subaru STI street racers, we all weighed voiding the warranty on a $38,000 car, but the beauty of the mods for the STI was that you could do bolt on mods all day. Risks were minimal. Exhaust and air intake gave you 20hp + and your grandmother could do it in 45 minutes. Need more? Larger Turbo, Intercooler, injectors, coil-over kits, blow off valves, lighter flywheels, you could even convert the intercooler spray to a NOS cooling system. You could do these mods up to a certain point because the drivetrain and transmission though mated to a 300hp engine was rated to over 500hp of torque. You went over that and you'd need to do some serious tinkering. But my point is all this bolt on, came right off in your garage and you could slap on the stock parts and go to a dealer with warranty issues. Eventually, Subaru caught on and started selling their sanctioned parts (right at the dealerships) that wouldn't void the warranty. I got a warranty new clutch and new brake pads and despite punishing the car on the now closed drag strip in Palmdale, never had warranty issues Subaru didn't cover because my car always went to them stock.

Will the hack enable us to revert to factory settings? Will the hack adversely affect the hardware? Unlikely, the GH2 is still going strong, 24Mbs mated to a body that handles 176Mbs without blinking? For me, even if a 176Mbs Hack became available, I'd make do with 50Mbs, or 100Mbs if my answer print was BD or theatrical release or shooting to specification. HPX250 is just 50-100Mbs. Yes, it's a calculated risk. But a robust AVC-Intra 50/100 clearly outweighs that. If folks didn't want better, they'd not be buying external solutions. Now, I don't suppose anyone thinks the AF200 will come out with anything less than AVC-Intra 100 after the GH2 escapades and with the ubiquity of UHS-1 cards? What if the AF100 hack makes the next iteration of AF redundant? Or at least prompts Panasonic to leapfrog a few AF iterations or add more features to sweeten the next release? I mean really, what would prompt you to buy an AF200 today?? Rhetorical question. Okay, what would prompt you to buy an AF200 after a bullet proof 50-100Mbs hack becomes available? Another RQ, but think about it. After years of brand loyalty, what do you get?

For me, I'm looking beyond just hacking the AF100, I'm 100% with Driftwood's rationale that they lowballed the AF100's onboard output so it wouldn't leave its cleats in the garden of its more expensive brethren, but that's all the more reason, I say, to hack away. Get a reliable hack and if that somehow indirectly and exponentially improves what comes after the AF100 - so be it. They'd have to. Otherwise, why bother buy the AF200 if I can get most of what it offers quality-wise with a hack? The big companies aren't your friends, they have one mission: sell you as much as they can for as long as they can. Our objective should be to get the best product for as little as possible and buy only what we need with our limited means. Well, let me speak for myself on that. It's a capitalistic money-draining treadmill that got us where we are today. On the other hand, yeah-yeah, if some big budget client should roll my way, I might pick up an AF200. Still, hopefully it's an AF200 influenced by the hack available to the AF100. So, yeah, Letring, I refute nothing you say, and agree with everything you inadvertently imply.

For science, for the little man, this is beyond the AF100, how much is this hack worth to you?
Chime in, please. This conversation needs your voice.
 
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