GH1 firmware research volunteers required

Online you hear about people hacking into their Sony PSP and doing all sorts of things with it and recently someone have made headlines for thinking that they discovered the first big step to fully hacking the PS3 and although theirs still a lot more work to be done, Sony didn't want to take the chance and did the unthinkable, they decided to release a firmware that disables the option to install another OS.

It would be nice of some of them would spend time on a GH1. At least people have done some hacking in Canon cameras so hacking a GH1 can't be that much more difficult unless Panasonic already thought about people going to hack it in the future and put an extra thick wall.
 
PSP hacking as well as PS3 hacking is very high level. Big money here, I believe. Millions at stake.
Dreamcast lost because smart software hack had been discovered (and online updates did not existed in that time). Despite this I still love my Dreamcast more then PS3 :)
 
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Don't everyone get too excited yet. For all we know, the limitations that are coded might be the maximum the camera can handle reliably.

As for coding, some coders are very liberal and put all kinds of notes and comments in their code for others to understand while other coders are very strict and do not do anything like that at all. For all we know, Canon's code might be chocked full of comments making it easy to hack. The panasonic code does not seem to be that way.
 
Svart said:
Don't everyone get too excited yet. For all we know, the limitations that are coded might be the maximum the camera can handle reliably. .
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You can be right here.
FPS and time limit are possible, but bitrate must be tested.
I believe that we must have about 30% guaranteed reserve.
And it can be anly AVCHD encoder bottleneck, as camera could write at faster speed (it can record 1280 MJPEG at about 25MBps).

As for coding, some coders are very liberal and put all kinds of notes and comments in their code for others to understand while other coders are very strict and do not do anything like that at all. For all we know, Canon's code might be chocked full of comments making it easy to hack. The panasonic code does not seem to be that way.
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Comments are not present in assembler :) Only some text strings (and, yes, Canon have about 25x more times of them)
 
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Ahhh... took a good look at this this morning, and while drinking my coffee, ripped the GH1 apart, downloaded the firmware onto another workable platform, updated the avchd to 24mbits, got rid of the 60i and made 1080 go at 24p, enabled hdmi out, and I also gave it a pair of breasts, named it sheila, and had sex with it. It's SUCH a better camera now.

But I'm not sharing this with you guys. Sorry.
 
Thanks for answering the question about Pentax cameras -- it would seem, then, that the video performance which Pentax themselves achieved (and some people quite liked the look of the k-7 video) was perhaps about the best you could expect from their choice of components?

Good to see the screenshots you posted but it's totally beyond me even after you explained what to look for! I have a GH1 and look forward to any developments that might come about (after I finish my current film project using the camera normally in case something went wrong!).

Interesting what you say about Canon cameras -- if they are easier to work, have you ever considered looking into say the 550D as a project? If ML have "gone easy" on the big targets (bitrate, even frame size) maybe there are some big strides to be made there? I was always interested in the possibility (if it really were possible), of re-windowing for 2k CinemaScope (instead of 1080). That is: 2048 x 858 instead of 1920 x 1080, which I believe would be a lesser datarate than 1080.

Cheers.
 
The camera does composite out right now, but it goes away when you hit record. Having it stay on would be huge...and likely much more possible than enabling HDMI out which isn't there outside of playback to begin with.
 
Interesting what you say about Canon cameras -- if they are easier to work, have you ever considered looking into say the 550D as a project? If ML have "gone easy" on the big targets (bitrate, even frame size) maybe there are some big strides to be made there? I was always interested in the possibility (if it really were possible), of re-windowing for 2k CinemaScope (instead of 1080). That is: 2048 x 858 instead of 1920 x 1080, which I believe would be a lesser datarate than 1080.
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In fact I looked at 550D and this is dead end until some information leak.
According to encryption statistical analysis XOR tables are not used anymore.
5D II have no interest for me (Pentax glass don't work on FF bodies), as it'll be replaced very soon with much better camera, I believe.
Also these cameras require bunch of tools to work as real film rig, and their limits can't be easeally hacked as GH1 :)
I still believe GH1 is the best camera with large sensor. It just have some silly limitations. And I already have two Panasonic HD consumer cameras and love them. Especially DX1, very underestimated camera with 3CCDs, no any rolling shutter :) Love mini-DVDs also. Instant backups, and cost about $10 for ten.
 
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Ben_B said:
The camera does composite out right now, but it goes away when you hit record. Having it stay on would be huge...and likely much more possible than enabling HDMI out which isn't there outside of playback to begin with.
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Camera just read proper resolution to show on screen, special resolution.
Have all processes running.
And as soon as recording starts it now read data using different resolution, so processor (or DSP) must rescale it to proper resolution (and I believe it just can't). This is the reason for turning off video output.
Most probably no artifical limitation here, it is just construction limitation.

P.S. Later addition - I can be wrong here.
 
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tester13 said:
In reality I think it can be impossible.
Camera just read proper resolution to show on screen, special resolution.
Have all processes running.
And as soon as recording starts it now read data using different resolution, so processor (or DSP) must rescale it to proper resolution (and I believe it just can't). This is the reason for turning off video output.
Most probably no artifical limitation here, it is just construction limitation.
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Hmmm...that explains why it has to do LCD and composite output at the same time, why it can't do viewfinder and composite output....interesting.
 
tester13 said:
Yes it'll be possible, only this function set frame rate for HD modes. You just need to change few bytes.
But firmware digest generation is still not solved.

Don't know about region locking other then that it is purely artifical thing for long time.
I believe that 720p 24fps is very interesting indeed.
And if bitrate could be up to 28Mbps, picture will be fantastic.
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Yes. 1080/24p native would be great. Removing the pulldown from the 60i stream is a pain. 1080/24p should be equal or less throughput to, so it's certainly within the hardware limitations, whether or not it's possible for a hacker or even for Panasonic to do with the current way it's built is another matter..
 
Ben_B said:
Yes. 1080/24p native would be great. Removing the pulldown from the 60i stream is a pain. 1080/24p should be equal or less throughput to, so it's certainly within the hardware limitations, whether or not it's possible for a hacker or even for Panasonic to do with the current way it's built is another matter..
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Several of these types of 'requests', may not be doable due to the hardware choices that were made. My personal suspicion is that the chip used to 'encode' the stream was chosen because it was 'cheap', and all one had to do was chunk out the 24 fps outoftheimageprocessor frame in 'field' format...

The firmware that is the 'management' cpu uses has not much to do with the image processor, other than controlling registers, etc. Data pathways are most likely set in hardware... so things like 'live' HDMI output, etc, may be just not available because of the hardware.

If these are 'controllable' by the management processor, the reason why these 'unfortunate' choices were made, was most likely because the engineers were balancing 'power consumption' vs. 'battery capacity', and so, by running multiple internal data pathways, more power was consumed, and hence, shorter time for a given battery capacity...

And as we all know, power consumption means 'heat', so again, some pathways may not have been selected to minimize heat as well.

Perhaps the audio AGC thing is about the only really 'non issue', as in 'why the heck wasn't that an option in the first place...'...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Several of these types of 'requests', may not be doable due to the hardware choices that were made. My personal suspicion is that the chip used to 'encode' the stream was chosen because it was 'cheap', and all one had to do was chunk out the 24 fps outoftheimageprocessor frame in 'field' format...

The firmware that is the 'management' cpu uses has not much to do with the image processor, other than controlling registers, etc. Data pathways are most likely set in hardware... so things like 'live' HDMI output, etc, may be just not available because of the hardware.

If these are 'controllable' by the management processor, the reason why these 'unfortunate' choices were made, was most likely because the engineers were balancing 'power consumption' vs. 'battery capacity', and so, by running multiple internal data pathways, more power was consumed, and hence, shorter time for a given battery capacity...

And as we all know, power consumption means 'heat', so again, some pathways may not have been selected to minimize heat as well.

Perhaps the audio AGC thing is about the only really 'non issue', as in 'why the heck wasn't that an option in the first place...'...
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Certainly very possible that it's impossible. However, 1080/60i is more data per second than 1080/24p...although conceivably less data at any moment smaller than a second.
 
Camera Expert said:
But wouldn't 720 60p generate more heat than native 1080 24p? At least we know that on the 7D, it's like that.
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Since I don't know the internals of either camera, I can't really say why that would be the case. The document that the OP has on their site, seems to just document the CPU portion, and not the image processing portion.
 
Ben_B said:
Certainly very possible that it's impossible. However, 1080/60i is more data per second than 1080/24p...although conceivably less data at any moment smaller than a second.
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Looking in to a bit further, there was reference to 'the Venus Engine HD', and I could not find any docs online to be able to delve into what exactly is the 'engine' capabile of, other than the usual glossy brochure type statements...

One would probably have to get an NDA and a sympathetic sales/distributor to get any real engineering data on the device...

Companies these days that are targeting the 'consumer/massmarket' have almost no incentive to deal with small operations or individuals, even if those small companies or individuals could address very small groups, and be profitable.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Looking in to a bit further, there was reference to 'the Venus Engine HD', and I could not find any docs online to be able to delve into what exactly is the 'engine' capabile of, other than the usual glossy brochure type statements...
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If you try to read carefully, you could find documents on used CPU core. Venus Engine is just marketing name for proprieraty LSI, same is true for any camera manufacturer.

Most other your theories are just plain wrong.
 
Hey if anyone can bump up the bit rate a even just to 21 and change the panny battery only junk.
I will gladly donate to you for your efforts.

I would like to say thanks in advance for those much smarter than me working on this (even if nothing pans out).
 
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