GH13 hack - the firmware installed way too fast, so not sure if it worked

T

tbirdparis

Member
Hi, I've searched and read a lot of the information on this forum and others, but haven't found any mention of what just happened to me so I thought it was worth a new post.

A few days ago I used the ptools hack (latest version with winebottler mac osx), following the instructions I've read and also following the video instructions from Bradley Steenkamp on Vimeo and another user on YouTube. At the time I only had a class 6 card, so I created a firmware hack using the "B" settings, just to test things out without trying to push it.
The first time I tried to install it on the camera, I got the dreaded "no picture to display" error. So I went back and redid the ptools hack but changed my version increment to a higher number (as per suggestions I found on this forum) and it worked. Shot some footage, checked the average bit rate in VLC and compared it visually to earlier stuff I shot. The bitrate was generally higher and the footage looked better. All good, seemed to have done the trick. The system version also showed 0.0 as it should.

Today I picked up a Class 10 card so I thought I'd try re-hacking to see what the "C" settings are like. Went ahead and followed all the instructions again, carefully put in the numbers for the "C" setting (AVCHD FHD/SHD only, am not using MJPEG). Then I kept version increment and prevent version compare ticked as I had done previously, saved the firmware to the next number up and put the card in the camera. It saw the firmware update right away (no "no picture to display" error this time), so I went ahead with the "version up" thingy.

Here's where it gets a little confusing. The first time I ran the firmware update the other day, it took a good amount of time to do its thing, with the green progress bar chugging along. This time, the green bar barely appeared at all, like for a split second. Then it said to turn the camera off and on.
It all works fine, I haven't bricked it or anything. But I just can't tell if I changed to the "C" settings or not... My understanding is that every time you "up" the firmware, the camera thinks it's installing a completely full official firmware update, so surely the progress bar should take roughly the same amount of time every time you do it? Not just a sudden quick display of the progress bar as soon as you say "yes" to up the firmware and then almost instantly it's done?

I shot a test video (trying to make sure I got a wide shot with lots of movement, color and contrast to make the codec work hard), and looked at the stats in VLC. It does appear to show some higher figures than previously, but I'm not sure if it's still at the previous settings or if indeed I've jacked it up to 50 mbps. In VLC I'm never sure which statistic I should be most relying on, "read at media" or "input bitrate" or "stream bitrate". The system version on the camera still says 0.0 as it should I guess.

So I tried doing the same process again, same settings in ptools but named the firmware file one figure higher and left increment at 1. Again, the camera saw the firmware update right away and I ran it.. same thing, the progress bar barely appeared and within no time it said to turn the camera off and on.

So my question is.. Is this normal behaviour? The second time or any later times you install a new hacked firmware, is it supposed to install really fast? As in, is it just updating a couple of settings and leaving the rest alone? Or is it just rejecting my new settings?

I'm wondering if it's because I left _both_ "version increment" and "prevent version compare" ticked the second time I created a hacked firmware file. Some people have said it's fine to leave them both checked every time you perform the operation, others say just to leave "version increment" ticked for subsequent hacks.

Sorry for the long post, I figured it was better to clearly explain the steps I took rather than be vague.

Appreciate any insight someone might have into this, so all input is welcome. Also, if anyone knows of a more reliable way of determining the bitrate of the video files, that would be great. For example, if there's any other software apart from VLC that can show you the maximum bitrate in clearly understandable terms so you know you _must_ be at the "C" settings because it would be impossible to get the numbers you are getting at lower settings, that would help too.

Cheers!
 
never heard of a super quick green progress bar before, every time i run the hack it takes around 40-60 seconds.

i also always tick both prevent version compare & version increment (up both the file name & number field one increment each time i hack).

have you tried formatting the SD card from within the camera menu and then starting fresh? (id imagine you have)

you could also try run your original GH1__132.bin file back onto the camera to get the firmware running at the default settings, then format SD from within cam to completely clean the SD card.

and then re-configure the the hack within Ptool to the settings you fancy.

i started off with the "C" settings but now i use the preset patches created by lpowell (*.INI files) never been happier :smile:

for checking the bit rates you can use streamparser, i think it only works on PC's tho, i"m MAC based so stuck with VLC
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?224134-StreamParser-2.0-Beta-Available
 
Thanks for the quick reply. Yep it's strange indeed.

One quick Q: When you say you up both your hack firmware file name and also the increment field each time you hack, do you mean you leave the number in the increment field at one (meaning a value of "1" increments by one each time), or do you actually put in a higher number in that field each time?

I did definitely use a new card, formatted in the cam before trying this. In fact for a second I thought that the new card (class 10) was so lightning fast that it made the firmware update go super fast as well. But that's pretty close to extremely unlikely. So yep I think something odd is going on.

I might try what you suggested and then give the lpowell patch a go. I presume you can download the settings somewhere? Will have a look into it, but if you can point me in the right direction that would be great.

Cheers.
 
So as a side note, I just checked some footage I shot after attempting the "C" hack.. I have the feeling the camera has flashed itself back to the default settings, VLC is showing me bitrates around 12000 kbps for stuff shot at 720, and only peaking at around 20000 for stuff shot at 1080 FHD. And the pictures don't look all that amazing either. So I guess I messed something up. Back to square one I think.

Anyone else ever seen anything like this happen?
 
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Here's a link to my 40Mbps AVCHD High Reliability Patch, with a link to its downloadable PTool INI patch file. This patch is designed to be applied to the original Panasonic firmware simply by clicking the "J" button at the bottom of the PTool main window.

If you want to experiment with manual PTool settings, I recommend keeping both "prevent version compare" ticked and "version increment" set to 1. This will prevent any version mishaps from occurring when installing patches in the future. The exact number used in the firmware filename is also irrelevant, so long as you conform to the convention of naming it "GH1__xxx.bin", where xxx is any combination of three numeric digits.
 
Thanks so much to both of you for taking the time to help me out. If I can just ask a couple of specific questions based on what's been said so far, that would be awesome..

Firstly, the first time I ran ptool and did a patch, I ticked both "prevent version compare" and "version increment" (set to 1). The first time I tried to run that on the camera (with a newly formatted card), I got the "no picture to display" error. So I read around on this forum and eventually decided to try setting the increment to a higher number, as had been suggested to someone else with success. So I set it to 30 (following the advice I read) and it worked. I got the proper progress bar and the firmware update took around a minute (a very nervewracking minute)..

The next time I tried (with the "C" settings and a new class 10 card), I still had both of the above ticked, but I put 30 in the increment again because it had worked the previous time. And yes, I changed the version number of my hacked firmware, but as you say this is not relevant to the technical side of the process. Is this where I went wrong? This time, the camera "saw" the firmware on the card - I got the firmware version up page when I hit the display button. But it just flashed the progress bar for a second, and then asked me to restart. When I attempted it again after this, I changed the "increment" value back to "1", thinking this was what I should have done, but no dice. So, since I have previously (ie, when I did the first successful hack) set the increment to "30", does this mean I now have to put a higher number, say 31, for subsequent patches and so on? And always continuing with keeping "prevent version compare" and "version increment" ticked?
Basically if I can clear that up, I think I'll be good to go to try further patches.

Next question: I'm definitely interested in trying your 40mbps High Reliability Patch, but there's one thing I'm not sure about. I've read lots of reports that using the setting which applies native 24p pulldown can cause instability for some people. Since I've gotten used to using reverse telecine in Voltaic, I decided not to select this. That said, I'll be more than happy to use it if it's part of your high reliability patch and it works well. However, one thing I am planning to do is shoot 720p at 50 fps (I'm in Europe so my camera is PAL), because I want to be able to convert the video later to play back at half speed for smooth slow mo. If I use your 40mbps HR patch, will the footage I shoot at the SHD setting (720) also be output natively at 25 fps, thus making it more difficult to generate smooth slow mo later?

And last question: I guess since VLC seems to be the best tool I have access to in order to figure out roughly the bitrate of what I'm shooting, can you give me some guidelines on what I should be expecting? For example, let's say I shoot some bright daylight street footage out my 4th floor window here in Paris (with lots of people wandering about in the spring sunlight), using the 14-140 lens with a bit of zoom (say half way), making sure to get lots of motion, colour and contrast in there, at full HD. With your 40mbps HR patch working, what kind of "stream bitrate" should I be seeing in VLC? So far just trying to get an idea of the rough figures, when my GH1 was running the standard firmware I was seeing numbers around 12000 kbps for that kind of footage in FHD. The other day with (what I think was) the "B" settings working properly, I was seeing numbers around 20000 kbps more regularly. Can you give me some kind of gauge I should be looking for?

Thanks a lot, really appreciate you taking the time!
 
Yes, that's what I was thinking of as well, but did you do an experiment to test this

Yes, that's what I was thinking of as well, but did you do an experiment to test this

tbirdparis said:
I did definitely use a new card, formatted in the cam before trying this. In fact for a second I thought that the new card (class 10) was so lightning fast that it made the firmware update go super fast as well. But that's pretty close to extremely unlikely.
Click to expand...

Did you try the class 6 card again? This might just tell you if that makes the difference.

I think it is unlikely, as well. I would think with such a flashy firmware flash and the instruction to restart the camera, something has gone wrong. Normally, I do not have to restart the camera. It does do that itself.

Possibly the high(er) increment value may be a problem. For sure, you will have to use a higher version number when hacking for the first time. If the camera did not accept the GH1__133.bin file and you had to increase the number, I am wondering what original firmware was on it. Do you know that? How young is your camera? (What is the serial number?)
 
tbirdparis said:
Firstly, the first time I ran ptool and did a patch, I ticked both "prevent version compare" and "version increment" (set to 1). The first time I tried to run that on the camera (with a newly formatted card), I got the "no picture to display" error. So I read around on this forum and eventually decided to try setting the increment to a higher number, as had been suggested to someone else with success. So I set it to 30 (following the advice I read) and it worked. I got the proper progress bar and the firmware update took around a minute (a very nervewracking minute)..
Click to expand...
As you've discovered, PTool can be confusing and hazardous to experiment with. Since there's some question as to exactly what is going on with your camera, I'd suggest re-installing the stock v1.32 firmware you downloaded from Panasonic. If that process proceeds without incident, I'd then suggest trying my 40Mbps AVCHD High Reliability Patch, without modifications. It is designed to be installed as a full-featured patch that needs no manual adjustments.
 
Hi, thanks for your insights. The camera is from late 2009, the serial number starts with WE9S. I bought it second hand and I'm pretty sure it wasn't hacked because it showed a version number of 1.3 in the custom menu. I think I definitely got something wrong with the increment setting the second time round, because the first time I applied the patch it worked.. well on the second try anyway. It definitely did show the progress bar updating the firmware and then all was fine. It's just in trying to do it again that it did that weird thing where it only showed the progress bar for an instant and then asked to be turned off and on again.

I'm now trying to get the bits and pieces together to run lpowell's 40mbps reliable patch. To do that I found that I didn't have the latest ptool version (ptool 3.50d), so I've downloaded it. But I'm on a mac and don't have windows or a windows emulator installed.. The last ptool version I used was one that had already been "winebottled" so I could just run it as an app, but it was v3.40d. So I've installed wine and the winebottler program in an attempt to run the latest ptool version with it, but it crashed when I tried to "bottle" it. Hmm. So now I'm digging around trying to find another solution to be able to run 3.50d. Once I've got that sorted, I'll try doing the whole process over again.

If by any chance you know where I can find a version of ptool 3.50d ready to go on a mac, please point me in the right direction!

Cheers.
 
lpowell said:
As you've discovered, PTool can be confusing and hazardous to experiment with. Since there's some question as to exactly what is going on with your camera, I'd suggest re-installing the stock v1.32 firmware you downloaded from Panasonic. If that process proceeds without incident, I'd then suggest trying my 40Mbps AVCHD High Reliability Patch, without modifications. It is designed to be installed as a full-featured patch that needs no manual adjustments.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. But in order to install your 40Mbps HR patch, I need to use ptool 3.50d, which I have downloaded but can't run just yet as I'm on a mac and need to find a way to get it running.. I don't have a windows emulator. I think I've found a way to do it using an app called wineskin, it seems to have succeeded in getting ptool to run (incidentally, it's the one I picked up from you link and it says it's version 3.51d, is that correct?)..

I'll go ahead and try to revert back to the v1.32 I downloaded from Panasonic, then go from there. Since I'm really still not sure I understand the "increment" value, can you give me any pointers on what I should set everything to in order to go back down to the original firmware? I understand that I've just got to load the original Panasonic 1.32 file into ptool, make no changes, and then save it, ready to take over to the camera. But just so I'm clear on this - do I need to name it a higher number than any of the previous hacked firmwares I've installed? And does the increment value always just stay as "1", or do I need to raise that to a higher value than what I previously had?

Cheers guys, sorry for bothering you all with such noob-ness but as soon as I've got some good quality, reliable and solid video settings installed in my camera, I really don't plan on messing with these settings again. From what I've seen and read about the 40Mbps HR patch, once I've got that in there, I'll be more than happy to not touch another setting again.
 
OK So I just successfully reinstalled the original 1.32 from Panasonic. I didn't use ptool 3.50d at all, just copied the untouched original firmware file from Panasonic to my card and installed it. Worked fine, version display is showing 1.3 again for the body firmware. It was showing version 0.0 before, so I think that must rule out any chance that my GH1 is one of the unhackable ones..

So now that I've got ptool 3.50d going, I'll give installing the 40Mbps HR patch a go. I'm treading _really_ carefully here now, so forgive me if this sounds really dumb. I just want to make sure I understand exactly what I'm about to do. So to install the 40Mbps HR patch, I input the following manually, in all the appropriate places in ptool:

Patches for End Users
. Wrapper
.. Native 24p/25p: unchecked
. AVCHD Compression
.. Video Bitrate FHD/SH: 41000000
.. Video Bitrate H: 24000000
.. Video Bitrate L: 16000000
.. Overall Bitrate: 43000000
. AVCHD GOP Length: unchanged

Patches for Testers
. AVCHD Compression
.. Preset bitrate: 180
.. Preset bitrate 2: 180

.... And I also import the .ini file for the reliable in camera playback patch into ptools. Once that's all done, I make sure both "version increment" and "prevent version compare" are checked, leave the increment value as 1. Then I save the file as GH1__133 (or higher?) and I should be good to go.

Does that sound right?
 
If you are able to import the Reliable In-Camera Playback Patch INI file iinto PTool, you should see its name in hover text over PTool's "J" button. Then all you need to do is click the J button to apply it to the v1.32 firmware, and save the patched firmware to a file. That's the whole point of the INI patch file and there's no need to make any manual patch settings.

If that doesn't work for any reason, you can open the INI patch file in any text editor, and manually copy each of its patch settings into PTool.
 
Hey, thanks yep that's exactly what I did. I just wasn't sure if the .ini file was just the settings for in camera playback and the rest had to be entered manually. But after reading your posts more closely I realized it was all in there. So I just clicked on J, made sure all the settings looked right and created a new firmware file. Transferred it over to the camera and it installed perfectly, proper progress bar that took about a minute, version number went back to 0.0, fantastic!

I just did some test shots, but it's night here in Paris so not exactly ideal for trying to shoot lots of detail. However, I checked the footage with a program called media info (which was mentioned in another post) and sure enough, the overall bitrate of each and every video file is 43.1Mbps since successfully applying your patch. Compared it with video files I recorded with the camera earlier with the standard firmware, and their average bitrate was consistently 18Mbps. So it looks like it's a done deal. Thanks so much for the help getting it done, can't wait to test it tomorrow when I can shoot in proper light conditions for the kit lens.. Shooting out the window into a dark street with the 14-140 at ISO 1600 isn't exactly ideal for making beautiful pictures, but I'm sure tomorrow I'll get some very nice stuff.

Cheers!
 
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