Hacked GH1 for live events?

Thanks for your feedback ATL, I appreciate it, do you have a sneak peek footage? I may grow a pair and hack the GH1 before this weekend, if not, I will for the following wedding for sure.

How long was the longest clip you were able to record during the ceremony?
Also, how many times did you changed the batteries?
 
I've used it for some ENG b-roll for the web that is cut together with some HVX footage. Looks great. What's your final output?
 
Beernardo said:
Thanks for your feedback ATL, I appreciate it, do you have a sneak peek footage? I may grow a pair and hack the GH1 before this weekend, if not, I will for the following wedding for sure.

How long was the longest clip you were able to record during the ceremony?
Also, how many times did you changed the batteries?
Click to expand...


Encoding one now..

Longest clip.. 48 minutes
One battery change.
 
jimmiesner said:
Wow great stuff. I am so torn about using tester13. Really really really want to try it, but have to many weddings this month, and even a one percent increased chance of malfunction is to high for me. Can you install it, but switch between the panasonic firmware and the hacked firmware?
Click to expand...
Is this your only cam body, and does your bread and butter depend on it to large extent? Then don't you screw with it. But if it's something like creative wedding reel and you can have a cheapo HV30 on the side just to back it up for intercuts then perhaps. I'm a hobbyist and if GH1/13 were part of my day job I'd be poor so I feel like I can experiment.
 
Re swapping Ptool versions in the field - you can use what I call the "two card trick", whereby apart from the cards you are shooting with, you have a couple of low capacity cards with nothing on them except one firmware version on each.

The two card trick would normally be used with Ptool settings all disabled - except for "version compare" - on one card, and the other card with the higher bitrate settings (etc, whatever you choose).

Or, one card has very safe settings, and the other card has the settings you are hoping will be better but which might be riskier.

Then you can take out the shooting card, and use one of these firmware cards as you wish, then put back the shooting card and carry on.

You could take a "Ptooled" card, and a standard firmware card, but once you've reinstalled the standard firmware you won't be able to use the Ptooled card unless it used version increment as well as version compare - because the standard firmware won't allow firmware upgrade unless the version increment is positive.

Do not try this stuff other than under circumstances where the end result does not matter. Having played with in that way and ensured you know what will happen when you "hot swap" firmware versions in the way I have described, then you can be confident in using it in the field.
 
This thread is interesting to me. A couple of times I've shot a concert with an HVX200A on a tripod and my GH1 in my hands using the 720 60p mode (Why I used that mode for a concert is irreverent).

I had to update my Production Premium CS4 to CS5 because I wanted the extra stability even though my laptop has an ATI card and the good news is that I can edit clips from my GH1 and the HVX200A together with full quality a little bit better than before. Because of the fortune that I spent to do that, I choose not to get a Sandisk 32GB class 10 card but about a week from now, I might be willing to try out the firmware and finally buy that card. The price for that card is no joke at all!
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/696651-REG/SanDisk__EXTREME_SDHC_CLASS_10.html. With all the extra business Sandisk is getting from us, they should offer DVX users a huge discount. I'm serious!

Is their anybody who shot a concert or a similar event in 720 60p for around an hour straight who's card did not stop writing using one of the higher bit rate settings?

I know I can pause in between every song but it would be nice to have it as 1 continues take so that I wouldn't need to match the audio that much. I know it's easy but still a little time consuming.

At least the HVX200A will still record any part in which the card stopped writing for several seconds but I would prefer to not be in front of the camera when that happens and be in the music video. I also know that I'd be able to put some B-Roll in that part but the shot I was recording could have been excellent.
 
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Hi, I shot some testing videos at 720 50p with 50,52,60 settings. I tried with Transcend 16GB and 32GB class 6 cards and recording fails in the file splitting moment (4,29GB), the recorded file was unreadable, then I tried with Panny gold 16GB class 6 and 10 cards and everything worked fine, with almost static subject (camera on tripod pointed to the street) I made a continuos 2h15min (!) recording on a 16GB card, so, I will stay with Panasonic cards for safe long shots. Shooting fast moving objects will reduce recording time to 1h20/1h40min, shooting a continuos fast wild pan will reduce recording time to 48/50min (16GB card), sorry for my bad english.
 
Ozpeter said:
Re swapping Ptool versions in the field - Excellent Stuff deleted
Click to expand...

Ozpeter makes great points. One additional thing to keep in mind though, is that the camera will not allow you to install any firmware if the battery is low (or in my case 1/2 full). At least that's what happened to me. I was shooting on safe settings, and decided to go C settings, but the camera said that I needed a fully charged battery. I had to wait until I recharged the battery to switch out the firmware. If you can, have one fully charged battery ready, and use it ONLY to switch out firmware.

And whatever you do, don't use the AC adapter to install firmware. One bad signal, one interrupted flow while installing the firmware, and you could end up with a brick instead of a camera.
 
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Ive got two GH1's. Use both during the ceremony, but the rest of the night I just go with one for the reception events. Right now it is becoming my main bread and butters, so am going to hold off for a little. Still very tempted.
 
FWIW

I just plugged in the AC adapter, and let my GH1 roll. I'm using the C settings for bit rate (ptool 3.37 I think), and 24pN. It was dark and the footage seemed to be averaging around 25Mbps in VLC player.

I'm using a 32gb Sandisk Ultra II class 4 card.

When the recording reached 3.99gb, it failed to automatically start a new file like it usually does.

At 3.99gb, I think it recorded about 20 minutes of video.

The video could not be played back in camera, which it normally can for me with 24pN and C settings. It did play in VLC player, however.

Just thought it might be worth mentioning for those wanting to use the hack for event use. Personally, I wouldn't attempt it at this point. Plus, it's kind of nice being able to record 4 hours of video without fiddling with changing cards...and risking losing one. ;)
 
Here's a brief report from last weekend wedding, I used my two GH1's (NOT HACKED) and it sure is harder than just grab your fX1 or PD170 and shoot, a lot of stuff to look out for. So for now I don't think I'll hack the cameras until we feel comfortable doing it. The original firmware backup on an SD card is a good tip, but I still feel it is too much of a risk, I can't imagine the brides' father giving the speech and I configuring the camera in a corner somewhere.

I'll give more details about my experience soon.
 
Ok, we've shot three weddings using the unhacked GH1's, but at one of the weddings during the ceremony on a very dark church we experienced mud at its best, there was a stone wall that looks awful in the footage, so we decided to hack the cameras for the next wedding.

@ATLMediaGroup, would you mind explaining here how did you hack your camera? I used Ptool V.40d with the C settings, loaded the hacked firmware on to the camera but I see no difference in the recorded footage. I get an average of 2.071MBytes/sec (vegas says so)

This is how this version of PTool looks like:
1281384552.jpg


Thanks!
 
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Shot a friend's wedding ceremony with the 40mbps "reliable" settings and the 14-140 kit lens this past weekend, no issues. After the ceremony was over, I flashed it again with higher/riskier bitrate settings for the reception but I never came across any write speed errors. Used an 8gb Class 10 Sandisk Extreme.

Still not a great low light camera, my copy of the GH1 isn't anyway (banding). The 5D and Canon 85mm f1.2 lens really shone for low light inside.
 
Beernardo, I just experienced the same thing. Hacked my GH1 for the first time using 3.40d, modified bit rates according to recommendations I found (around 40000000) and shot some low-light footage (this is where the low bit rate hurt the most in previous projects) but only got clips of between 8 and 13 Mbits/sec which exhibit the same problems as without the patch.

Please post if you resolve this.
 
RMK I'll run some tests with the lpowell's file and let you know if I succeeded (I'll try not to post too much about this issue in order to keep the subject on track :) )
 
Ok, I ran some tests with lpowell's settings and I still didn't notice any mud reduction.

I then changed the following settings:

Video Bitrate FHD/SH: 50,000,000
Video Bitrate H: 50,000,000
Video Bitrate L: 50,000,000
Overall Bitrate: 70,000,000

...and recorded two 1min. clips on a very dark scene, I used two GH1's, one hacked and the other one with the original firmware, both with the same lens and camera settings.

I don't see any mud improvement or difference between them, I may be doing something wrong during the Ptool preparation, or perhaps I need to run some tests on a scene with foliage?

The only differences I saw is that on "MediaInfo" the unhacked mts file overall bitrate is 13.8Mbps and Maximum Overall Bitrate is 18Mbps, when on the hacked mts file it reads 16.1Mbps and 70Mbps. Also the unhacked file size is 102MB and the hacked file is 120MB. Weird thing is that Sony Vegas 9 says that both files have an average 2.071Mbps bitrate.

http://vimeo.com/14020652

pass: t35t

I modified the color curves to bring up the worst of the footage, the original one is very very dark.

(My apologies for the focusing issues)
 
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