How much would you pay for a GH1 Firmware update?

How much would you pay for a GH1 Firmware update?

  • I would not pay for such things that should've been there in the 1st place

    Votes: 17 35.4%

  • $5-$20

    Votes: 1 2.1%

  • $20-$50

    Votes: 6 12.5%

  • $50-$150

    Votes: 11 22.9%

  • $150-$250

    Votes: 8 16.7%

  • $250 or more

    Votes: 5 10.4%
  • Total voters
    48
Tim Joy

Tim Joy

Veteran
Assuming that Panasonic is a company that wants to make money, and firmware updates probably cost a good deal to produce, let's see what people are willing to spend for a Firmware update that fixes all, or most of the following:

  • Increased bit-rate or 'Mud' elimination.
  • True 24p with no wrappers in all shooting modes.
  • Some kind of video out while shooting, even if it's low rez.
  • Audio meters and manual gain control.
  • Zebras or over exposure metering.
  • Anything else I forgot to mention.
  • A Panasonic rep will cook you dinner every night. :)



Maybe if they see that there's some real money to be made by issuing a "pro" version of the firmware, they just might do it.... or they might decide to charge for the update that they were going to issue for free. :( Either way, we get it, and in the end, that's what matters, right?

This assumes that these fixes can be made with a firmware update, and maybe they can't- who knows... but if they could over-clock that baby and get rid of mud, at the expense of a little overheating now and then, I would much rather attach ice packs to the camera rather than tell my client, "oh, you can't move the camera like that because it becomes muddy."
 
For a pro firmware, I'd reluctantly give them a small amount, £20 to download it.

Realistically, such an update would be worth a lot more to me. It'd be priceless!

But I simply cannot stomach paying for such a thing... I have already paid for the camera and for Panasonic to improve it with free firmware updates...

Such updates take a long time to go through QA, I am sure there will be a fix in the pipeline, but there is a good chance it will NEVER be the case that this stuff reaches a consumer range Panasonic camera. They are ALWAYS compromised.

Still - fantastic camera though. Managed to smuggle into the Blur gig in London's Hyde Park last night, and even the built in mic is not too shabby.
 
Charge for an upgrade? Reminds me of the Panasonic FZ1 firmware upgrade debacle.

Pasted from another forum -

"What happened with the FZ1 firmware upgrade is that Panasonic released it only to the Japanese market AND charged for it (about US$50). It was a VERY significant upgrade that added so many features to the camera that it literally turned it into a FZ2.

The problem in this is that such a signficant upgrade really should have been released in every market that the FZ1 was released. Because they didn't do that but the entire world was salivating to get their hands on it, you can guess what happened -- yup, it was pirated, posted on the internet for download, and everyone other than Japan basically got the upgrade for free. "

In that same forum a Panasonic rep posted this -

"The decision to sell the upgrade in Japan, and the current situation where it’s not available to U.S. customers has nothing to do with PR or poor PR. There are factors that are delaying the release of the firmware outside Japan.

At this time I can only comment that we are aware of the situation and it’s not a case of ignoring our customer’s. Installing the new firmware in your FZ1 is definitely not advised."

However, despite such warnings the upgrade was widely installed outside Japan, and worked perfectly well (I speak from personal experience...)

And my point is - I can't picture a paid-for upgrade being kept off the net. So I can't picture it happening.
 
Good points.

Okay then, so you buy a special memory card that updates the firmware but isn't readable by computer.. or something.
 
really paying for firmware updates. is that a normal thing? I would think that if you bought the gear, the updates were free?
 
Tim Joy said:
Assuming that Panasonic is a company that wants to make money, and firmware updates probably cost a good deal to produce, let's see what people are willing to spend for a Firmware update that fixes all, or most of the following:

  • Increased bit-rate or 'Mud' elimination.
Click to expand...
It's not the bit rate that causes mud. Crank 2 was shot on HF10's (and A1's) that have an AVCHD bit rate of 17mbps with the sharpening cranked to full. Some shots involved placing several of them in a row to get a kind of bullet time effect. But there's no mud in that movie.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/crank2/

It's the lack of "B" frames. Most long GOP codecs are something like IPPPBPPPBPPPB or something and the GH1 is IPPPPPPPPPPPPPP. One Intra frame and all Predictave Frames. This was probably done to ease AVCHD processing which is intensive. But if you move the camera faster than the predictive frames can predict, it's essetially a like fake out move in basketball and that gives you the mud.
  • True 24p with no wrappers in all shooting modes.
  • Some kind of video out while shooting, even if it's low rez.
  • Audio meters and manual gain control.
  • Zebras or over exposure metering.
  • Anything else I forgot to mention.
  • A Panasonic rep will cook you dinner every night. :)



Maybe if they see that there's some real money to be made by issuing a "pro" version of the firmware, they just might do it.... or they might decide to charge for the update that they were going to issue for free. :( Either way, we get it, and in the end, that's what matters, right?
Click to expand...
Your joking with the Panasonic Rep to cook you dinner everynight, but along those lines I think we should prioritize what we're asking for.
1) B FRAMES
2) LIVE VIDEO OUT
3) if they have time, disabling audio gain might be nice
I don't really care about native 24p. For $1500 with DSLR lattitude and interchangeable lense I'm fine with removing pulldown.

1 & 2 in my list are the only real ways that the camera is compromised / potentially limiting IMHO and I think it would be better to ask for the real dealbreakers rather than cake and eat it too.
 
$150 to $250 for 24mbit or better non breakable 1080p 24 codec and make it progressive without any 60i wrapper. This must also include audio levels without AGC enabled.

A 120fps at NTSC would also be very cool.
 
If the AVCHD is so processor intensive, especially for this cam, why don't we request everything be in MJPEG (which it already uses) but at a much higher Data Rate. It's at 30Mbps right now...just double that. Problem solved. We have a codec that is much much easier on our PC and should be on the cam's processor.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
But if you move the camera faster than the predictive frames can predict, it's essetially a like fake out move in basketball and that gives you the mud.
Click to expand...

Jack, that's not actually what I've found. I've shot static scenes where grass & bushes are in the foreground and moving trees blowing in the wind, slightly behind. I've seen mud in the stationary grass & bushes, but not in the moving leaves and tree limbs! I still think there's more going on here than we know.

Go figure.
 
Ian-T said:
If the AVCHD is so processor intensive, especially for this cam, why don't we request everything be in MJPEG (which it already uses) but at a much higher Data Rate. It's at 30Mbps right now...just double that. Problem solved. We have a codec that is much much easier on our PC and should be on the cam's processor.
Click to expand...

You'd also get about 5 minutes of high quality video on an 8gig chip and probably run your battery down in 1/2 the time. There's payback for stuff like this.
 
Its important to stick with AVCHD not an old format like MJPEG.

In terms of size and sophistication its like the difference between BMP and JPEG files!!

A lot more sophisticated compression goes into AVCHD, they just need to implement it better on the GH1 so that it competes with other AVCHD camcorders, which do not have the same problems with motion blur, mud and fine detail.

There must be a good reason why the firmware is like it is. I don't think they crippled it on purpose. A large digital camera CMOS primarily designed for stills is a very different beast than Panasonic's dedicated video CMOS or CCD chips we find in their video cams, and they need more time to refine the image processing when it comes to getting the image off the sensor.

It is not the same as what goes on in capturing 12 megapixel stills. Remember we are on a first generation product here - the first time they have ever attempted to deal with a chip like that found in the GH1. It really is the cutting edge and we should expect some bleeding.
 
I'm not sure if I have some settings wrong or not, but my GH1 seems to have a 2GB file size limit on MJPEG files... limiting me to just 8 minutes and 20 seconds on a single take.

This can limit its usefulness in many situations...
 
That limit is because MJPEG files take up much more room than AVCHD and the memory card file system (FAT32) has a limit on file sizes. The GH1 does not split recordings seamlessly over multiple files. There is a similar limit on AVCHD recordings for the same reason but of course the limit is MUCH larger and measured in hours unless you live in Europe and have bought a PAL GH1 which is crippled by a tax law to 28 mins.
 
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