GH2 Looking for advice on GH2 hack. [Video inside]

[bming1]

Hi everyone,
I posted my query within another thread, but didn't receive any recommendations, so I'm hoping for better luck by starting a new thread.
I like shooting stuff like the video below, which I shot with a stock GH2, and hope that someone can point me in the right direction regarding the best hack to try. I did do a search, but couldn't find anything definitive that would provide the answer I'm looking for, so I'm trying this route instead

Please forgive me if the nomenclature I use isn't correct and/or what I'm trying to state is confusing. The things that are important to me are:

* Stability and reliability - I just want to pick the camera up, switch it on and shoot, knowing that it will always work the way it should.
* I want wide latitude for color grading.
* I want to be able to use the SD cards that I have right now (16GB Sandisk Extreme 30MB/sec) without losing too much recording time.
* I want to see an improvement in quality, i.e. more detail and less noise.
* It would be great to see the liberation of clean, higher ISOs too, but this isn't nearly as important as the stuff above.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

http://vimeo.com/32345582

 

[Dazza]

It's probably best to ask this over at personal view, the patches have changed quite a bit and I haven't kept up.

I'll try my best to help you though

The most popular patches are probably Cbrandin's and Driftwood's, Cbrandin's for get the most efficency out of the encoder and Driftwood's for his work in GOP1 Intra recording that a lot of people seem to like the motion of and akin it to film.

Stability and reliablity, I think any of the recent patches under 80mb/sec should be fine in that regard. Under that bitrate they should all support spanning(meaning you can record to the full capacity of your card). There was one caveat that I'm not sure if it exist still, is when filming at 720p60 with B-frames enabled you had to film a clip at 1080p24 on the card first. Not to sure about playback in camera though for Driftwood's patches.

Latitude, the bitrate patches will give you maybe one more stop of dynamic range due to the bottom end of shadows not turning into complete mush.

SD Card, your current card is good and should be able to handle just about any of the patches. The original bitrates are 24mb/s for 1080p24 in SH mode and 17mb/s for 1080i60 and 720p60. Cbrandin's patches are around 40-60mb/s and Driftwood's smallest Intra patch is 80mb/s

Quality, you will see more detail, shot dependent of course, especially with complex scenes with motion. You will actually see more noise(as in grain) but less digital macroblocking and smudging of the image. But this is far more desirable as you can clean up the noise in post.

Higher ISOs, ISOs higher than 3200 can be now selected. Debatable as to whether they are clean or not, I have seen some very good videos filmed with them. Along with the higher bitrates, it allows this noiser footage to be usable. In B&W the grain has a very organic look to it.
@12800 ISO
http://vimeo.com/32204670
http://vimeo.com/31914626

@5000 ISO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dycUpo3vRJw&feature=player_embedded#!

Your video is fabulous BTW

 

[bming1]

Dazza, thank you so much for such a detailed reply. You've been extremely helpful! The increased detail in complex scenes with motion is definitely something that I'm interested in, as I foresee myself working in settings much like the one in the video I posted fairly often. The main reason I want to try the hack is to see if I can pull out more detail from the backdrops of my videos.
The personal-view forum is chock-full of information, but it's not easily found and the posters there are sometimes a little harsh in their treatment of questions (and questioners) they consider rudimentary to them. That's why I asked the question here, as I've found that posters on DVXUser are more n00b-friendly.
Thank you for the kind comments about my video. It was my first foray into 'fashion shorts', for lack of a better phrase, but it's something I plan to do more of since I'm making the jump from fashion photography. Cheers, mate!