News about GH2 firmware

Soldier said:
Jeez, the Nikon D7000 when it's hacked might even be better than the GH2!
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I think it will be a great alternative...but not better. It certainly will be #2. But that color moire....makes it look like a higher resolution 7D/T2i....which is both a good and bad thing. Anyways...I like the D7000's image overall...alot. But the GH-2 edges it out IMO.
 
Time estimate, Vitaly?

Time estimate, Vitaly?

I imagine this might be difficult to estimate, but is there ANY idea how long it will take to get 1080p 60 fps in the GH2? I'm seriously thinking of selling mine while it's new, assuming it'll take more than a month or two for the hack to be done. What exactly is the bottleneck at this point?

Thanks!
 
The bottleneck is that we (they) don't have full access to the GH2's firmware yet. As far as I know they have the firmware itself, but it's encrypted and will need to be decrypted before they can do anything with it.

This will take a lot of time, and a lot of money to hire someone knowledgeable enough to decode and work with the firmware.

So it'll be a while. Also, if you check the GH2 improvements list here:

http://www.gh1-hack.info/wiki/GH2ImprovementsList

it says that while 1080p/60fps is desired, it is "most likely impossible". I don't know any more info than that, but maybe Vitaliy/someone else can elaborate as to why this is the case.

For what it's worth, the GH2 has only been out for, what, 2 months? The GH1 came out some time in 2009 and didn't have a hack until mid 2010. These things take time.
 
jascination said:
Vitaliy, if Paypal is an issue, check out WePay:

https://www.wepay.com/

Great service for receiving donations from people, and far less evil than paypal.
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I still prefer PayPal.
Only problem is that we need someone to setup account for us.
If you want to know more details, just email me. I'll tell you reasons behind it.

As for technical things.
GH2 MCP (you can see it at http://www.gh1-hack.info/wiki/GH2EncryptionAndDumpingInformation) can be desoldered and dumped.
We know programmer that support this exact chip (and as I said, it also support many many other chips).
We also won't be able to distribute dumped firmware in any way, as we are keeping all aspects of our project legal.
We could only use it to exlore used encryption algorithm.

Best approach is to find some kind of sponsor. So we'll pay for work and necessary adapters only.
 
jascination said:
it says that while 1080p/60fps is desired, it is "most likely impossible". I don't know any more info than that, but maybe Vitaliy/someone else can elaborate as to why this is the case.
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Most probably either encoder or the sensor are not able to do 60p.
Otherwise I don't know why they stripped this ability.
Personnaly I am for encoder inability to make all necessary work at 60p.
But I can be wrong here.
 
I have a D7000 arriving Monday, and would chip in on a hack.

No one has really done anything yet to improve Nikon firmware. But Nikon sells a LOT of cameras. A D7000 hack would find a large audience.
 
Vitaliy Kiselev said:
Most probably either encoder or the sensor are not able to do 60p.
Otherwise I don't know why they stripped this ability.
Personnaly I am for encoder inability to make all necessary work at 60p.
But I can be wrong here.
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Thanks for the info. If I understand you correctly this means that there is zero hope for the GH2 to ever support 60p. This is really important information for many who have been waiting for this improvement. Somebody should post it on the other forums.
 
yosemite said:
Thanks for the info. If I understand you correctly this means that there is zero hope for the GH2 to ever support 60p. This is really important information for many who have been waiting for this improvement. Somebody should post it on the other forums.
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There's 720p60.
 
smith148 said:
Sounds more like it's still unknown to me.
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+1 You might not ever get 1080p @ 60 FPS in real-time with sound. However, 1080p @ 60 FPS in 40% playback speed is all I actually need. I believe the AF100 is capable of this so perhaps it will be added to the GH2 as well?
 
What is this "encrypted" GH2 firmware?

1. Is it really firmware? If it is encrypted, how can you tell?
2. If it is encrypted, couldn't it be just any other bullshit file?
3. If it is encrypted firmware, does it mean the firmware on the GH2 and the firmware update will be encrypted?

This may be just Panasonic tricking Vitaliy spending time and effort on something that isn't even necessary at all. In the worst case, if it were encrypted GH2 firmware and Vitaliy can decrypt it, there is no way he could publish it.

Until we don't know that, why are we all spending time and effort talking about it and even raising money for it?

Wouldn't it be better to just work onto something that we have at hands?
 
What I am really confused by is that it was stated in several places that the GH2 sensor records 1080p at 60 fps, but wraps it into 60i because of some AVCHD limitation.


Vitaliy, you write that "Most probably either encoder or the sensor are not able to do 60p." Does that mean that if it is the encoder, you might be able to hack it to 1080p60? Sorry, I'm just not understanding exactly what you're saying.

In my mind the 60 frames per second are phenomenal to have and I think this will be the standard for many years to come. It just seems like the brain is not able to distinguish 60 fps from real life (an infinity of frames), whereas 24 fps clearly looks like a limited recording.
 
Actually I think it reads at 120 fps, that's one of the reasons the autofocus is faster on the GH2 than the GH1, according to that Japanese interview with the engineers.
 
Right, it has a 120fps mode but that is only used for focusing, probably only for stills, and I don't think we know at what resolution it runs - but it would be awesome to get this mode exposed in a hack (even at reduced res).

Two options AFAICS: either the encoder really can't keep up with 1080 50/60/120p, or (more likely imo) they just didn't want to expose the higher rates. We won't know until Vitaliy cracks the firmware open.
 
If Vitaliy can't get 1080p60 to run on the GH2, they better start selling the GH3 very soon, as 1080p60 is quickly becoming the industry standard even in much less expensive cameras (see e.g. the new Sony PnS's). Plus the NEX-7 for sure will have it.
 
yosemite said:
If Vitaliy can't get 1080p60 to run on the GH2, they better start selling the GH3 very soon, as 1080p60 is quickly becoming the industry standard even in much less expensive cameras (see e.g. the new Sony PnS's). Plus the NEX-7 for sure will have it.
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Actually 50p would be enough for pal country's, would 48p work for ntsc countries too? as a compromise would 48p work and isnt that already doable in the GH2, but without sound?
 
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