NTSC GH1 in PAL land - time to hack or not?

R

RandyQ

Well-known member
Folks,
I got my NTSC GH1 and will be leaving for China in a day or so to shoot some factory shots. Does this mean its mandatory to do hack and switch it to PAL, or can I get away with tweaking the shutter speeds? My big concern is fluorescent light flicker.

If it can be done by tweaking shutter speed (thus avoiding doing the hack), whats the right setting?

Thanks in advance!

rgds/ RandyQ
 
Oops, forgot to add - I'm shooting strictly 720P, and right now I strive to keep my shutter speeds at 1/40-1/60 range (mostly in 1/50 actually).

i originally planned to do the hack when the time to shoot in a PAL country comes, but right now I am liking the GH1 so much as it is I'm afraid to hack it.

Any advice will be appreciated.
 
In Pal countries 1/50 will avoid flickering as it matches the electricity of 50hz. I am in Israel and have hacked my camera to Pal with no issues. Have shot 3 weddings of about 4 to 5 hours each with a pair of hacked GH1's.

If you are shooting at 720 60P, and you drop your frame rate to less than 1/60, then you will get a hacked version of 30P with duplicate frames inserted into the 60P timeline (same as if you drop below 1/50 when shooting 720 50P).
 
weismangroup said:
If you are shooting at 720 60P, and you drop your frame rate to less than 1/60, then you will get a hacked version of 30P with duplicate frames inserted into the 60P timeline (same as if you drop below 1/50 when shooting 720 50P).
Click to expand...

I'm editing the 720 60P footage on a 30P timeline - are you saying that if I go below 1/60, the effect is an odd shutter speed of less than 1/30?

Re: NTSC cam in PAL land - the question is more like what I would have to do in order to deal with the flicker issues, without having to perform the hack.
 
If you drop the shutterspeed below 1/60 or 1/50 for PAL, then the framerate will automatically drop to 1/30 or 1/25. You will not get any "odd shutter speed," you will get exactly the shutter speed you selected but a slower frame rate. The file is still put into a 60p/50p stream, so if you scroll through your footage frame by frame, you will see every frame twice. This won't really matter if you are use a 30p timeline but you won't be able to do smooth slow motion. To avoid the flicker you'll simply need to keep your shutter speed at 1/50th.

As for whether or not you do the hack, it depends on what you plan on doing with your footage. If it is just going straight to the web, then it's fine to use NTSC frame rates. If you want to give footage to other PAL users, or you want to mix it on a timeline with other PAL footage or you want to edit and output to a PAL DVD then you should do the hack. If you are not sure what you want to do with the footage, then it's best to shoot either with 1080 24p or 25p as these are easy to interchange - you can re-interpret the footage inside your NLE and there will be a barely noticible speed change, but it will otherwise appear perfectly normal. If you are shooting in 60p wih a shutter of 1/50th, you'll be losing half your frames anyway so you may as well shoot at 24p/25p to give yourself more resolution and more options later on.

Keep in mind they now have the 'version compare' feature which allows you to revert back to the original Panasonic firmware with the proper sequence number. This means if something goes wrong with your camera you can change everything back to the original version and send it in to be repearied under warranty and it will appear to be a completely original, untampered GH1.
 
My client isn't particular about NTSC or PAL - its the flickering fluorescent lights I am concerned about, which makes me consider doing the firmware update.

What i'm asking for is if I go ahead and shoot in NTSC, are there shutterspeed settings that will enable me to reduce or eliminate the flicker? I'm shooting 720/60P, so does this mean shooting at shutter speed 1/100 will help? I used to do this with my PD170 - shoot NTSC, but shutter speed at 1/100 and it seems to work somewhat.
 
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