Question about FAQ

T

tonpole

Carbonite Member
Ive been on these forums for a couple weeks now reading everything i can, the FAQ, the hack and panny manuals, and all sorts of tweaks and tips, however there are still some questions i cant find the answers for:

Bitrate Settings (3.4d)

From what i have gleaned, at one point in the hack's life there were bitrate settings that let you determined the range it was allowed to stay in. Now all i see is one setting for each preset, and an "overall" setting. The faq/manual makes little mention of what they do. When it comes to throughput and determining bandwidth requirements, there needs to be a high, a low, and an average setting. So:

What is the overall bitrate, an average or a max? Is this an absolute, like can the camera go past this limit? If so, by how much? And how does the preset bitrate correlate to that?

Also in the ptools popup under avchd compression, it says "you must use two patches to have any effect". Two patches? What two patches?

Abc?

All ive heard since i first heard about this hack is what preset did you use, a, b or c. Well i downloaded the firmware and ptool, and click on a, b, and c, and nothing happened, except for a little popup that appeared telling me to go here to get the preset files. Here? Like the whole forum? So i can just click on anything and it will download straight to my desktop, awesome thanks.

No really, why isnt this in the FAQ? or the manual? or in a thread titled "Download ptool presets here"?

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More to come...
 
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These questions are not addressed in the FAQ or the manual. If they are then post a link.

Chrisso- the first link's link's are broken. the second link only gives me "reliability", which isnt what im looking for.


I want the ABC settings everyone is referring to, and i want to know what the FHD and OVERALL bitrates do in relation to eachother.
 
When you get a chance, thank Vitaliy up there for providing this hack in the first place. Without his hard work, that he provided for free I might add, there'd be no demands in this thread. He's also a knowledgable and helpful guy who interacts here on a daily basis. Hope you come to do the same. Thanks Vitaliy!
 
When you're using PTool and select an adjustable setting, many settings have a popup that gives some information about the current setting. Some of these popups have a "Suggested values:" section with three values usually. Strangely enough these three items are labeled as "a)", "b)" and "c)".

You actually need to manually change the default setting to the value you want, perhaps based on the a,b or c suggested value. AFAIK, there is no actual single A, B, or C button.
 
Panasonic hasn't provided any of that information to us, so we are making educated guesses. The best we know is that video bitrate is the target bitrate for video only for high detail scenes (AVCHD is a variable codec so the bitrate is not fixed). Overall bitrate is video plus everything else and is used for the camera to calculate how fast it produces data and how much buffering is required to transfer it to flash memory reliably. The A ,B, and, C settings are documented right in PTool itself. You can get a good start with this by using Lpowell's settings (which are very good and stable, although somewhat different than the A, B, or C settings) here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=2068446&postcount=1.

That's it for easy answers. I'm not sure I'd recommend getting into playing around with settings too much - you seem unwilling to do the reading necessary to understand how they work. It's much more complicated than just understanding those two settings. This is, after all, a work in progress and still in the research phase.

You are going to get a lot of bad comments here. We rather treasure Vitaliy and his efforts around here and don't like it when people with bad attitudes threaten to discourage him.

Chris
 
It still puzzles me how some just can't seem to find the ABC settings. You click on/highlight bitrate patch, a pop up appears and says "here are the suggested values, ABC", you punch it in, done.

Hmm...maybe some people don't click on the text and just tick the boxes missing all the input options. that could be it. I think im onto something..ha have the pop up and input options appear when box is ticked. GUI tweaking to cover a broader audience. Some of us just like to click on everything in the screen and discover stuff, others don't i guess.
 
The first time you use PTool, it can be confusing trying to navigate the hierarchical patches when you're not sure what to look for. And if you've read of the A, B, and C settings, it's not unreasonable to assume they'd be selected by the A, B, and C buttons at the bottom of the window. But in this case, the goggles do nothing until you've downloaded PTool INI files...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqfOxm_1BE0&feature=related
 
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Both links work for me, nothing broken.
The first link is to a video walk through on YouTube which goes through each hack stage in good detail. How to do the hack effectively.
The 'reliability' thread is 17 pages long and includes a wealth of information about Ptool, and which settings work best, how and when best to use them etc.....
If you can't be bothered to do a minimum of research by reading a thread like that, well.....
 
I've read every post of lpowells thread, and MPEJ80Mbits thread, and the Perfect project and the FAQ, and every other settings/performance/samples thread and they still dont tell me what relation the FHD bitrate has to the overall bitrate.

1. Is the overall bitrate an upper limit or just an average?

2. If its an upper limit, can the bitrate exceed this, and if so by what margin?

3.Does a preset like FHD represent an average or a lower limit?

4.From what ive read these values are just a suggestion, as the bitrate of encodings can drop far below this, if this is the case, then what purpose do they serve?
 
1. Is the overall bitrate an upper limit or just an average?
Click to expand...

(overall = low to high, so in a sense average)

2. If its an upper limit, can the bitrate exceed this, and if so by what margin?
Click to expand...


(It wouldn't be a limit if you could exceed it, now would it?)

3.Does a preset like FHD represent an average or a lower limit?
Click to expand...

(Don't know)

4.From what ive read these values are just a suggestion, as the bitrate of encodings can drop far below this, if this is the case, then what purpose do they serve?
Click to expand...

(From what I've read this is still a work in progress that requires each person to test and come to their own conclusions. This isn't a software purchase.)
 
The lpowell settings look better than the original unhacked footage, and the camera performs without any problem.
The c settings are popular also.
I couldn't tell you about this or that bit rate, or mathematical value.
I followed all the hack threads for a couple of months, decided on a fairly problem free set of values (lpowell), watched the video walkthough a couple of times and then did the hack.
 
tonpole said:
I'll xxxxxx when he tells us what these settings do and where the mysterious ABC settings are. Apparently im not the only one who wants to know, and for some reason no one bothers to help.
Click to expand...

I'm amazed at the arrogant & ignorant people that plague this GH1 hack - if you can't read the posts & work it out - don't do it! there's no need to be rude & demanding - where are the moderators? :furious3:
 
One should keep in mind that the firmware hack is a reversing effort. Vitaly started with the finished firmware and finding his way back at understanding how it works. It is not as if he is given a written manual about each and every function of the firmware or given the source code. The ambiguities surrounding some of the features/ significance of some values are the result of the very nature of the project. Panny has apparently made the project tougher by means of less than straightforward coding. So the difficulties the new user face is trivial compared to what Vitaly faced.

The documentation efforts have been individual efforts and were initiated by different members at various stages of development of PTool and are at different phases as far as updates are concerned. Since PTool is still in active development, it further adds to the confusion to newcomers in absence of concerted effort at documentation.

The best solution would be a Wiki style help page that can be edited by the entire community. This would save the trouble of navigating through multiple threads and will future proof the documentation even if one member goes hibernating or if features change. Anyone think the same way?
 
Black_Ste said:
The best solution would be a Wiki style help page that can be edited by the entire community. This would save the trouble of navigating through multiple threads and will future proof the documentation even if one member goes hibernating or if features change. Anyone think the same way?
Click to expand...

Thats a much better idea than telling people to read through 16 pages of threads and figure it out for themselves.
 
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