GH2 Since we can now achieve 132mbs, Whats the future of the GH2 Hack and its updates?

M

moviemaykr

Active member
Im starting this thread with a film aspect in mind, as regards to the future of the GH2 VK Hack and its possibilities. The things I care about are how it relates to use on short and feature films as well as music videos. I see a lot of tests and articles but I really want to see or hear about if all this can applied to an actual professional film shoot. Im sure all of you testing these settings arnt doing it just to have great home videos or stationary landscape movies. Id love to see more short form movies with actors and even some action sequences to seriously test the limits of this new hack. Until the Scarlet or some other camera pushing the limits comes out, then it seems for indie film makers that rely on shooting their projects on a small budget need a camera that pushes the limits of 1080 24p.
So the ? is does the GH2 VK Hack, have the ability to provide a better looking and more stable images than the Canon 5D and 7D, which films are currently flooding the festivals and some films are actually getting sold. Id love to hear thoughts on this subject and what the future holds for the GH2 Hacks.
 
interesting thread. i would love to see a film get its due and find out later it was shot on a gh2. surely one must be in the making.
 
It just cant be any feature though....

It just cant be any feature though....

It needs to be a feature that has professional actors and not the directors girlfriend or family members! LOL It would also be great to see one that has shot with great lenses like the Zeiss CP 2.0's combined with great audio from Lectrosonic lavs and a Scheops boom mic. Throw in some professional lighting, a stedi-cam and some type of dolly or jib and thats the GH2 movie I want to see!! Oh wait I think I'm talking about my next feature film. LOL :) Its great to see people like VK and more push the limits of this camera. Now if the memory card makers could only make a card that writes at 200mbs I think we would have it covered!!
 
Well unless things change drastically I'm going to be shooting my next feature on several GH2s and some AF100s. There's other interesting cameras on the market too... so who knows. I believe after seeing Monsters that anything is possible with any 1080P camcorder. That film was great.
 
Hey Justyn good to hear your making due with what you have but make sure you have the best lenses and audio you can get because without those it will only hurt your chances of distribution. Story is the most important, but try to make your shots and audio like the major films you see on the big screen, it will make a huge difference in the production value of your film. As for Monsters being great I begged to differ, it was actually a horrible story and the acting was sub par. What was amazing is the graphic treatments and what Garth did by himself.
I cant wait for the GH3 and then Vitally to hack, to see how much better it becomes!
 
The main advantage is raise from 24Mbps to, let's say 48Mps. There, the IQ improved immensely. Afterwards, some people decided that more bitrate always equals better IQ and started doing tricks to eek the highest possible bitrate with...err... dubious visible benefits. Most of it was by lowering codec efficiency by forcing it to use lower GOP.

To put it in the simple way:

If GH2 was a car, Vitaly found the way to raise it's power from 150 to 220hp by using some more gasoline. MPG dropped from 30 to 15, but car was noticeably quicker.

Then the funny brigade came and made the connection lower MPG = more speed. Now, the latest fancy is to drive the car in the first gear only, leading to really atrocious MPG. They claim it gives the racy (sorry, filmic) speed...that can only be felt, not measured.
 
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Grunf said:
The main advantage is raise from 24Mbps to, let's say 48Mps. There, the IQ improved immensely. Afterwards, some people decided that more bitrate always equals better IQ and started doing tricks to eek the highest possible bitrate with...err... dubious visible benefits. Most of it was by lowering codec efficiency by forcing it to use lower GOP.

To put it in the simple way:

If GH2 was a car, Vitaly found the way to raise it's power from 150 to 220hp by using some more gasoline. MPG dropped from 30 to 15, but car was noticeably quicker.

Then the funny brigade came and made the connection lower MPG = more speed. Now, the latest fancy is to drive the car in the first gear only, leading to really atrocious MPG. They claim it gives the racy (sorry, filmic) speed...that can only be felt, not measured.
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LOL! - that's a *very* good analogy :cheesy:

If they do shoot a movie with the new setting, perhaps they could call it 'Bit Rate Fever'
 
Well I enjoyed Monsters even without knowing the story. The talent did what it needed and I enjoyed a more slowed down aspect to the genre. I'd also take his ROI on this...

I know too well about the merits of what kills and what makes a feature. That's why I bought my steadicam and have been practicing and workign with it like crazy. To me, that's the single biggest gamechanger, especially for a genre like I'm doing. I'm also an audio guy so having decent audio will be a main concern and issue. I plan to do multicam and multi sound source. I'd like individual tracks for all talent and some plant mikes and booms and also a concealed SD recorder on each person too. Some monitored and some recording wild... Just giving myself the best possible option with backups for all of it.

I do also think that I have a pretty unique niche and distribution platform for what I'm doing... But then again we'll see. Certainly there's lots of films coming out, but not a lot of sales. I also now believe that getting a name is option due tot he downturn and so many actors out of work. Name actors too...
 
I disagree with Grumf, the lower GOP settings started being explored by folks who had a lot of experience shooting film and who felt that the higher GOP settings compromised film-like motion. It's true that lowering the GOP requires a higher bit-rate, but the lower GOP/higher bit-rate stuff was NOT about maxing out the bit-rate. It was about achieving a more film-like motion along with the benefits of a higher bit-rate and I do not think that work deserves to be ridiculed.

Vincent
 
Some people need to actually test the difference before drawing conclusions. I find the people, myself included, are being honest about what results they're getting. The first stage of any testing like this is find the highest roof. Then tune that by a number of factors, including bringing the bitrate down and testing gop. There is no magic setting, what we will probably end up with is two or three patches, each works best in a certain situation as well as a couple that are good all rounders.

It's about supplying superior alternatives and choices to the default settings. We are actually now trying to find the best quality image, not just the highest bitrate. The 132mb patch is virtually indentical to hdmi output. That said, the 44mb patch is a good stable alternative, but there are clearly cases where the 132 is superior. It is, with its GOP 3, superior in low light and with motion.

Some people just think this is about trying to pixel peep. It's not. You won't see much difference. Higher tuned bitrate holds up to grading better and reveals shadow details better. If you're not shooting a scene where that applies, use the 44mb and so on. If you like using lower gop for motion in a scene, now you have an alternative.

Applying a different patch takes 2 minutes. We are experimenting. You have to do that before you draw a sweeping conclusion. Lower gop, high 132 bitrate has it's place. Right now that's all I'm using.
 
What's been the difference after the hack? I haven't been following it? Is it worth doing.... do people think? Anyone have a URL on how to start as I've never done this to a GH cam.

thanks
 
I'm kind of with grunf on this one, but again I do really like the look of GOP 6 (but dislike GOP 3 and GOP 1). Although my background is video, I have a history in experimental film, so I know what film look is. GOP 1 and GOP 3 aren't it, they are more like a digital film look though (RED like). We've lost the real motion look of film when cinemas moved away from mechanical shutters that deliver the same flicker as the film cameras that shot the footage to DLPs, so its all pretty moot. It does look more like AVC-Intra running at GOP1 or like prores, or any other intra only codec. You'll get the same using the MJPEG codec at a high bitrate, sure the compression isn't as smart as AVCHD but run MJPEG at 220Mbps (if you can) it'll probably look as good. All that being said, the change or improvement to motion, (though improvement is an odd word to use as far as I'm concerned, its definitely different though) isn't that jawdropping to my eyes considering the cost of filesize. I think its worth noting too that AVCintra after all is maxxed at 113Mbps, the neares thing to running AVCHD at GOP 1. Driftwoods settings though are part of a series of tests he's doing studying the behaviour of the buffers, they are very valuable in themselves for that.
 
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Justyn said:
What's been the difference after the hack? I haven't been following it? Is it worth doing.... do people think? Anyone have a URL on how to start as I've never done this to a GH cam.

thanks
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I think the main perks are much improved 720p mode, improved shadow detail and 30 minute limit removal (PAL).

My main goal in hacking the camera is to improve shadow detail. The stock GH2 has a tendency to turn shadows to a macro-block mush
 
moviemaykr said:
does the GH2 VK Hack, have the ability to provide a better looking and more stable images than the Canon 5D and 7D, which films are currently flooding the festivals...
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The hacked GH1 was better than the Canon's image wise, and the Hacked GH2 exceeds that. In my opinion the unhacked GH2 surpasses the Canon's. Here is a link to a discussion I started on a short I shot last year with the hacked GH1. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?223388-GH13-Short-film&highlight=
 
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MR Fanny said:
interesting thread. i would love to see a film get its due and find out later it was shot on a gh2. surely one must be in the making.
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There is :) Our film will be out for 2013 festivals, although we didn't shoot it *all* on a GH2, some of it was and continues to be as we finish.
 
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I as well would like to know why the festivals seem to be flooded with more canon dslr films and less of the others. I agree that the gh2s are the best resolution of the two but why hardly no mention of these other brands?
 
reem12 said:
I as well would like to know why the festivals seem to be flooded with more canon dslr films and less of the others. I agree that the gh2s are the best resolution of the two but why hardly no mention of these other brands?
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The GH2 hasn't been widely available long enough yet for films shot with it to be placed in festivals (also keep in mind that some quick films may have been shot on GH2s and thrown together, but weren't good enough to place at the better festivals...good films take time to produce.) Depending on when a film is finished with post-production, it can still take as long as a year before it makes its festival premiere. Canon DSLRs have been out for a longer period of time (at least with the 5DmkII.)

Further, films that actually place in decent festivals tend to have decent DPs/Cinematographers and DPs that I know (and myself included even though I dearly love the GH-series of cameras) would rather work with Canon DSLRs even though the image isn't quite as good as the GH1/GH2 image because the overall build quality of the camera, availability of really good lenses (and other parts on short notice) from rental houses in the native mount...not to mention the knowledge base and support network surrounding Canon DSLRs is far superior to that surrounding the Panasonics.

And don't forget that when we are talking GH1 days pre-hack (and it's films who started production in this era that are now starting to show up at festivals,) the transcoding/pulldown removal issue was a real pain in the butt, whereas working with Canon footage was much easier, and I know DPs who didn't want to bother with the GH series because when you combined that problem with any one of the other issues I mentioned it was just much easier to go Canon...Panasonic cams still didn't offer enough upside to be picked.

The transcoding/pulldown issue has changed with the GH2, but my other points still stand -- that said I wouldn't be surprised if we see a fair number of films in 2012 festival circuit shot on the GH2 (Ours is going to be in 2013.)
 
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its because the canon cameras are like iPhones. theyre not necessarily better, just more known. the editing for canon is equally a pain in the ass as gh1 footage. both had to go through cineform to work properly.
 
Interesting thread...

The thing is, if we didn't try and push the boundaries we'd never know - I for one am not simply after a huge bitrate so I can turn round and say mine is better than yours- my goal is to see what the codec can achieve and how to implement the settings to achieve great looking results at various resolution and GOP settings. If I find I cant obtain quality without having to push the bitrate up for a short GOP then sobeit, I'l damn well do it because I can and I may need this setting for future film project.

I am about to embark on a project that requires GH2s (alongide a couple of EX3s) for various fast action scenes. This has driven my own testing of the hack all along.

I see very few people actually testing the hack of late but a helluva lot of people ARE prepared to knock down the time and effort of others without even bothering to look at actually what is going on. We need more testers. Its plain to see its worth it.
 
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