GH2 So, what's everyone's favorite patch? And, if you didn't hack your GH2, why not?

L

L1N3ARX

Well-known member
So for the first time, I tried a non-driftwood patch. Kinda crazy, I've been in personal-view and tinkering around with my GH2 for about a year now... and have yet to try any patch that wasn't by Driftwood, until today. I popped in Flow Motion V2.02 out of curiosity and was totally blown away. The smoothness and cadence of the motion, was amazing. I seriously couldn't believe it, that ever so present micro jitter and frame judder I had gotten to used to in other patches was no longer there. I don't really know how to describe it, but something has definitely changed in regards to the smoothness of high detail shots.

So what is everyone else using?
 
L1n,

I'm on the sanity 4 right now but at a shoot today I just noticed two things.

1) for unknown reasons, my focus ring of my fairly new 20mm 1.7 panisonic lense stopped working mid recording. I had to shut down, change a setting, restart the camera and then it would work again. Is this the patch...? I dunno yet.

2) I a missing 2-3 clips... maybe it crashed and I didn't notice is since I am viewing out of a lilliput but dang does that stink.
 
gundar said:
L1n,

I'm on the sanity 4 right now but at a shoot today I just noticed two things.

1) for unknown reasons, my focus ring of my fairly new 20mm 1.7 panisonic lense stopped working mid recording. I had to shut down, change a setting, restart the camera and then it would work again. Is this the patch...? I dunno yet.
Click to expand...

Hmm... did this happen after you installed a new patch? Or was it a patch you had been using for a while? And, are you referring to the AF during recording? Obviously focusing manually would never stop working, so I assume the AF is crapping out for whatever reason?
 
I'm using the Flowmotion 2.02 right now. The last Driftwood patch I used was Aquamotion 2, which was great except I get the odd occasional stopped recordings and non playbacks.

Being a cheap bastard, I refused to pay through the nose for the expensive 90mb/s cards that seem to only work with Driftwood's latest patches, so I never got to sample Driftwood's best efforts, sad to say.

With Lpowell's Flowmotion 2.02, I've pretty well stopped worrying about hiccups. I think Lpowell has hit the sweet spot, both in terms of image quality and recording time. I've never been so happy with the Gh2...

Thanks, Lpowell, Driftwood and Vitaly!
 
L1n,

Nope, focus actually stopped working. Being a new panny lens without ever having this happen before, I assumed it was the patch... could be the lens I guess... Will reinstall panny firmware and see if it happens again.

I shy away from A/F as much as I can.

BTW: 95 mbs card on relatively new gh2.
 
LPOWELL's Flowmotion 2.02 here as well.
(props to you lpowell!)
I chose it for it's combination of high bit-rate, smooth motion, and reliability even with standard Sandisk Extreme class 10 cards (which is all I can afford right now)
So far - zero problems.

One secret trick I use a lot and is enhanced by Flowmotion 2.02 - video stills as production stills.
I do a lot of still photography that ends up as Web Only delivery - the world of 72dpi. I have had great success by simply rolling video on the subjects for a couple minutes and the shoot is done! Then I get the sick luxury of having a million stills to choose from (the video stream) so "the great shot but someone's eyes were closed" is a thing of the past. I can advance frame-by-frame and get the exact best moment! I'm spoiled by this.
Are the results pro-magazine cover print quality? NO. But for web only applications they are totally good enough - especially with the enhancements of this hack.
People say pixle-peeping is not very relevant to video, and they may be right, but if your intention IS to use only stills then pixle-peeping is your entire game.

I am still simply blown away by what I get out of this $1,000 camera.
Blown.
Away.
 
To anser the question "Why not?", it's because on every thread I've read about GH2 patches there's always someone who has had the camera malfunction at some point because of the hack. And if you are only using the footage for web delivery or for DVD, does it actually make any difference? And the drastically reduced recording times have put me off too. Don't get me wrong, though, I have been very very impressed with some of the sample videos on Vimeo and think the people who have come up with these things are very clever. I'm just answering the question from my point of view.
 
David Parsons said:
To anser the question "Why not?", it's because on every thread I've read about GH2 patches there's always someone who has had the camera malfunction at some point because of the hack. And if you are only using the footage for web delivery or for DVD, does it actually make any difference? And the drastically reduced recording times have put me off too. Don't get me wrong, though, I have been very very impressed with some of the sample videos on Vimeo and think the people who have come up with these things are very clever. I'm just answering the question from my point of view.
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I agree - for web only video delivery I found the hacks unnecessary.
The hacks have had a BIG impact for me when it comes to using video stills as pictures. The improvements in macro-blocking and fine detail are more important and more visible in stills, and allow you to crop in more without losing all your quality.
Also if someone is going to put your video up on a 20-foot screen from a bluRay player then the macro-blocking improvements are quite visible.
 
I've been using Driftwood's Orion V4b and love it so far. Haven't tried Flowmotion or Sanity yet, but hope to someday soon.
 
FlowMotion 2.2 here also. Love it. Works great on my 16G Transcend cards though I have had 2 occasions where right when I started t record I received an error message. Hit record again and it worked fine. Never crashed or lost anything in-process.
 
Iam using the 44mb/s Hack. The mb/s is already enough to reduce or eliminate the very disturbing banding issues in the sky, this was my main problem with the GH2. Also blocking with higher ISO gets already reduced. I dont use any higher mb/s hacks since I didnt see a bigger difference on my 42´TV and the files are getting too big for my taste, this is maybe more interesting for professionals. The 24h Timebuster hack looks interesting, I´ll probably test this software soon since it records in real 2 FPS and needs less memory space.
 
"time buster" never heard of this, can you explain, or link to where I can find more info. I'm guessing it may be for timelapse?
 
Orion and Flowmotion. Orion has just a touch more oomph in certain situations, FlowMotion handles the majority of my needs.
 
maranfilms said:
"time buster" never heard of this, can you explain, or link to where I can find more info. I'm guessing it may be for timelapse?
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Yes, it is for video timelapse with true 2 FPS without wasted frames and therefore less memory needed. Even with higher mb/s i.e. flowmotion 2.02 or driftwood patches you get the possibility to record for a longer time with allegedly great quality results. At least this is how I understand it, there is a lot of tech talks which I cant follow all. They talk also about the possibility for ultra long timelapse recordings up to 24 hours with a 64gb SD card.
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/...mehbuster-2.0-settings-the-day-is-not-over/p1
 
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One area in which FlowMo might be at a disadvantage relative to Driftwood patches--but I haven't tested to know!--is in noise in the shadows. This is especially crucial for certain kinds of grading. Again, not trying to start a flame and i haven't checked it out yet, but remember that the advantage of hacks isn't always immediately perceptible. Some of the ooomph comes from how flexible the footage is in post grading.
 
qwerty123 said:
One area in which FlowMo might be at a disadvantage relative to Driftwood patches--but I haven't tested to know!--is in noise in the shadows. This is especially crucial for certain kinds of grading. Again, not trying to start a flame and i haven't checked it out yet, but remember that the advantage of hacks isn't always immediately perceptible. Some of the ooomph comes from how flexible the footage is in post grading.
Click to expand...

Definitely, you're probably right. I guess what I'm after is how smooth the motion is, no judder, no jitter... really it's like shooting any other "real" pro camera. You have to download the original to see it, since vimeo compression / internet connection will totally make that irrelevant. But I'd be interested in testing out different patches side by side in dark areas to find out if this is the case.
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Your stuff always looks great. What lens was that?
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It's actually a flimsy old lens that's literally falling apart, I found it in an old dusty box of nikon mount lenses. It's scratched to hell and the focus ring is almost coming off haha, but I love it. It's a Rokkunar 35mm 2.8. I'm sure "Rokkunar" is just an off brand that was labeled on top of a generic lens made for the masses at one point. But, I really dig the aesthetic.
 
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