Where did I go wrong? Hack problems

J

jbcon

Active member
Last week I received my new GH1 and got right to learning how to use it and waited to do some tewst at stock resos before appling the hack. I have been using the camera for photos and videp for abot 8 days now with no issues.

Saturday I updated the to 1.32 official firmware and went out and used the GH1 all weekend; again with no issues. Today I installed Ptools 3.4d and put together my own firm ware with a very mild increase in bit rate and implimented 24p as well. My exact settings are below:

[Settings]
Prevent version compare=Checked
Third-party battery=Checked
720p30 420->422 color sampling=Checked
Native 24p/25p=Checked
Video Bitrate FHD/SH=32000000
Video Bitrate H=26000000
Video Bitrate L=22000000
Overall Bitrate=34000000
Limiting Bitrate=38000000
Preset bitrate=234

These are the only settings I changed.

I went out and fimed some test footage and while filiming the second clip in FHD, the camera crashed, or rather froze. The screen went black and nothing I would do would unfreeze it. Even cutting the power wouldn't work (the power led stayed on even in the off position).

I took out the battery and the camera booted up fine, I went to look at the footage I had recorded and again it froze. After heading inside I used the AC power adapter and tested things incase it was a battery issue, but again it froze. I unplugged and fired it up again, and this time went into the camera mode and took a few pictures and had no issues, until I went into play and tryed to few them.....

I am about to restore the stock firmware version 1.32 and see if that helps, but can anyone give me an idea as to what I might have done... I am assuming t was usr error since the camera worked fine before the update....
 
jbcon said:
[Settings]
Prevent version compare=Checked
Third-party battery=Checked
720p30 420->422 color sampling=Checked
Native 24p/25p=Checked
Video Bitrate FHD/SH=32000000
Video Bitrate H=26000000
Video Bitrate L=22000000
Overall Bitrate=34000000
Limiting Bitrate=38000000
Preset bitrate=234

These are the only settings I changed.

I went out and fimed some test footage and while filiming the second clip in FHD, the camera crashed, or rather froze. The screen went black and nothing I would do would unfreeze it. Even cutting the power wouldn't work (the power led stayed on even in the off position).
Click to expand...
You are getting the infamous "native" freeze. Either do not check "24p/25p native patch" or try matching your preset rate to video bitrate fhd/sh setting (that would be 320 in your case).
 
Hack issues?

Hack issues?

Just reset original firmware and all is fine.... so i will have to revisit my procedures and see if i can't determine what i did wrong.

That being said, all my footage i took, including the 1080/24p taken with the hacked firmware. so whatever the issue it only impacted playback..... i have determined that the hacked gh1 can not playback 1080/24p footage? Guess i missed that part of the howto.... but would that freeze the whole camera, after the hack is installed, rather than give a message that it can read the file?

If we can't playback 24/p fotage on camera, how do you all review footage in the field?
 
Thanks will try that tomorrow...thanks also for the correct terminology, now I know what to search for -- native freeze
 
By your statements I'll guess that you somehow expected some kind of perfection and/or relative worry free experience..

I'll say it again, this is a HACK. It is not a product nor a service. It does not come with tech support or guarantees of any kind.

This HACK was meant as a TEST and we are the TESTERS. Putting this hack on your camera means you are now an active participant in testing the hacks that Vitaliy has put in place. We test, test some more, test some more and then report what we find. Sometimes we find real problems, sometimes we just find bad combinations. This HACK can/will probably cause your camera to fail a lot until you find stable settings. We report what we find to the others and they test it too. Vitaliy takes what he needs out of our testing and tries new/different things and we start all over again.

I'm not trying to be rude or anything but we've had an large number of people who come in, fail to read through the stickies and the informative threads and then stick a hack on their camera and then complain when something goes wrong. Please at least read the stickies and then move ahead to the more lengthy threads. I know it's a ton of reading but a lot of the problems that you might experience have already been gone through.

Another thing to keep in mind...

One person's perfect settings might not even work on your camera. The cameras, the cards, the settings, the scenery, etc, all have something to do with the relative stability of your setup.

It's up to you to find what works for you and your setup. Nobody else can tell you what will work for you.
 
i agree... lets worry less about the quirks and risks....without risks there is no glory.all i know is i am getting 40mbps for an avchd 1080 from the hack, which is more than the 7d or the 5d can do and its holding....i had that experiences...dont panic..just keep trying with the settings everyone is sharing....good luck
 
No offense taken... i come from the computer overclocking world.... this whole process is a kin to that i suppose. trial and error, with the potential for great risk to your hardware for marginal gains.
i understand.... this being my first GH1 proverbial "blue screen of death" it caught me off guard. i guess my misunderstanding was that this process was so paralleled to overclocking a computer..... if i can contribute anything, maybe someone could insert the comparison with pc overclocking into the official stickies... if i would have read that, i would have had different expectations, but not being from the film world may be experiencing a language for the first time.

My brother-in-law is a film school graduate and alumni of several Victor Nunez films and suggested i look at this camera, he was very impressed with the one he got and has very little computer or other consumer electronic experience.... guess i figured it must be easy if he got his modded and i am the geek in the family....
 
if your stuff froze your memory card is probably not up to snuff, just take the battery out put it back in reboot the cam and delete what you filmed and either stop putting such high settings on the hack or get a class 10 sandisk extreme or one of the top cards
 
it's not that simple. There are plenty of combinations that can fail even on the "best" cards.
 
I am trying to be conservative with my settings, and am now working with 24p off. While the freezes aren't as frequent I am still getting a few with my latest settings.

Update: The A) settings w/ 24p only ticked have produced a stable 24p recording at 1080 with no freezes or crashes of any kind.... I left alone all other options, except version incriment and 3rd party battery of course. Will try this for a few days and then work into the B) settings.

For me like my analogy of PC overclocking, adjusting the minimum settings first, then adding adjustments one at a time seems to help.

Just so I am clear -- but are the A), C) settings, B) settings etc, are the recommended settings that appear in the little help pop-up in ptools when you select a menu item?

still plugging away.....
 
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Well, I may have found a setting I can live with (for now) I am sure I will want to push things even further at some point, but I am not seeing much difference in quality on the limited scenes I have been playing with and shoot to justify the hassle of going higher.

I have found a stable and fairly reliable setup on a Patriot LE Class 10 (16GB card) to be:

Native 24p: On
FHS/SD bitrate: 40k
H bitrate: 34k
L bitrate: 34k
Overall: 42k
Limiting: 44k
Preset bitrate: standard 234 (I thought I had chanced this too 400, but didn't when I went back into Ptools. It seems to work without....

My settings are just experimental and I am by far not a decerning eye... As I learn more I am sure I will change things again, but this and the original Pani 1.32 firmware will be the ones on my extra cards in my bag for now.
 
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