All this tested on GF2, i think it's same for GH2.

1. Video Bitrate FSH/SH : you can set it for example to 200 000 000, final bitrate will depends on what quantizier you will set.

2. GOP Size : 1

3. Encoder settings 1 180i/p : 1 Without this video will very jerky.

4. Quantizier : depends on your card speed. Fast card needed. Take 32 for start number.

5. Quantizier table : all to be 1.

6. 1080 Scaling I : all to be 0x0. First 16 part is for Y, second for Cb, third for Cr.

7. Table flag1 I : all to be 0x0. (Not shure affect this seting or not )

8. Table High I : all to be 0x0. (Not shure affect this seting or not)

And that's it. You should to set all picture adjustments to -2 except sharpness. This settings will give you image that very close to that what you see in live view.

The day I discovered the GH2 could do 2fps I got so excited, I loaded up a full battery, put the camera on the balcony and aimed it at the shopping mall door. I got over 3+1/2h of Cinema 24p footage (@2fps) and after speeding it up 15x (to 300fps) in VirtualDub I almost couldn't believe my luck. This is what I got and I have yet to grade it properly:

Since that event, I wondered about the best way to patch up the camera to capture them. MJPEG was the obvious candidate. It's a Full Intra codec and it can be setup to capture just 2fps. That means absolutely no wasted frames unlike AVCHD, so MJPEG must be great, but there was a caveat: even with stock settings there was a capture time limit that was well below AVCHD. How is that possible since it's only capturing 2fps, the bitrates have got to be frugal? Well, it happens that there is a 2GB filesize limit within MJPEG so even after taking Driftwoods Quantum 100-50's MJPEG settings and cutting the quality to take half the bitrate, you will end with less than one hour of footage. Compare that to AVCHD and you see what got me started.

Then there was the IQ issue. I stumped into this: http://sonnati.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/h-264-for-image-compression/ which made me start another full set of tests (http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2111/gh2-mjpeg-resolution-findings-and-myth-busting/p1) in which I found that unlike most crazy MJPEG resolutions that only seem to be 720p upscaled, the one used on Driftwoods patch was the best that ATM can be extracted from MJPEG and that even rivals with AVCHD. That test ended up on a tie, so in my book AVCHD wins for flexibility and recording time.

At the same time these tests were taking place, I fought a lot with the stock settings trying to make a patch that used GOP 13 and yes, that's the frequency at which you see major block changes when you set the shutter speed to 1/2s. This GOP13 would insure excellent quality as it makes the result Full Intra once you trash the needed frames. But the frames and limits and buffers and modes were giving me all kinds of speed messages Hell. By that time I also discovered that the null B frames that encoded no changes at 2fps were much larger than P-Frames which also appeared a lot more frequently than I wished they would. Null B-Frames were 2.5x bigger than P and when there was movement, the P-Frames would take as much space (and sometimes even more) than I frames, so I had to do something about it to make it more efficient. Meanwhile Nick @Driftwood and @LPowell were kind enough to share their knowledge and let me in on a few tricks. These allowed me to suppress B-Frames altogether and starve P-Frames to death.

So here I was armed with a bazooka and a missile and I couldn't even fire a pistol. Then a few days ago @Balazer came out with his Cake patch featuring a completely VBR approach through a Constant Quantizer as if he couldn't care less about bitrates, limits or buffers or all the stuff that was putting me down. I tried it a 2fps and I couldn't believe how well it worked. And since the frame rate I'm using is ridiculous when compared to normal video modes, there are no speed/buffer/spanning issues even if you have the slowest SD card in the business. In this case, this VBR aproach is a no brainer and the cherry on top is that you get Constant Quality at Quantizer 22 which is very very good IQ!

So, hands to work, bake the Cake, mix Driftwood's MPEG settings, apply the P/B-Frame tricks and it was working on the third try. :O

It could have been a lot faster as I tried to best the 60i mode and leave all other modes alone. It ended up being the wrong choice because the 60i GOP isn't sticking and probably the Interlacing is making too big P-Frames around the I-Frames. In the end I managed to use tweak 24p for timelapses and the frame usage when there is no movement is a beautiful set of I-Frame spikes with all else almost null. 60i is now GOP13 on I/P frames exclusively and the P sizes look generous, so the starved P-Frames on 24p don't seem to affect it. 720p modes seem also unaffected. In the end this patch tries to give you the best 2fps and still leave you with 2 very workable modes without repatching: 1080i60 and 720p.

Thank you @balazer for baking Cake.

Thank you @drifwood for the MJPEG settings and no B-Frame trick.

Thank you @lpowell for telling me how to starve the P-Frames.

Thank you @cbrandin for StreamParser 2.4 which gave me wonderful new numbers.

.

VERSION HISTORY :

1 - TimeBuster 1 - First Release

• Based on Cake v1. It uses GOP13, a Constant Quantizer VBR approach without B-Frames, minimum P-Frame size and quality.

2 - TimeBuster 1.1 - with 2 significant changes:

• Now based on @balazer 's Cake 1.1, it has switched to use the Rate Control mechanism from @LPowell 's FlowMotion 100.

• 720p mode was broken due to use of a very low quantizer (12) which lead to skipped frames in 720p. It now uses QP=20 on both 720 & 1080 modes which will have an observable effect in both bitrate & quality even though it still gives you 24+ hours on 64GB.

3 - TimeBuster 1.2 - with 1 significant change for a fully featured 720p mode:

• Since @balazer 's Cake 1.1 is now heavily based on @LPowell 's FlowMotion 100, I decided to copy LPowells 720p settings since they will probably play better with the other modes. The only difference on 720p is a constant QP which had to be lowered yet from 20 to 21 because it still dropped frames on torture charts and/or sometimes present speed issues at very high ISO (>3200) on Class 10 SDs.

4 - TimeBuster 1.3 - with a lot of significant changes:

• Ported to PTTools 3.64d

• Savings on P-Frames is now accomplished by using a Scaling Table that is full of 0xFFFF for 1080p modes.

• Quantizer boundaries were removed since they are now much more dependent on the new Quantizer Tables.

• Redesigned for merging, these definitions try to be as independent as possible from their re-packaging definitions (in this case FlowMotion 1.1) and are published in two flavors: Timebuster 1.3 Base (for merging) and Timebuster 1.3 FloMo (merged with FlowMotion 1.1)

NOTE1: Timebuster Base 1.3 was merge tested with @LPowell 's FlowMotion 1.1, @Balazer 's Cake 1.2 and Nick @Driftwood 's Quantum X (v2) with minimal impact on all modes except for 1080p. I recommend FlowMotion or Cake for the simple reason that the 1080p24 Frame Limit is set to a much higher value in these settings. In fact, if you care for nothing other than the 24p timelapse IQ and don't mind impacting some of the other modes, you should set it to 10,000,000.

NOTE2: Merging Timebuster Base 1.3 with other settings is easiest done by loading Timebuster Base 1.3 first and then Alt+Clicking your choice of merger.

5 - Timebuster is now comprised of 2 main variants:

a) 24h Timebuster 2.0 - with the following changes (from TimeBuster 1.3):

• The GOP for 24p is now married to 2.5fps. The bitrate hit is a little above 20% but the recording length can be easily compensated by raising the QP. As a benefit it's still very close to 2fps and it's the closest to a 360º shutter we can get on 24p.

b) 24h TimeHBusteR 2.0 (NEW, uses HBR 30)

• Similar philosophy to 24h Timebuster 2.0 Base but as the name suggests, uses HBR mode instead of 24p. There is another difference, P-Frame quality is fully preserved as this kind of frames is used for one of the interlaced slices on Key Frames.

• GOP married to 1/2.5 on HBR 30p (NTSC) and to 1/5s on HBR 25p (PAL). The big benefit is that both are using a 360º shutter. Uncheck "1080i50 and 1080p24 GOP Size=5" before merging if you don't plan to use Shutter Speed (SS) =1/5s and want to better preserve the 24p mode and HBR 25.

Both variants are now:

• Using B-Frames. There is a 6% penalty in bitrate usage but this was necessary to make sure the QP was respected. I believe the gain from setting the QP at will is just too great to ignore, since not everyone wants to record for 24h straight. QPs as low as QP=16 were tested and theoretically it could go as low as QP=12 @ISO160 when merged with FlowMotion 1.11 on regular tripod mounted footage.

• GOP married to 2.5fps. The bitrate hit is a little above 20% but the recording length can be easily compensated by raising the QP. The reason behind this was getting as close as possible to 360º.

• User definable GOP - GOP can be set at will according to intended SS, use the attached "GOP-SS-table.png" to look up the right value. Defaults settings are SS=2.5fps and GOP 1080i=10 for 24h Timebuster 2.0 and SS=2.5/5fps and GOP 1080i50/i60=12/5 for 24h TimeHBusteR 2.0.

• User definable QP - QP can be set at will according to desired IQ/recording length. I've gathered quite an amount of information so that in the future I can make an Excel tool to estimate the best QP from Card Size/Footage Snapshot/Desired ISO/Recording Length. Default settings are Q24/23 for 24h Timebuster/TimeHBusteR.

As before, there is the Base Release to be merged at wish with popular settings (load Base first in PTTools and then "ALT+Click" your choice of merger) and there is also the FlowMotion Release (already merged with FlowMotion 1.11). I've merge tested against @lpowell 's FlowMotion 1.11, @balazer 's Cake 95, and @bkmcwd 's GOP3ZILLA and no undesirable effects were observed. The key is using a VBR settings definition with a very high "1080p24 Frame Limit", especially if you are going for a low QP (<22).

(edit) If you want to merge with Nick @driftwood 's settings, I recommend going for Cluster v1 as shines in being both a long GOP set and also having the biggest "1080p24 Frame Limit" of all the sets I know.

6 - Updated Release of Timebuster/timeHBusteR 2.02 FlowMotion - WARNING HBR version IS BROKEN at 24p

• (EDIT) This turned out to be a rushed release. Several users have reported problems with timeHBusteR (the HBR variant) It looks like FlowMotion 2.0(+) is highly dependent on GOP length (trough heavy use of GOP Tables, GOP Opt Tables and GOPx2 parameters). I'm investigating other possibilities right now so watch this space for further news. In the meantime I recommend you stick to timeHBusteR /Timebuster v2.0.

Since FlowMotion 2.02 looks very stable now, I'm releasing my pre-merged versions of Timebuster/timeHBusteR. There is nothing new regarding timelapsing except for FlowMotion's 2.02 changes.

• 24h Timebuster 2.02 FlowMotion which is 24h Timebuster 2.0 Base merged with FlowMotion 2.02

• 24h timeHBusteR 2.02 FlowMotion which is 24h timeHBusteR 2.0 Base merged with FlowMotion 2.02

The day is not over. :)

NTSC:
AVCHD FHD = 1080p24 3GOP superb detail in highlights and shadows / smooth looking motions / very high bitrates / spanning works very reliable
AVCHD SH = 720p60 3GOP with even higher bitrates (bitrates about 10% higher than in 1080p24) / IQ looks good, needs more testing as this mode was not primar target of the patch

PAL:
AVCHD FHD = 1080p25 13GOP looks good, needs more testing (bitrates about 60% of 1080p24)
AVCHD SH = 720p50 26GOP looks good, needs more testing (bitrates about 40% of 1080p24)

MJPEG (both in PAL and NTSC):
Integrated timelapse settings by Jordan Noblet / 2fps in "HD" 1920x1080 / colors 4:2:2 / It is ideal to use 1/2s exposure to get beautifully looking subject's motions in the blending frames, so strong ND filters are necessary in the daylight. Of course, shorter exposures are also possible- with sharper looking motions. In 2fps mode maximal file size (in MJPEG not avoidable) will be achieved after ca 1h25m. One can stop-and-start again the recording for longer recordings and edit later. For rendering is recommended to use Jordan Noblet's free software, you can download it on his website http://www.timelapser.net
All other MJPEG modes (WXGA, XGA, VGA) are also influented by the 2fps setting in HD mode, so rather forget them. File format after rendering in "Timelapser": AVI 1920x1080p 25fps

Bugs reports:
The released beta version of the "Varigop" runs in many situations stable, but it is regularly freezing if the object is well-lit grass or trees. All users of this setting should please keep me informed about observed bugs and feel free to post directly here. All those information will be very helpful for the development of the setting until the stage when "alpha" version can be released some day.

If you use this patch and like it, please don't forget who made all this with his tireless work possible and make donation to Vitaliy on the top of this page and support that way his hacking projects.

(beta-version released on January 30th, 2013)

Thank you so much in advance.

I did a firmware hack only changing the iso limit and set the avchd datarate to 40 Mbps.

What happens is a strange pulsing diagonal pattern in flat color areas in the image.

When I play the original mts file with windows media player there is no problem, but...

When i transcode the original mts file to avi with neoscene the problem is there in the avi file. When i render the original mts file to a h264 file the problem is there in the h264 file.

Would it be a problem in the hack footage or an issue when decoding avchd?

Link to download the mp4 video file (10MB) to see the problem:

http://www.apefos.com/upload/pulsing.mp4

Any help or knowledge share will be much apreciated. Thanks

Thank you.

Here's my own hack I think it might be usefull to others. The purpose of my setup is for my vacations in USA next month: I'll do a personal souvenir little video, instead of the usual photos.

I wanted: • all in Full-HD 1920x1080 at 24im/s so that I can show it nicely on the plasma TV. • solid 35Mbps+ average for quality encoding and have 2 hours of time on a 32GB card. • timelapse mode to be able to do the traditionnal sunset/sunrise & night views. • ultra reliable (don't want to see any error message during my vacation) / plays in-camera (so that I can do some daily cleanup without a computer).

I mixed several settings from the forum (thanks all!) and managed to do it!

So it's on my GH1 (from UK), using a Sandisk 32GB SDHC UHC-1 card (rated 45MB/s). (I have the 25mm/f1.4 and 14-45mm lenses)

The settings: (file attached) • NTSC mode & 30mn limit unblocked (camera set in NTSC mode for 24im/s) • bitrate set at 40Mbps / 44Mbps peek (giving a 37Mbps average) for AVCHD Full-HD mode (24im/s wrapped in 1920x1080i/60) • MJPEG mode configured at Full-HD (1920x1080) at 2im/s only, allowing a 1/2s exposure / 2im/s filming with very good bitrate (needs manual mode + manual focus). Converted to 24p it is equivalent to 54Mbps bitrate (with 4:2:2 color sampling). That compression level will allow 1 hour of filming (2GB limit). Awesome!

It can run the deadlies charts for 10mn without any issue, giving a solid 37Mbps average on those death charts & nature on tripod (trees from my window), and plays in camera as needed.

It's still having a long GOP (1/2s = 12 frames GOP) and using the standard 1080i/60 wrapper, for reliability, but that's not an issue for me: Premiere can handle that very nicely to produce the 1080p/24 in the end.

And from the 1 hour (realtime) 2im/s MJPEG, using http://timelapser.net/ tool, I'll be able to make a 5 minutes timelapse (once converted from 2 to 24im/s) ... or even faster using Timelapser frames blending.

All tests are working perfectly and all. I can't wait my vacations next month! (will go to Washington DC, San Francisco / Monterey, and New-York)

I based my settings over Driftwood cluster v6 settings.

I'm extremely sorry to be reporting any negative to this AMAZING hack/setting, but I went out on a FREE (Thankfully) Band Shoot last night with my GH2 under the Cluster v6 DrewNet patch. I'm using a SanDisk Ultra 64gb card (30 Mbit/sec) and I set the GH2 to the Lower of the two settings both for disc space and extra stability. With these settings I'm getting 2 Hours and 55 Mins on the card with a 50 Mbit/Sec Data Rate (equivalent to 100ish...Yay!)

After the first set I shut the camera down, and when I re-powered on for the second set (with still an Hour and 50 mins left on the card) it gives me this VERY unpleasant response when I hit the record button...

CANNOT RECORD. FILE NUMBER EXCEED LIMIT

I gave it my best "college try" with powering down, card in and out, in a desperate effort to get it to record again, but alas it just laughed at me. (and a hacked GH2 has a very unpleasant laugh, let me tell you)

I'm DESPERATELY hoping there's something silly I'm doing, or a work-around that will fix this, as the v6 Cluster was SPANNING LIKE A CHAMP! I've tested it out to almost THREE HOURS more than once and it's doing it. But I've never shut down then tried to resume as I did last night.

If the only solution is to bend over on the price of an Extreme Card, I would gladly do that if it WILL solve this, but I get the feeling it won't and I'll be stuck paying WAY too much for a card that will go for $50 at some point down the road. (That always P's me off...the Ultra 64gb was $45 and it was working FINE other than this new glitch...and I'm not sure it's the card necessarily...I'm under the 60M point...)

Anyhow, I again apologize for reporting less than great news, and I'm truly hoping someone has a solution out there in the land of innovative photographic genius!

Take Care, Erik

PS: With an old Nikkor 50mm f 1.4 lens on the GH2, and in a DARK restaurant - it was like I had a LIGHTING CREW on the band...UNBELIEVABLY nice!

Currently we are using Apocalypse Now 444, soft matrix.

I'm confused and surprised that a card rated up to 95mb/s is crashing with a hack that is at 44mb/s??? Has anyone else experienced this? It also crashes on my older Transcend Class 10 16GB cards but not that much more frequently. Completely lame given the cost differential between these two cards.

I'm considering reverting back to baseline, but nervous to do so in the middle of a shoot (the vanilla hack was my first hack on the GH2 so this is still new to me). For now I'm working around it. Any advice or thoughts are appreciated.

I've been trying various patches, at 24H and 24L, and here are my results: Sanity 5.1 and Flow Motion don't span in 24H, but they span in 24L. Intravenus 2, Quantum 9b, Quantum 2 don't span in either mode. I'm trying Cake 2.3 right now.

Now, I understand that one needs a Sandisk Extreme Pro 64gig card to be absolutely sure that spanning can work. I'm not sure why that is, but that's been reported. But others seem to be able to get some of the above to span on the 32gig card (for example, Quantum 2's supposed to be able to do it).

So I have two questions. Is there a patch that reliably spans the 32gig card? And is this an indication that I got a bum 32gig card?

ADDENDUM: Cake 2.3 seems to be spanning in 24H m mode. But my questions still stand.)

For this I filmed a resolution chart on my computer screen from a distance, using Quantum 50-100 settings which use quality settings that are already over the line for 2fps be it AVCHD or MJPEG. I loaded the MOV files into AVIDemux and extracted 100% lossless snapshots to compare the various modes. Shot on M Movie Mode, aperture and shutter speed were both fixed.

Note: I'm only showing the relevant 100% screen captures but all the files generated in this test (and I tested both HD and VGA modes) weight in at 38.5MB and can be d/l here: http://www.mediafire.com/?u2h8ycc2c6vmj0a

Unless marked as AVCHD all other files are MJPEG.

Myth 1 - MJPEG 1080p is MJPEG 720p up-scaled.

Result: Plausible.

It's too close to call, really! Even though there is evidence of a very very small resolution advantage to 1080p, it is hardly noticeable and it could be a consequence of the input-output workflow of 720 being done in a smaller resolution.

Evidence: (look at the second image, I can't delete the first which is similar)

I created the video below to show new users how to update their Panasonic GH2 with the new customizable version 1.1 settings using Ptool. The intent is to get new users to try the extremely stable settings first so that they don't jump right into extreme settings that their memory cards can't handle.

Hopefully, this will reduce the number of threads that are created that say something like "Why won't XXXXX Settings Work For Me"? The settings used in the video will work with any card in any situation. Once they play with those settings then they can move on to other settings once they have decided what they want to get out of the camera and how much they are willing to spend on faster memory cards.

No adverse affects settings http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/953/gh2-patch-vault-most-popular-patches-in-one-place#Item_5

I got a Panasonic GF2 and have some trouble with the analog video output. I want to use the output to preview video during recording. I already found that you can enable the live output by pressing Q.MENU for some seconds. This works fine for capturing stilts, but if you start recording a video, the output shows only black as long as you record the video. After stopping recording, you have normal output again.

I think this is just a firmware restriction that can be removed! Any suggestions?

And I really need the analog output all the time, because I want to operate the camera remotecontrolled and get the preview via an analog video transmitter.

Other discussion about this issue: http://www.aplanding.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5179

Regards

Igor

Is it possible to make a "hack" menu for GH2, something like a standalone menu category, where all of the cheats, shutter speeds, AOVs, guide numbers and all of those things may be "written down"?

Yes, no?

:D