Hacks and Patches

So long, but thanks for the fish... (eye) - A Protest Video.

duartix — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:35:11 +0000

@Vitaliy_Kiselev: sorry if this is the wrong place, but I feel it covers so many topics (GH2, FlowMotion2, Samyang7.5mm, capture, defishing, AE workflow, Premiere workflow) that I wouldn't know where else to put it. Let me know if you want it moved.

The short story: 31-OCT, the day the Portuguese Budget for 2013 was approved. People gathered in front of the Parliament to say we're being governed by thieves. Not very original I know, but it's a great place to shoot video and take pictures (well at last until it degenerates into mayhem which is rare around this parts but not unheard of until very recently). This is how I worked it.

1) The extremely simple setup:

GH2, screen folded back as a monitor, Transcend 32GB class 10, Samyang 7.5mm fisheye (my favorite video lens), set and forget to hyperfocal, ISO 400 I believe, SS=1/25s. Flowmotion 2 was used as I never know before hand how much video I'm going to capture or how many photos I'll be shooting, so I need something that is very good quality but doesn't make me have to change cards when something very important is happening. If the card is pre-formatted (the extended, not the quick format) it has never failed me to span.

2) The capture:

This is all about getting there up front and trying not to shake the camera. The police until very recently (and only after a 1h stone shower) has been instructed not to charge, so it's an easy job, you just dodge the TV reporters and other amateurs like me. So, here's my first mistake: the aperture is fine, this lens is sharp as an axe, but should have upped the ISO and set a faster SS because in these situations you are always bound to get bumped and it shows in wobbles after software stabilization.

3) Defishing the Samyang:

Load the MTS into AE. Export as image sequence. Use a batch (http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/69869#Comment_69869) to defish the images and import the output again to AE now as image sequence. The defishing was done using the Panini projection. It's loads more natural on people than Rectilinear, it preserves a lot more corner resolution and still manages to keep a few lines straight. This was the first export and not reasonably quick because the synthesis part takes it's toll: ~2-3fps.

4) Stabilizing:

Throw AE's Warp Stabilizer on the footage. Set the "Smoothness" to 15-25% (it will require much less cropping later) set borders to "Stabilize, Synthesize Edges" (again a lot less cropping) but drop the "Synthesis Input Range" to 0,2s otherwise you'll bog AE. In this kind of footage there is usually little point in using a higher value. Skim the footage looking for black borders and try to resize and reframe it so that they don't become evident. Note: defishing after stabilizing should make more sense as you would have more image to work with (defishing crops it) but from a few rough tries, the AE stabilization isn't clearly as effective when working on fisheye footage. This was the second export and a very long one: below 1fps.

5) CC & Denoising:

Used some of ColorGHear's gears, notably GHrain killer to kill a bit of noise and blockiness, but the footage was already very clean from the start and little color correction was used, just a little bit of levels adjusment. This was the third export and I believe it was even longer than the third due to the noise reduction filters: below 0.5fps.

6) The "so long" part: video effects, tracking and subtitling:

Translations were pretty quick, the hard and long part (at least until I found out how to smooth it) was tracking. It was fastidious to track people's features, takes a long time and needs constant review and adjustment. In the end I found out a few tricks (like increasing the tracking area) and smoothing the tracking points. This eased the job a lot and gave much better results. In the end I had to do it sometimes up to 3x until I was satisfied with it. In the process I had to learn a lot about tracking, smoothing, 3D objects, texting, transitions and light sources. This was the forth, the quickest and last export, probably around 10fps.

7) Audio mixing.

This was the part I was more ignorant about, but turned out to be pretty simple. Even though it's pretty rough, the footage is little demanding with so much crowd noise. It was as simple as importing the last video export from AE into Premiere, importing the original sound, importing also "Le Tigre - Dike March 2001" cutting and pasting a few pieces of this track and adjusting the volume here and there to serve the original events while leaving the words of the protesters audible when needed and off I was to the final export.

The resulting video can be found here:

Here are a few pictures of the event.

Anything more you may want to know about any part of the process I'll be glad to detail it.

GH2 Hacking for Lower ISO?

saltherring — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:40:23 +0000

I did a quick search on this and couldn't find anything but I apologize if this has been discussed before.

I'm curious if anyone has hacked the GH2 firmware to develop lower ISO settings than 160. Is that even possible with the camera? I'd love to be able to shoot at 100 or even 80 or 50.

NEED HELP to find the best (set of) Settings for my Project

MetaControl — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:21:30 +0000

Hi guys!

Once again I am pondering a decision to which I would like to inquire on this forum's awesome knowledge of all things GHack2 related.

So what is this all about? You see, I am in pre-production for a no budget webseries called JÄSØN (http://creativemonkeys.org/jason/), a satire about a failing wannabe serial killer klutz. The style I am going for is grimy dark and dusky narrative. A lot of Se7en and 8mm. The first episode has a long low steadicam shot going through several rooms of Jäsøn's trashy apartment, showcasing his failed and broken life. There are moments of serenity, when light breaks through barred windows and plays with dust in its path, there are many dark corners and an overall low saturated, mid/hard contrast range and a wicked eeriness I want to achieve. Then there is a low light scene in a bathroom with flickering fluorescence light, and one ultra slow motion moment.

Our DoP will light it properly, I have no doubts, but I would like to have the proper Hack for the right shot prepared. I thought about getting a couple of cheap and slow SD cards and store different hacks on them and use them on set as we need them.

But here is my problem: My DoP is not familiar with the GH2 - he has a 5D MKII he suggested to use, but I think the GH2 has a nicer film look - and I want to make it as easy for him as I can, by having the best settings ready. And since I am not so good with cameras to understand the finer details as much as many of you do. This is why I am turning to you for help.

I need a set of 3-5 hacks that I can swap on set when needed, to accomplish the best shots. The premises are:

Best Quality - The best possible image quality. Is 2k HD MotionJPG an option? Any other suggestion? Film Look - as close to narrative cinema (80/90ies) as possible. I am considering to use anamorphic lenses here and there, so that should work too. Slow Motion and Ultra Slow Motion - I don't mind using 720p and upscale it later for those shots. How much difference is GOP1 and GOP3. Good Low Light - I do have light, so I am not too worried about low light situations, but I might want a shot were we deliberately do not use any light and for that, I would like to be prepared. Equal Quality/Equal Style - All the hacks need to work and/or work together flawlessly. 25FPS - Living in Europe, I have to adjust to the 50Hz issue. This is why I am opting for 25FPS, but IIRC it should work just as well with 24FPS as long as the shutter is set to 50/100 etc. right? [Edit] Greenscreen - For some effect shots, we will use a greenscreen and a good setting for that, to preserve as much color and details as possible, would be great too.

I am looking forward to your suggestions (including in-camera settings, workflow etc.) and thankful for your help.

PS: I forgot to mention: I have a 64GB 45MB/s SanDisc Ultra and currently no budget to buy the 95MB/s version, as I have to put the few bucks I have into other things, but spanning is irrelevant for me, as there are no shots that should be longer than 3-4 minutes. Thoughts?

Setting for B&W shooting. Is there a chance to improve existing settings?

nachelsoul — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 06:20:38 +0000

Hello. I was wondering if you (masters of Ptools) can design a setting for B&W shooting. The goal could be to improve the detail and the Dynamic Range for example. Is it worth?, Could be a real improve from existing ones?. Many many thanks to Nick, Vitaly and others developers. Pardom my english.

GH2 Hack Myths and Realities

cbrandin — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:50:32 +0000

I have seen a lot of really good testing going on here. Some of the interpretations of results, however, seem a little off to me - or at least a little simplistic. Although testing things like high bitrates and low GOP are clearly valuable, interpreting results based on maximizing just one thing doesn’t effectively address the issue of how each of these affect a usable final outcome. No one thing will produce the results we want, and some of the things that need to be considered seem to never even come up. Some of the issues I see:

High bitrate means good results. Not necessarily. Once the bitrate has been set high enough to outperform other factors in the camera (e.g. the sensor), there is no need to go farther.

High AQ settings produce noise. Not true – high AQ simply reproduces noise more faithfully.

Setting noise reduction in the camera is bad. Not necessarily true. If you are shooting at high ISO’s more noise will be produced. The codec has to work hard reproducing this noise, and you’ll end up just crushing the blacks or doing noise reduction in post anyway. Applying some noise reduction in camera under these circumstances can be very helpful because the NR is applied before video is encoded and you are not consuming codec bandwidth reproducing noise.

The camera should always be set with Contrast at -2. Not true, the camera’s contrast should be set so the histogram shows the entire range being used. If you always set Contrast to -2 low contrast scenes will have poor gradations because you have set the dynamic range artificially low thus limiting the number of bits being used for the image.

In camera saturation should always be set to -2. Not true, for the same reason given above.

In camera sharpness should always be set to -2. Absolutely correct! Sharpening produces fake detail which the codec will have to work hard to encode. Sharpening is always done better in post.

Bigger P and B frames are always good. Not true – with static scenes B and P frames serve no purpose insofar as image quality is concerned because they primarily encode changes to the image. If things are correct, static scenes will produce small P and B frames.

Bigger P and B frames are always bad. Also not true – with highly dynamic scenes P and B frames get bigger because lots is changing.

Smaller I frames coupled with big P frames is bad. No, it’s perfectly normal behavior because with highly dynamic scenes because there is usually some motion blurring – which reduces I frame size – combined with big changes from frame to frame – which increases the size of P and B frames.

Individual frame quality can be improved without raising AQ. Mostly not true. The exception to this is when the codec runs out of bandwidth before completing a frame, resulting in image degradation in lower parts of the frame (macroblocking). The quality of motion encoding, on the other hand, benefits greatly from bitrate increases irrespective of increases in AQ.

Bigger I frames means better individual frame image quality. True.

Bigger P and B frames means better individual frame image quality. Only if there is motion, otherwise big P and B frames do little to contribute to individual frame IQ.

Bigger P and B frames means better motion encoding. When they appear in high motion scenes, absolutely true.

Improvements to image quality are readily visible. Absolutely not true. Some of the most important improvements only become visible in post, when color grading, etc…

To put all this together; consider a test where high bitrates coupled with AQ 4 produces an unacceptable amount of noise at ISO 3200. Moreover, the stream is exhibiting artifacts, such as odd looking pulsing in the frame sizes. What is happening is that the codec is being overly stresses trying to encode an inordinate amount of noise. Raising the bitrate won’t help; that just stresses the codec even more. Lowering AQ will seem to help – but it isn’t really doing anything except lowering the quality, which would be better achieved by just lowering the bitrate. The solution here is to apply a little in camera noise reduction. If you just lower AQ, all gradients and image subtleties will be degraded, whereas NR is only applied to the darker parts of the image near the noise floor.

Of course, all this assumes that you will be doing some post processing. I assume most people interested in advantages brought about by the hack do that.

Chris

Ptools 3.66 wont load ini files?

andycl — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:18:17 +0000

Hello All,

I've ran into a slight problem. I downloaded the new ptools and now when I try to load a patch from 'my populars' basket, it wont recognize the patches/ files. I can however make a patch of my own and save it. Am I the culprit here or is this a glitch of some kind? Pardon my ignorance, I'm not new to this but l'm no genus either, this is the first problem with using ptools, it might be me, and if it is I'd like to know what i'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance

best hack for long form documentary

neko30 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:02:36 +0000

hi all,

i'm starting a feature length documentary, which will require a couple specific types of shooting/hack requirements:

--longer interviews (around 2 hours). so i will need reliable spanning...doesn't necessarily need to shoot entire time. but i can't have something that stops every 10 mins. --verite shooting in shifting environments. so i'll need an all around hack that can deal with varying enviroments.

of course, high resolution/filmic look would be great. but i'm more looking for all-around, reliable, rather than something that shoots at highest bitrate (i.e. sedna or apocalypse)...

i was thinking possibly flowmotion v2.2...or something similar that shoots in the 75 -100 mb/s range.

i'd love to head about any other suggestions/experiences.

thanks very much. goro

GH1 Can it still be improved

rigs — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:11:43 +0000

Its been over a year since the first hacks rolled out for the GH1 and what a great ride its been. With great thanks to Vitaliy and others the GH2 has entered the scene with much promise. I love my GH1 and I'm still prefer it to the look my GH2 offers even with the hack. I was wondering if there will be any future developments based on the findings we now have from both cameras and whether they could be introduced into improving ptools for the GH1.

GH2 settings for smooth motion?

theconformist — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:41:37 +0000

Less interested in insanely high bitrates, etc as I am in stable hacks that perform well and most importantly - provide smooth motion. I'm not sure what it called, but DSLRs seem to suffer from slightly choppy motion. What is responsible for that and what should I look for in a hack to eliminate it? And recommended hacks? What of the new Apocalypse hacks? And does 4:4:4 have anything to do with it?

GH2 Hack Wavy Lines

jvalal — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 11:37:34 +0000

This is in Manual video mode on the camera (icon with video camera and M) Set to either HBR or Cinema 24P. The lines happen in either.

Any thoughts why this is occurring? It happens at various location in the video.

Cluster V6 Drewnet stops playing after 7-8 min recording

tusoli5 — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 17:04:18 +0000

I love this setting, but it is the second setting, after Orion where my camera stops recordng after 7-8min. The patch is done with every limit removed... Any other person experienced that? I need to film interviews so the longer I can record, the better it is. Otherwise I have no other problem...

Thanks for your help guys! You do all a really great job!

the most updated Stable Patch with span for 25P PAL

kenjikarma — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 04:13:47 +0000

HI guys,

I got a japanese version of GH2 but I'm in hongkong. So I'll be shooting with PAL 25p. I've read the previous threads about the stable patch for 25p dated 16mar. Mostly Gop3zilla + sedna A settings. However, when i loaded the hack, there is still no language menu for me to choose from unlike other hacks. Also, I'm wondering if there is any update on the stable patches that works great for 25p? Thank you so much.

GH1 low light - best settings

m_c — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:14:45 +0000

hi, hope you can suggest best patch for shooting with gh1 in indoors low-light situations with only available light using gh13 with FD 50/1.8 finding no matter what i try, i'm getting some undesirable noise in the images the test shots so far are ok, i'd just like to get as best possible shooting a no-budget short very soon THANKS

Out of the game - update on current situation.

Donnie88 — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:26:42 +0000

Hey people,

I've been away from Personal-View and other GH2 hack related sites - the last time I touched it was when I updated it to the new firmware Panasonic released to be able to shoot 25p.

The HBR 25p mode's footage doesn't seem as nice as some of the hacked stuff I've seen. What would you guys recommend the most to get beautiful footage with 25p? Hack and then apply a patch? Can I still do that with Panny's firmware?

Or is there anything new I've missed out? (Except for the imminent GH3 which this post isn't about).

Cheers guys

GH2 | Best hack/settings for extreme low light (haunted house)

archstanton — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:00:31 +0000

I need to shoot in extreme low light (haunted house) tomorrow night and need to know the best hack and settings to accomplish this. I've been playing around with the ISO limit removal (12800), but there's probably more needed than that. Such as bitrate, GOP, quantizer, film mode settings, etc. I would do more research/testing, but I'm pressed for time.

Digital Noise in Blue Sky - Vanilla Hack

mattodowd — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 02:19:40 +0000

Hey all -

Wanted to throw this out to the community and see if there were any thoughts. Going through footage from this weekend's blue sky shoot, and on top of the expected mild posterization, I'm seeing some subtle but noticeable digital noise.

Any thoughts? Here are the specs:

GH2 running Vanilla Hack Firmware V1.1 ISO 160 Nostalgic -2, -2, 0, -1

It was very bright light, but properly exposed with an ND / Polarizing filter.

Thanks, Matt

HELP - Getting CINESTYLE results from the GH2 ?

Electric_Haggis — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:40:41 +0000

Well, I'm stumped.

As a new & and proud owner of a GH2, I've downloaded the latest (V1.1 25p) firmware and am investigating hacks.

A higher bitrate is obviously desirable - around 50Mbps will hit the spot, so I'm currently trying: "Driftwood Quantum X v5b and v5c 'β Pictoris' (baby Quantum X) VBR" (35 - 75Mbps variable)

The REAL question is about capturing more dynamic range and squeezing maximum latitude out of the GH2 to get results that resemble Cinestyle. I see evidence here...

... yet trying that hack, I see zero latitude difference.

Come to that, I've tried several hacks now, and they all look identical (apart from bitrate).

I'm trying to research this, but struggle to get real answers. What should one do to get Cinestyle results as above???

Thanks in advance...

Best detail 720p settings/hack?

uppfade — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:33:46 +0000

Need to shoot a slo mo video. Need the best detail 720p hack for GH2 (using NTSC 60 frames). Thank you! :)

24p25p-NINE - GOP9 Hack for friendly co-existance of 24p and 25p

towi — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:10:34 +0000

Please ignore attachments

Update is here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/45642#Comment_45642

Mountain Lion, Cluster hacked GH2, and FCPX

rsquires — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:13:50 +0000

I recently tried a camera import with FCPX and using hacked GH2 Cluster footage I got terrible artefacts and unusable footage. I selected the Transcode option as I usually find .mts in FCPX struggles. It imported fine into Premiere but FCPX and iMovie both produce awful results. The weird thing is Quicktime now sees the AVCHD file and you can play the files in the finder. I tried a transcode with 5DtoRGB and that was fine producing a clean ProRes. It's a massive disappointment. Obviously Cluster could be the issue but it produces such great footage.

How can I get HDMI output with teleconverter?

DNL — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:49:43 +0000

I have a GH2 with ver 1.1 firmware. I want to be able to turn the tele-converter on and get HDMI output. Is there a hack for this?

I am using 3 GH2s to feed live into a switcher and I need the HDMI output as a live video source. But I need to also invoke the teleconverter because the lenses I am using (very fast old TV camera lenses) are too wide. Also, there is some vignetting.

Getting to the bottom of the noise

Bania — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 07:54:05 +0000

Hi Guys.

I've just started reviewing footage from a recent shoot and am a little perturbed by the amount of noise showing up in shadow details. The problem has occurred on a range of shots in different lighting conditions and even at very low ISOs.

I was using a GH2 for the shoot, with LPowell's Flowmotion 2.02 hack. This was the first time I had used a Gh2 (let alone a hacked one) so it was certainly a baptism of fire. For the majority of shooting I was using a lumix 7-14 ultra-wide lens.

I've uploaded a short clip with three different shots, each displaying the telltale noise. In the first, the noise is visible above the character's foot, on the side of the piano. This was shot at a ISO800 so it makes sense that there will be noise. Still, it seems like there is more than there should be. the second clip was shot at iso160 yet there is still a fair amount of noise showing up in the man's beanie. In the third clip, also shot at iso160, again there is a lot of noise in the man's sweatshirt.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1m7c10p98tvy883

I didn't fully test the patch and cam before the shoot so at the end of the day it's my problem, but I'm hoping someone can shed some light on the source of the issue so I can avoid this next time around.

Cheers

ONLY SETTINGS COMPARISON, NO SMALL TALK!

Kihlian — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 06:02:50 +0000

Hope this is welcome.

Since there is much interest about "the best settings" and a lot of good settings are coming out for different purposes, but the useful settings confrontation are rare and scattered over the topics. I propose to start this topic to collect this confrontation. Rules:

1) Only video or screen shot confrontation with different settings, but SAME: ISO, Picture profile, light condition, Focus, subject, registration mode.

2) No post of Video or screenshot of only 1 settings!

3) No comments, otherwise the discussion deviates on discussions about the weather.. (If VK welcome this topic hope it delete all non sense comments)

Possible exception:

1) The creator of the settings can also add comments to comparisons

Recommend HBR patch for night/low light shoot

radikalfilm — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 06:26:03 +0000

So far I've shot with Flowmotion2.02, Valkyrie ZERO1 and Canis Majoris Night. The best for low light is Canis Majoris, except it only works in 24p. In HBR it becomes a slideshow on the LCD, to the point where you can't shoot.

Reliability and Recording Times (GH2)

devinpickering — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 17:05:19 +0000

Hello friends, I need your help - This weekend I have been mounting my gh2 and various lenses to a few different locations on a biplane for a documentary I have been working on. Everything that has to do with the rigging and mounting has been no issue at all so far - but I am having major issues with the camera stopping recording in the middle of a clip. I'm running the new "Apocalypse Now" firmware from driftwood - should I go back to the stock firmware to make sure that the camera will record for what I need? I Only need 15 minutes here but there's obv lots of motion. Is there a better patch out there that will work no matter what?
I'm relatively new to the GH2 community - PLEASE HELP! I would really appreciate it - will be filming tomorrow and would really like to not waste another day.

I'm also using a Sandisk Extreme Pro 32gb 95mbs SD card

Flow motion/apocypse now hybrid?

GravitateMediaGroup — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:02:58 +0000

This may be like asking McDonald's and Wendy's to share recipes, but is this at all a possibility? I only ask because I've seen other patches mixed together but that may have been because they had the right compatibility. There is nothing wrong with either patch as is, I was just curious on what a merger would look like.

GF hack - simple questions

lampadaferens — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:54:19 +0000

I am late to this party and spent 6 hours trying to hack my GF1 to make use of Timelapser's 2 fps mode. I started by updating the GF1 firmware to the latest official version (which seemed reasonable at the time but might just be the problem). So I know how to get firmware on the camera at least. I downloaded the PTOOL and modified the GH1__132 to do what I needed and it wouldn't flash. I then modified a version of the GF1__122 version in PTOOL and changed only the version checking and it loaded. My GF1 is now version 0.0. Progress I thought.

So now, my simple question. The hack I need is to the MJPEG frame rate 720p30 -> 720pXfps. In the firmware for GF1 there's no option in PTOOL. Is that the problem. I can't do what I want in a GF1?

references: http://forum.timescapes.org/phpBB3/index.php

If the answer is "no" it was at least an education. cheers Bob

Which GH2 patch would emulate colors similar to Canon t2i so I can color match it better?

senzazn12 — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:57:10 +0000

Any suggestions for in camera or patches with GH2 or Canon t2i to help match the colors better for both cameras so that last work needed in post to match would help?

Fine Tweaks in GH2 Operations

kholi — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:30:02 +0000

Not sure where to put this, sorry VK if it's in the wrong place.

I'm back using the GH2 and now with the hack. Been great. Still love whipping out the Epic and rolling but right now the hacked GH2 is allowing us to move super fast and deliver a format that people can wrangle all on their own. Quite impressed with the quality coming out of the camera in low lit (working with 3-4K lighting packages sort of low lit) situations.

Curious, though, about at least two things:

1. Any way to open up the picture profile (film mode_) manipulation? I'm sure this one has been talked about plenty, seems like it would be top lister. If so, what was the progress on it? I've done a search but not come up with an answer.

2. What's the possibility of opening up the shutter speeds to go from 1/40 to say 1/42, or especially 1/48? Being locked into 1/40 or 1/50, I automatically gravitate toward 1/40. On Canons, I shoot at 1/45. Obviously, neither 1/40(45) or 1/50 equal 180 degrees @ 24 frames, opting for a slower angle over the hair faster one looks better to my eye.

What are complications with doing so? Is it a hardware lock and not a software lock?

The second one would be a major deal to me, as it would further help correct how the camera renders motion.

Thanks for all the hardwork. I get paid next week, so my small contribution is finally going in.

gh1 No Valid Picture to Display Update problem

disease8 — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 12:24:28 +0000

Hi I have been searching around for an answer to this issue and although i found a lot of people that have the same problems no one seems to have an answer. I have no idea why it has started doing this and I really need to change the hack that is presently on the camera. Any ideas of how to get it back to recognizing the firmware updates? I tried: -Updating Panasonic official firmware. -Version Increment ticked and unticked -Prevent Version Compare ticked and unticked. -Renaming Firmware to a variety of names going all the way up up 150 (camera says its on 1.3).