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GH2 -- Hack vs Un-Hacked Firmware Tests
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  • GrgurMGGrgurMG

    @questech

    Is this footage all supposed to be 24p in a 60i container or were your shooting 60i? Either way, the stepping you highlight in the png seems like it may be a workflow thing. 24p needs pulldown.

  • Ian_TIan_T

    @questech If by "your baby" you're implying that I'm a GH-2 fanatic/fanboi then you have me all wrong. If you don't see any benefits to hacking your camera then I encourage you not to. But there are many including myself who see the obvious differences.

    Let me use one of you findings for example.... You say the stock footage displays less noise than the hacked. I agree. But do you know why? The compression masks out the noise. If you can live with that then don't go any further. But whe you start looking closely at the image during motion...in dark areas...(especially green shrubbery etc.) you will see a bit of "smoothing" of the image. What that means is you lost some definition or detail. Take those same images and try to lift the blacks then what I'm talking about stands out even more. Like the GH-1 before it the GH-2, during motion, produces weird artifacts. Sort of like what you see from highly compressed YouTube videos or cheap cameras. They bonkered the codec and it shows. But if you are not going to display your work on anything larger than a computer screen then...the camera is "good enough" for the job.

    As far as the noise is concerned...as Public Enemy would say..."Bring The Noize." I like the fact that it lets that noise through and so does my Neat Video. It cleans up so nicely...and leaves all the detail in the image. No more (or a lot less) compression artifacts to fight with.

    Then there's the motion...which looks a lot better than stock.

    Like @mozes suggested..."film for some weeks in hacked firmware. then film in stock firmware, you just need no more the 3 seconds to see the differences."

  • questechquestech

    Hello All,

    Thanks for all of the feedback!

    @Ian_T, I'm a director, I don't have to point a camera for a living, so I'm pretty much done reading about this topic. I simply ran some tests, and they speak for themselves, that's all.

    Again, these test were only for the scenes that you viewed (if you took the time to watch them) and if you read my posts and the ReadsMe file included in the zip, you know that I mentioned that I don't know if a high action scene would show the hacked firmware to be better or not.

    But from my limited tests, I came to the conclusion that for low light dramatic scenes, like the ones in my tests; a) less noise with the stock firmware, and b) undetectable improvement with the hacked firmware in general. At least I couldn't see it and I looked at the footage at every magnification imaginable.

    Now I will state that I did notice that in some of the test that others have conducted, in some cases the noise looks better, more like film grain at higher ISOs.

    My tests were done at ISO 400 and I usually shoot under that because I light my scenes well and don't have to push the camera.

    But my test mainly concerned noise in ETC mode and I believe the tests are absolutely conclusive... The unhacked firmware produces less noise than the hacked firmware.

    I don't see what the big deal is, none of us invented the GH2, it's not like someone is calling your baby ugly :-)

    The information shared should be unemotional and factual. We are seeking the truth, not brownie points... right?

    My mind is open, but I guess I will have to run some action scenes with my camera eventually.

    Thanks Again !!

  • GrgurMGGrgurMG

    Are we strictly talking a difference when it comes to noise? Cause if we're talking in general, the notion that there's no difference between stock and hacked nearly sounds like trolling.

    I'm sure there's lower detail scenarios where any difference may not be as perceivable without pixel peeping, but many of the hack profiles are certainly condonable if you want to be prepared to shoot whatever comes up. In fact, you could leave one 1080p setting at stock if your concerned about file size, while leaving another for high bitrate shooting.

  • Ian_TIan_T

    I think you all are wasting your time explaining this one. But good luck. It's going to turn into another one of those threads quickly.

    All I'm going to say is @questech...you need to spend a lot of quality time with your camera and a lot of time reading.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @TGDude "If anybody has a clear example of how hacked clearly outperforms stock, I'd love to see it."

    In my Flow Motion v2 thread, I've posted numerous comparisons of FM2 versus unhacked firmware results. These include links to both unfiltered frame grabs and original downloadable MTS video files. In addition, I've uploaded documented proof of the unhacked GH2's Fallback Mode syndrome, which in my view makes the unhacked camera less reliable in practice than many of the well-tested patches that are currently available:

    http://www.personal-view.com./talks/discussion/3337/gh2-flow-motion-v2.02-spans-in-hbr-25p-24h-720p/p1

  • kavadnikavadni

    @TGDude .. I view mostly on 2 x Samsung LCDs .. nothing special about them. I also look on my laptop, and my television.

  • driftwooddriftwood

    Oh, this result means we can all pack up then...!!! :-)

  • TGDudeTGDude

    @kavadni I'm viewing the MTS files on an iMac 27" 2560x1440, using VLC with a normal size window.

    What are you viewing it on to see the difference?

  • kavadnikavadni

    If you are unable to see the difference .. makes me wonder what you are viewing it on.

  • bwhitzbwhitz

    Bit depth and motion. Stock motion (GOP 12) looks odd and video-like the AF-100, IMO. Also, go shoot some scenes with allot of underexposed areas and you'll where the patches really work their magic. Plus, you can't even touch the colors in post with stock settings without the image falling apart. It was worse for grading than a 5D/7D codec. It was HDV territory.

  • mozesmozes

    Try this. film for some weeks in hacked firmware.
    then film in stock firmware, you just need no more the 3 seconds to see the differences.

  • TGDudeTGDude

    Thanks for the test. I checked it out. I see no difference between your stock and hacked clips.

    I got my GH2 a couple weeks ago and did similar static tests for myself in low light and concluded that the current hacked firmware out there is not worth the extra file size if I'm not going to notice any difference, so I stick to stock for now. I use the Leica DG 25mm F 1.8.

    If anybody has a clear example of how hacked clearly outperforms stock, I'd love to see it. I've only seen one example that showed that high ISO noise was slightly less shitty on a hacked clip, but I wasn't very impressed. People say that you notice the difference in post when color grading, but I'd still like to see a video example of the color grading process being made easier.

    Edit: After shooting a fight scene, I now see where the macro blocking occurs and gets ugly when pausing the playback

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