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Beginners: Basic hacks questions, series 2
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  • Mark....yes I tried it with checking "version increment" and without, no luck either way.

    Vitaliy.... by the smiley face at the end of your comment, I am assuming your comment is humor? I don't know what a hex system is, so not sure how to find that in my menus.

    Thanks for your input so far !!! :-)

  • I finally got it rehacked. I just kept putting in numbers and clicking options in ptool and changed cards until something worked. When it did go to update it asked me if I wanted to update to ver 2.5 which seemed kind of odd as I was listing firmware 135. Don't care why it worked....all that's important is it did !!!

    Thanks for your help!

  • I'm currently using my GH2 with an Olympus 35mm macro lens connected with the DMW-MA1 adapter. However, compatability only came with Firmware 1.2 update (Otherwise I can't use the lens at all!). I'm concerned that in installing PTool (which I would really like to do), I will lose my lens compatibility - and can I backtrack to V1.2 if so? p.s. Olympus lens focus is accurate, but atrociously slow and illogical. Lens messes around for a few seconds before finding focus. I have to press trigger button three times to get it to macro range as it jumps about a third closer with each press, and then goes hunting for focus in the long end. :(

  • I just finished using ptool 3.66 on my GX1 and clicked the circles for the Cluster and Galaxy patches. I used panasonic GX1 firmware 1.1 was the base. When I put the card in the camera it went through all the procedures but now, nothing on my camera has changed (when I go to my settings I can't find all of the things I have put on there like the Cluster or the Galaxy patch, or choices of frame rates, etc). Any ideas what happened, thanks.

  • Hello,

    Anybody knows how can I find the menu to switch from NTSC to PAL and viceverse?. I checked it in the hack but I can´t find it. I´d like to shoot in 720/60p!

    Thanks for your help!

  • @triton in the menu/spanner/page 3/video out = pal or ntsc :)

  • capebio, you seem to be confusing the lens firmware with the camera firmware. They are separate. The latest GH2 firmware is version 1.1. Your lens firmware is version1.2. PTool only deals with camera body firmware images. You should have firmware version 1.2 on your lens, and use PTool to modify camera body firmware version 1.1. Nothing will change about your ability to use that lens with the GH2.

    Jakartaguy, flashing your camera with a firmware image modified with new encoder settings won't change what you see in the camera's menus. It simply changes internal encoder settings. You'll know it worked when your recorded video has a higher bit rate and looks better.

  • Hi everyone, first post here. I did read a lot of topics and guides. I just got a GH2 for Aerial Video with a octocopter, I'm using a Nex5n and T4i for video, but sometimes both cameras lack the details needed. The problem is there is so many patchs that I'm confused. Can someone point me a good hack for aerial video? I need very good resolution. Thanks!

  • Hello, I'm using a PAL GH2, and I'm trying to find the settings with the best quality/highest bitrate. I tried Flow Motion, Sedna, and others, but I can't reach the highest bitrate (shooting HBR 1080 25p). I shot a scene involving a singer on a white background, so no complex frame data, but the bitrate I obtained was 21 mbps with Sedna and only 17 mbps with Flowmotion. I guess that is because the scene is "simple" (2/3 white background, 1/3 singer singing and moving), the bitrate went down, but I couldn't get the best detail on the subject, there was clearly too much compression going on. I know Sedna could do more than 100 mbps, but the problem is that it DIDN'T and I went just 21 mbps. Basically the question is: how can I "force" the bitrate to stay high even without having a complex/busy frame? Is it just a matter of choosing the right patch with the right settings of GOP, matrix, etc for that kind of shot? Thank you people for your help!

  • Cake is 45-50 Mbps in HBR mode.

  • I'm fairly experienced hack user with GH1 and GH2, but I've always played with how to get the best quality. Right now, I'm going to be doing a project where I'll be filming a ton of footage, but using little of it, but want what I do film to be good.

    So here is the question.

    What is a good hack that ups bitrate very slightly, and keeps the encoder from going into "fallback mode"? I want the files to not be much bigger if possible.

    Basically, what's the next step up from basic firmware? I've never had to deal with something quite like this. I may just keep the original firmware, but there will be a fair amount of shots of water and for those I'd like to not have the camera going to fallback/ugly macroblocking mode. Thanks for the help!

  • A modest increase of the bit rate won't guarantee that the encoder won't go into fallback mode. It will just make it less likely. Cbrandin 44M in 24L mode and Sanity 5 are a modest step up from stock.

  • @balazer, do you mean with Cake I'd obtain "guaranteed" 45-50 Mbps

  • @balazer thanks for the advice. Can I ask a bunch of other questions? 1. Once I flash the camera, and the format the card, the settings are still in there right? It just seems sometimes my camera behaves oddly (like for photo styles, i believe my original only had Standard and Chrome, and right after the flash it has many more options. But when I format my card and turn the camera back on, it goes to just having those two options again. 2. I read that some people put different settings of hacks on different cards, but does that mean they don't format the cards? Because I found that if you don't format the cards the camera will ask you to upload the hack every time you push play.

    Thanks everyone for their inputs and guidance.

  • flablo: observed, expected, predicted. Guaranteed? :P

    Jakartaguy, flashing the camera doesn't erase the camera's settings. But on occasion you will need to do menu, setup, reset, to get the camera to behave correctly. So make a habit of keeping your camera settings written down, so they can be reprogrammed if necessary. You can keep firmware image files on multiple cards, to flash them as needed. Of course formatting those cards will erase the firmware image files.

  • Question about loading patches.
    When loading a new patch my gh2 shows loading 1.2 when checking firmware it says 1.1 is this correct? the patches seem to be successfully installed(my record times are changing) but something seems off.

    Also is there streamparser or something similar for mac to analyze footage?

  • Talking about the second video demostration. At the end he said: "Remember, all the benefit of this patches will be lost if you recompress the footage" So, if I take the footage and use, 5dtoRGB or log&transfer, mpegstrem or compressor to make a proress for example, am I screwing all my highbitrates? Means that is better to edit in CS5, CS6 native mts? recompress a the end? I think that the footage will benefit equal of high bitrates because it will do a proper proress in case yo wanna mix several cameras or not?

  • Sorry, talking about third one!

  • Hello! I'm a first time poster, so please be gentle. I've been reading these forums for quite some time and have really enjoyed using the hacked GH2 (with Aquamotion v2). However, since the new 1.1 firmware came out earlier this year, I've sort of out of touch with the latest hacks. I've searched around for a Aqua v2 equivalent for firmware 1.1 but can't seem to find one. All the newer patches seem to be either extreme high-end requiring very fast cards or long they're GOP. Can anyone point me to a newer, firmware 1.1 compatible, patch that is equivalent to Aqua v2 (100-Mb/s, Intra, 30 MB/s SD card compatible)? I've looked high and low and come up empty. TIA!

  • CAN ANYBODY help my with my GF3.... i tryed 20 times to put some hacks and it wont work. i´m noob about it i think. i downloaded i tryed with firmware 1.1 for GH2.... wich firmware should i use? and wich filename should i save it in.... pl help. do some short story and axplain for me!!!!!

  • fran, whoever said that about recompression was wrong. The decrease in picture quality resulting from recompression depends entirely on what you recompress to. If you recompress to a lossless or low-loss format, it will look fine.

    bozfx, Aquamotion will work for the v1.1 firmware the same way it did for the v1.0 firmware. There are newer hacks, not all of them super high bit rate or long GOP.

    kingmix, the GF3 requires a GF3 firmware image. Everything you need to know is in the PTool FAQ:

  • @electric , thanks for personal message - here is the link where you can download the latest Ptool for GX1: Download link -

  • so the lower the GOP THE Better quality