Better than a rumor: “Driftwood” patch brings the GH2 quality on a new level. Rivals RED?
Tsawout Spit – Gh2 Test (driftwood 176mb gop1 hack) from mark wyatt on Vimeo.
Some news are sometimes even better than rumors! Who said you have to buy a new camera to increase the video quality? With the latest settings from “Driftwood” (check here at personal-view) the GH2 can now record AVCHD Intra at 176Mbit. And plenty of users are now extremely happy with it. According to Perry Wilson (Click here to see his video on vimeo): “”I wish y’all could see the prores 422 HQ file, rivals RED all day long. Believe it or not this looks like crap compared to the prores“. And “This camera is changing my workflow and my company all in positive ways.” More videos have been posted on vimeo by John Justice and Orgie. And Hanadok posted an example video shot with the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens. Of course what you see on vimeo/youtube are compressed videos and do not reflect the real quality you can get with the new settings. All GH2 owners can hack the camera by using these instructions: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/332/ptool-3.60d-topic. And to see a list of all patches (including the driftwood) go here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/953/gh2-patch-vault-most-popular-patches-in-one-place
P.S.: As I already told you the GH2 price is dropping slowly in US and Europe. Check at Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay (Click on shop name to visit the GH2 search page).
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Recent comments
Comment from Maelle Lévy: Yes Real, it rivals RED in in bitate, lo...
Comment from Perry Wilson: I would challenge you to tell the differ...- Comment from bitcrusher: Tell me about it! I used this patch and ...
Comment from Perry Wilson: BTW here is a RAW screen grab from this ...
Dummy00001
8 months ago |> “This camera is changing my workflow and my company all in positive ways.”
I wouldn’t base my business o an hacked unsupported firmware.
Otherwise, it is pretty amazing people do with the GH2.
I think the users should petition Panasonic to allow 3rd party installable code (plug-ins) in the GH3′s firmware. (I see that users do not even mind the voided warranty – less risk for the Panny.) That would immediately differentiate the GH cameras from the competition and secure lots of loyal users for Panasonic. (Unless of course Panasonic wouldn’t succumb to the greed and start charging money for the plug-in interface.)
Marketing is always talking about how hard it is to differentiate a product in the crowded market, and now IMO Panny has a real chance to differentiate themselves. Heck, even TVs this days allow to run 3rd party plug-ins – why not cameras???
mpgxsvcd
8 months ago |It is funny how they keep posting footage and gushing over how good this insane bit rate is and yet all of these videos are re-encoded to less than stock settings. Even if you download the original file from vimeo for these videos it is still just 720p.
I have said it before and I will keep saying it until everyone realizes that these settings make no sense at all. The bit rate is way past excessive and in fact it introduces a lot of encoder issues that are even worse than stock.
None of the people posting these videos have posted exactly what settings they are using or unedited footage because they know that it would show that these settings are not better than much lower bit rate settings.
Elenion
8 months ago |… Do you think that the base official firmware is supported? By panasonic? Like… with an update every 3 years?
Ahah, i think that the hacked firmware (that is always updated with the newest official firmware) is much more checked and supported.
And you don’t have any problem with the guarantee because it’s totally reversible.
And… ehi, it seems that everyone is forgetting that we can make miracles with a seven-hundred-bucks toy, while many ‘professionals’ prefere to spend thousands of dollars in every gear that has the word “pro” in the header of the manual.
Go out and shoot, we have the opportunity to make great things, for cheap.
Holuko
8 months ago |what is the best video quality worth if you make such boring videos?
Jim
8 months ago |+100000
cameras need to be treated like other tech – they need an OS that can run 3rd party apps to control any aspect of the camera and image processing!….
My dream camera…. if it was m43 of course
Chris
8 months ago |Its great and I don’t think you need any higher but the problem is now is finding a big memory card that’s fast enough and big enough (128 GB) to hold the video data files.
I seen a Sandisk Extreme 64GB SDXC 98 MB’s – £300
(that’s just too expensive)
Mr. Reeee
8 months ago |Spending money for cutting edge technology is a way to stay competitive. If you can produce a better product with a prosumer camera instead of a much more expensive professional camera, then the cost buying faster and larger memory cards is moot. It’s part of the cost of doing business.
Buy 3 or 4 cards and dump them onto a hard drive (another expense) with a fast card reader (another expense) as you fill them up and repeat. That’s one the great things about solid state memory… you can reuse it!
If all you’re doing is shooting little videos of pets, kids or vacation trips, maybe the extra expense isn’t worth it.
Esa Tuunanen
8 months ago |Problem isn’t about lack of fast enough memory cards but about memory card type and obsession with marketing hype SD. There would be lots and lots of CF cards fast enough for this bitrate.
But then again video contains most of the time big amounts of duplicate information between consecutive frames so interframe compression setting would allow same quality for notably smaller bitrate. (btw, Blu-ray’s max bitrate for video is 40Mbps)
Reason why industry likes and talks so much about intra frame compression is simply because it allows lot easier and faster cutting and editing when software can handle every frame as full image instead of needing data from previous and succeeding frames.
James
8 months ago |In order to see the quality difference between standard GH2 1080p/24 video and these hacks, why don’t anyone upload to Vimeo a split-screen (standard on left, hacked on right) video that contains an expanded view e.g. just 10% of the video image expanded up to fill the screen. Then we could all see the quality difference via Vimeo…
Frederic Hew
8 months ago |Vimeo is not capable of demonstrating the differences. To be able to do that you should download the original files.
Jim
8 months ago |It would be if the image was zoomed in massively…. just say 1/10th the screen zoomed – then you would see diffrence between low bit rate and high bit rate!
mpgxsvcd
8 months ago |If you re-encode the videos at all then you will destroy any benefits the hack has. The only way to see the benefit is to view the original file at its native resolution. A .png still frame works as well. However, that doesn’t always show any motion issues.
C
8 months ago |I’m pretty sure compression from my computer is a lot better then the compression that comes out of the GH2, amazing video processor or not.
mpgxsvcd
8 months ago |You would be surprised then. After about 40 mb/sec you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a simple profile H.264 and an advanced profile.
There is a good reason why Blu-rays only go up to about 40 mb/sec. For 1080p video it really doesn’t do you any good to go higher.
Esa Tuunanen
8 months ago |Rather moot point that 40mbps is good enough bitrate when it comes to sold consumer cameras.
Remember that original AVCHD (25p/30p) has 24mbps max bitrate but just recently announced AVCHD 2.0 specification which finally gets rid of that archaic low framerate limit by including progressive 50/60 fps is still limited to lowly 28mbps despite of doubled amount of image data to store.
Kinda makes sure that consumer standards are ment to keep device performance at artificially lower level than lot more profitable high priced “semi-pro/professional” equipment.
mpgxsvcd
8 months ago |It is simply a matter of support. They can definitely set the spec higher. However, they wouldn’t be able to make a cheap Blu-ray player that was AVC-HD 2.0 compliant if the bit rates were as out of hand as the latest hacks have been. It does take a lot of processing to decode these files.
www.MilosJanata.com
8 months ago |But 1080 starts to be outdated :]
Compare it to Iphone or new mobile devices which already play HDready videos on it’s tiny screen.
And rumor says it could record 4K, and I am sure it could play 4k via external TV. GPU optimizations make miracles.
btw: a single cheap nvidia card is much faster than 8-core intel I7
Elenion
8 months ago |You get the most evident benefits while grading because the hacked codec contains a huge quantity of more color and detail informations. You get more information in shadow details, noise and color all-around.
Also you don’t get any macroblocks.
If anyone wants demos you should try by yourself or look at the thousands of tests on personal-view. You can’t see much differences in compressed-not-graded footages.
The difference between hacked and unhacked gh2 exists, and is huge; whoever says otherwise just makes me smile and lose the opportunity to achieve much better results.
mpgxsvcd
8 months ago |We are not talking about hacked and un-hacked here. We are talking about hacked to 40+ mb/sec and hacked to 176 mb/sec. The difference between unhacked and 40 mb/sec is measurable. However, the difference between 40 mb/sec and 176 mb/sec is not.
Yes the hack definitely helps with macro blocking. However, changing it from 40 mb/sec to 176 mb/sec won’t change color or detail at all. Show me one example where the 176 mb/sec has a noticeable difference between the 40 mb/sec settings.
The only thing these settings could help with is frame accurate editing. With a GOP = 1 you can definitely cut it frame by frame. However, I doubt that most people really need that kind of accuracy. If you do then this would definitely be the settings you should use. Just be aware that you will sacrifice reliability(It fails almost every time with telephoto lenses and detailed scenes) and it requires a ridiculous amount of storage space.
Daywalker
8 months ago |Can I use the hack on a GF2, too?
mpgxsvcd
8 months ago |I think it is limited to the GF1, G2, GH1, and GH2 right now. VK would be the only one who would know what it will be available for in the future.
Promit Roy
8 months ago |Rivals RED…is this a joke? RED records at 4K resolution, which is more than four times as many pixels as 1080p. It doesn’t rival the RED any more than a 3 megapixel camera rivals the GH2.
mpgxsvcd
8 months ago |The biggest problem is that there really isn’t a great way to share High bit rate 4K video. All of the 4K benefit of the RED cameras is wasted because almost all distribution is 1080p or less now.
The real benefit of the RED is its dynamic range. And no the hack does not improve dynamic range at all. That is a function of the sensor and not the bit rate.
Jim
8 months ago |4k is what imax is edited in…. so red is ok for imax distribution!
www.MilosJanata.com
8 months ago |We can say it’s future proof, multi-format and it has headroom for crop or stabilize video.
There is not huge benefit for us as for big companies who will re-master and re-sell film multiple times in future. (VHS->VideoCD->DVD->BlueRay->4K->8K)
would be fun to suggest to shoot film on VHS when it was only distribution format at that time…
It adds extra value to any good content recorded.
Interesting how future proof the 35mm was or even 65mm was. they scan it at 8K.
I mean, resolution is a good investment if you shoot something valuable.
Perry Wilson
8 months ago |It rivals RED in in bitate, lowlight, and 1080p dilevery…
bitcrusher
8 months ago |Tell me about it! I used this patch and no way dose it come close to RED. Besides the resolution deference the dynamic range compared to a red is a joke. The GH2 is a killer camera but it’s no RED.
Avner
8 months ago |What about the af 100 ?
Perry Wilson
8 months ago |I am excited that you all have liked my video. Sorry for the boring videos, I can promise there are MUCH bigger projects coming soon. But for now its testing, testing, and more testing. Just finished shooting a wedding for a friend and also a short film on Sunday. I will be shooting a Doritos commercial on Nov. 6th. The real credit goes to DriftWood… he is the man and he is soon sending me a newer GOP1 setting, and he states it will be more impressive.
rigs
8 months ago |RIVALS RED? Not in any way! I use both GH2 and Red mx and the GH2 does not have the latitude or the colour space or a raw codec that the Red has. They are completly different animals. Each has its own place in the productions I work on. Just like any other camera that will come along that will fit the bill. The GH2 is an awesome tool for its price and the quality is decent enough with the new hacks too make it into any small or large budget production.
Perry Wilson
8 months ago |I would challenge you to tell the difference of a gh2 with this patch and any of the red cameras in a 1080p delivery
Perry Wilson
8 months ago |BTW here is a RAW screen grab from this weekends short film right from the .MTS file [IMG]http://i55.tinypic.com/2chn6ed.png[/IMG]
Maelle Lévy
7 months ago |Yes Real, it rivals RED in in bitate, lowlight, and 1080p dilevery… and more..
I love it