Thank you

Mantra is the only existing all-intra hack for Panasonic GH2, including a stabilized 720p50 version. Mantra is for Pal system.

IMPORTANT! All-intra 720p50 mode has limitations. Using this, the camera sensor needs much more light than before. When shooting in low light or shooting in dark areas, the camera could freeze. Furthermore: choose the right iso settings. When shooting outdoor (daylight) a 720p50 GOP1 is fine. For low lights and indoor shootings use Zo, the GOP2 patch version.

Mantra and Zo 1080p24 shoot at 23,976fps.

For canon cameras there is a reverse engineered software called „Magic Lantern“. One option within this software is the possibility to create your own cropmarks / overlays. You just create a photoshop file with two layers. A white background layer and a second layer with whatever shape you want. When you copy this photoshop file on the SD Card of your camera you can load it onto your camera. The second layer with your shape will then bye shown as an overlay. It´s meant to use it for different aspect ratios but you can also draw a flower and let it appear on your camera liveview.

Here is a link to that software: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Cropmarks

For Arri cameras you habe the following option to create costum Framelines:

http://www.arri.com/de/camera/alexa/tools/arri_frameline_composer/

For Sony cameras there isn´t such thing but there seems to be a way to build android apps and install them on the camera to create new functions. My question is:

Is it possible to built an app for sony cameras that lets you create costum overlays that show in camera live view?

Best, David

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!

GH2 Died during update of firmware...

BTW.. camera turns on but only I can see black screen...

Appreciate any help,

Thank you,

Robert.

THE RIG:

• PAL GH2. Shooting a mix of HBR & 24p. Shooting people, settings are generally SMOOTH -2 contrast, -2 sharpness, 0 Saturation & -2 NR. If no grading is going to happen or I'm shooting products I might bump up the sharpness & contrast a bit. I used NOSTALGIC for a while but found it added too much warmth to the image & highlights went funny. SMOOTH has nice roll-offs and good skin tones.

• 32GB Sandisk Class 10 Extreme HD Video 30MB/s SD cards for reliability. 2 of these make sure I have more than enough space for a day of shooting.

• Official Panasonic batteries for max battery life, compatibility & reliability of the battery meter.

• Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 & 42.5mm f/0.95 - two beautiful lenses. The 42.5mm's ability to go 'click-less' is a very nice feature.

• Tamron 18-50mm f/2.8 - a solid workhorse lens. Fully open and wide, this lens is a bit soft but it gets better around the 24mm mark onwards, stopped down a little. The short focus throw makes focusing a little tricky. Not knowing my exact f/stop is a bit annoying. My Novoflex adapter had issues connecting so I use a cheapo ebay adapter with iris control. This is the lens I use when I don't have time to use primes.

• 50mm f/1.8 Nikon E-Series - the lens I used before I got the Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95. A great interview & portrait lens. Very forgiving on facial features. Dirt cheap. Here's a shoot using this lens and the Sanity hack: http://www.cblok.com.au/portfolio/promotional-video/

• 100mm f/2.8 Nikon E-Series. A bit soft but it gets me out of trouble when I need some more zoom.

• Custom Gini Rig: 2 x arm mounts, a follow focus and 1 x handle. The follow focus on this item is very, very good - BUT HUGE! I attach handles & a shoulder mount when I need it.

• Zoom H4N recorder for audio

• LN2MIC-ZMGH-MON cable for syncing audio from H4N to GH2 & monitoring. Set the headphone output of the H4N to 64, the input level on the GH2 to level 2 AND make sure you've installed the Pasadena Pulse Audio v2 beta patch which gives increased flexibility and quality with audio levels and recording.

• Good headphones to monitor - I use the Sennheiser HD280 pro

• Carbon Miller DS20 Solo. A solid, light, beautifully smooth tripod.

• Small HD DP6 monitor for focus - the colour is always a bit off though.

THE HACKS:

For me to use a hack it must be ROCK STABLE. If it fails unexpectedly I never use it again. For this reason I only use:

• Sanity 5 with Pasadena Pulse Audio v2 beta
• Flowmotion 2.02 with Pasadena Pulse Audio v2 beta.

Sanity is my workhorse - super long record times, good quality, very reliable. Anything that is time limited or I've only got 1 x shot at, Sanity is used.

Flowmotion is if I want to push quality higher eg: on a short film or larger production with more time to set up.

THE TESTS:

Driftwood Seaquake: My first hacked shoot was with Driftwood's SeaQuake 24p. File sizes were huge, recording time was limited to 4 mins & my editor complained about the files being tricky to process due to their off the charts bitrates. My editor also mentioned that grading was tricky - the image seemed to fall apart easily. Visually, the results were outstanding, however the usability of this hack was it's limiting factor. Here's the shoot, we used the 25mm Voigtlander f/0.95 lens & a single 2K:

http://www.cblok.com.au/portfolio/short-film/

Driftwood Quantum x v4b Orion CBR (HBR): I used this hack for a while on corporate shoots. For the shoots I was doing (interviews), the large file sizes seemed unnecessary. This hack failed on me a few times with grass and trees so it was scrapped.

Driftwood Quantum x Orion v4d Dark Matter + HBR Fix CBR, Driftwood Quantum x v3 rocket RC 100+M, Driftwood Sedna Q20, Driftwood Span My Bitch Up v2b

All of the above hacks failed on me on HBR, generally on grass and trees.

Sanity 5 with Pasadena Pulse Audio v2 Beta:

This hack has generally been rock solid. The only times it has failed have been situations which the creator had already warned of. That is:

• Shooting EX-Tele. Often it works, however times where there is a lot of movement it may fail. For example, I was shooting off a boat using EX-Tele. The mix of Tele-EX & lots of moving water caused constant fails.

• Shooting using very high ISO. Generally I stick between 160-1600 ISO. Over 2000 ISO is gets a big dodgy. The night sequences of the shoot below caused constant fails due to high movement & high ISO - we wanted it grainy though. We used the Voigtlander 25mm 0.95 & LED lights.

http://www.theengineroomproject.com/portfolio/serenity/

Flowmotion v2.02 with Pasadena Pulse Audio v2 beta:

When I want more information in the high and low-lights, more room for grading & finer grain I use this patch. Generally pretty stable, I like how it handles low-light and my editor mentioned that grading was much better. Here's a test we shot that had TONNES of highlights which generally held together:

http://www.theengineroomproject.com/portfolio/someone-has-a-problem/

The above was shot with the NOSTALGIC setting - again, I'm not too happy with how this setting treats skin tones and highlights, but the hack held together well.

As for low-light - this film was shot with SMOOTH & the Flowmotion patch and worked very nicely: http://www.cblok.com.au/portfolio/short-film-3/ It's a shame I can't post the entire film as it's doing festival circuits at the moment.

So that's my experience and over-all workflow with this camera. Its been a great little camera, but I do often miss proper ENG style ergonomics - not to mention, built in ND filters! If anyone has any questions about what I mentioned, I'll try and answer them in batches.

Cheers.

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.

USE IT AND ABUSE IT. DON'T forget to weed out the starved frames in post. AfterEffects instructions here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/49325#Comment_49325 and freeware workflow is here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/39079#Comment_39079

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

7 - Updated Release of Timebuster/timeHBusteR 2.02 FlowMotion variants - 24p is now fixed on timeHBusteR. There was a note telling you should remove the "1080i50 and 1080p24 GOP Size=5" for better preserving 24p but no one seemed to read it and it was causing more trouble (to most of those who wanted 24p preserved) than it was worth (for those who wanted more timelapsing versatility.

NOTE: The mergeable timeHBusteR wasn't updated! Just the the FlowMotion variant. I ASSUME that if you are using this base for merging that YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, and read the DOC.

The day is not over. :)

Can anybody here please help me withthis ?

Thanks to answer

Someone tells me that might crash the recording if the use for 3 or 4 continuous minutes, and I've never tried it, but I want to ask you whether it is possible to lower the bitrate perhaps 80 m / bits? thank you

I am going to combine still images of which I have 1,000's at 4:3 with videos from my G2 I make digital art montages and use video software to make them into slowly merging cross fades I now want to incorporate some video footage but at 4:3 and not 16:9 My idea is to take some video footage, of say a river with the camera in a fixed position on a tripod and then add some still images from the same position, I do not want to start making still image in 16:9.

May I ask if this is possible please?

Cheers - Jem

greet alex

I am new in this forum and have applied the hack for the GF2 with the settings as per attached file: languages = all maximum ISO limit removal = ticked

However, after saving the file and updating the f/w, a) the languages are still the same b) I have no idea how to change the ISO mode for the video mode as there is no menu entry which I have found. => Can you give me a hint how I can change the ISO mode for video recording, please.

Thanks, Torsten

(This is my first post, i am a spanish videographer and English is still a barrier for me....excuse me. Anyway, thanks so much to all the PV comunity...I learn everyday)

A friend of mine is trying to use them now to match his 30p setup. Problem is, as I understand it, the GH2 only supports 30p at full resolution and sound in HBR. He tried that, and the camera chokes every time in the middle of recording. I told him to use the fastest cards he can get, and it still chokes eventually. I guess LPowell was right, his 100mbps modes aren't good for long recordings that require spanning.

So my friend is asking what to do, but I've only captured in 24p so I'm at a loss for suggestions at this point, other than just telling him to return to stock. I think he likes the idea of the hacked GH2 being a legendary performer, and would just rather not return to stock if there is a better option. Are there any reliable hacks that can handle spanning and be stable for long recording times in HBR? Or is there another full HD 30p mode that I'm not aware of, that uses a lower bitrate with Flomotion? I know the GH2 is practically ancient history at this point, but I'm sure someone else has had to deal with this before?

If this is not the case then why may I ask? And either way could it ever be done??

As you probably figured out where this may lead, yes it is ought to do with having flat or log video, and I know it has been discussed to death in regards to the existing ones in-camera and how to set them etc etc etc. but i really want profiles that are designed to professional use, Cinestyle or even V-Log would be absolutely incredible to have on these Panny cameras dont you think??? :)

I just updated from Moon T7 to T8, and I've lost the live preview ability, even though in threads on here, people have said they have it. I'm wondering if there's some setting somewhere that is preventing my from live previewing my footage in-camera. I've looked on YouTube, FB, Vimeo, Google, PV, etc. and I can't figure out how to do it. Thank you guys in advance!