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Beginners: Basic hacks questions
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  • Hi everyone. I need help to hack my 2nd GH2 I hacked my 1st GH2 few weeks ago; and we I decided to hack the 2nd it didn't work. I copied the GH2__V11.bin file into my SDcard, and when I turn on the camera and press the play button nothing happens besides the message the there are no files. did anyone had the same problem? and if YES how did you solve it? by the way the battery is genuine and fully charged.

    Thank you in advance.

  • @Meierhans, The 1080 ETC mode horizontal crop factor is 4976/1920, and of course the aspect ratio is 1920:1080. If you can find the sensor dimensions published somewhere, you should be able to calculate the sensor area for ETC mode.

    @xtra00, try resetting your camera. (menu, setup, reset) Try re-attaching the lens.

  • That sounds easy enough.

  • It is going again and again. Just download original zipped patches. Click on round button in Ptool, locate your patch, and it'll import all by itself.

  • If you use winebottler to create a mac application, the patch setting files cannot be loaded. Suggest putting PTools.exe together with the specific patch.ini files you want to use in the same folder, then Ctrl+click on PTools.exe and select "Open with wine.app". This way the patch files are available from PTools. If you simply create a new wine app, you can't. You can organize binaries & patch files so they can be easily loaded and/or created for testing.

  • Thanks JDN! I didn't mean to trivalize the patches, I just meant if they were a different software thing happening altogether (like a plugin for PTool), or if they were settings within PTool. I certainly don't understand enough about this stuff to go in there willy nilly changing things.

    Now in terms of using a patch, on a mac, using wine, where do I put the .ini file as I don't have the .exe exposed anymore to put it in the same folder. Does it go with the wine file, or do I bury it inside with the .exe?

    And lastly, in terms of learning more about this, is this book good?: http://www.eoshd.com/gh2-guide-book I did a search on the forum here but didn't turn up much. It's quite expensive (particularly for an ebook), but it does seem thorough and quite applicable to what I want.

  • @kapemuna @rmckoen @Chhatrapal Aquamotion v2 is your best bet. H mode will span on any class 10 card (or at least sandisk, adata, lexar and transcend, all of which I've personally tried). If you want spanning at a higher bit rate, the only thing that works is the sandisk 64 sdxc. That's it. I've shot numerous doc interviews on Aquamotion and it is 100 percent reliable and quality is great.

    @Meierhans I believe it is about 2.5 zoom.

    @Rodrigo, while you can pop in different setting in ptools, the patches are not just numbers people have entered in, they are the result of countless hours of tinkering with a variety of settings and testing with streamparser to see if the results they've sought actually get returned by the camera. Just putting in numbers won't help -- for most of us, myself included, the best thing we can do is try out new patches as they are posted and report our feedback -- unless you really want to bury into it, you'll advance the hack fastest by helping out the pros, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

    Re cards and quality it is less about card size and more about its read write speed. I suspect with that card Aquamotion will be the best patch you can use, but you can try others and see if you don't get a write error

  • Can anybody provide me with the exact dimensions in mm of used area on sensor when switched to ETC mode? I need them to calculate focal lenght for tracking.

  • Hello all first post. Just trying to understand how 'patches' work here. So using PTool I can change all of the settings myself? Patches are just some 'presets' for PTool or are they something else?

    The tables on the FAQ are a bit confusing in terms of what's happening (at least to a relatively beginner).

    Secondly, in terms of picking what patch works best, is it mainly about the memory card speed and size? I have a couple of Lexar 32gb 133x speed cards, and I don't mind big files (as long as I can fit at least 30min per card). I'm primarily (exclusively really) doing relatively low light filming of music performance stuff, and am interested in a nice film look. So would I just pick whatever has the highest bit rate/lowest GOP I can fit on my card for 1080/24p?

  • I am a complete newbie to the hack world, as can probably be gleamed from my question. However, I have attempted to hack my GH2 and though I had just about managed it but then when I went to adjust lens, (Panasonic 20mm) I could not longer adjust f-stop.

    Am I missing something really simple? or forgotten something?

  • I tried SeaQuack and failed to span on both H and L settings on Original Sandisk 32GB 30MB/s and morever i am looking for a patch which can do all 720p, Variable Movie, Extele,and which can span. So now i am putting on Aquamotion V2 which is doing everything this fine till now. Is the best available? I don't mind if H doesn't span ... even L spans reliably, i can take lengthy shots with it? Please let me know what the best thing i can put on 32 GB 30MB/s card

  • Hi. Just want to thank everyone for their time/sweat 'n tears in working on these hacks etc. especially VK. I've uploaded a few different hacks with different results but I'm looking for a hack around the 66M area that spans. I've cruised the GH2 Patch Vault etc but haven't found one that spans. Could someone point me in the right direction? Cheers! I'm using 32g Sandisk 30mb/s cards btw. edit: FOUND my answer. Driftwood's "SpanMyBitchUp". She did the trick. Was able to record 1hr10mins straight on a 32g Sandisk card. Exactly what I was looking. Thanks. And to all the newbies out there via hack land. Read the Faqs in the top banner. Incredibly helpful. I say this because I read through all 600+ replies in the last two days and most answers are in the FAQs. Cheers.

  • Many thanks - I'll give it another try ..... One more dumb question. Will the hacks only work from v1.0?

  • @pgranshaw When loading one of the patches to your camera, it will show v1.0 as the firmware on the camera. Don't be alarmed, you probably have a hack installed. There are a few ways you can double check, such as checking if all languages are showing up in the language menu if you checked that box for your patch. Also, there are programs you can use to check the bit rate and other information of clips you record. Best of luck.

  • Hi ....this is my first question on here so please be gentle with me! I have gh2 and have recently downloaded the 1.1 firmware update from panasonic. Having seen the fantastic possibilities courtesy of Vitaliys (and others) hacks, I downloaded the pTool 3.63 to try some hacking of my own. I reloaded the camera with v1.0 and all was going smoothly, or so I thought. I was able see everything in the pTool and saved the new firmware as v1.2 as instructed, but when uploading to the camera it still reads it as v1.0.......I am obviously making a fundamental mistake. Any ideas? Thanks Paul

  • @RRRR thanks for the response, i don't have the post edit option with this. it has to be WYSIWYG.

    i've found a couple of budget JVC camcorder models (that are unmanageably small) that shoot AVCHD-SD but no optical image stabilisation.

    i was hoping that a GH1 hack option would be possible.

  • @zebedee I don't recall ever having done that, but you can just crop the 16:9 in post. Use photo mode 4:3 to make manual crop reference for the lcd..

  • Hi, i'm new here.

    i have a currently unhacked GH1. have been trawling but cannot find the answer anywhere.

    i have the need to shoot video in 4:3 in Pal 25fps.

    post cropping isn't an option as the footage needs to be checked as-is on the fly (out of the camera - into the laptop) on site. however hard i try i cannot find a SD camcorder or DSLR that will do this - everything is HD-wide now.

    is this possible with any hacks for the GH1?

    if anyone knows or has seen a link on another thread please help. my eyes are going square!

    much thanks

  • @kapemuna, read the FAQs. @chrimsbroome, audio encoding parameters are a function of the camera, not the microphone or the player. The GH2's stock config is 192 kbps.

  • Hi all, I just bought a Rode Video Mic Pro, nice Mic but I have noticed somthing. Is is the audio bit rate 448000bps = 256kbps when you play back through a windows media player of media player classic?

  • Good day!

    If I install the official firmware update from Panasonic, version 1.1, will I still be able to use ptool 3.63d to patch settings?

    I really like the image quality of the hacked settings but since I haven't upgraded to a fast sandisk card (still using a 32Gb Transcend Class 10), there are shoots where I need to be safe, especially with regards to spanning. :)

    I apologize if this has been answered before but I didn't find a similar query. Thanks.

  • thanks again for the info driftwood....

    what patch are you using in your gh2 just now?

    seaquake is nice

    i guess a 64gb is essential?

  • Nope its easier to edit than long gop... of course the size of files are bigger but you can cut more precisely and is less prone to errors. :-)

  • thanks driftwood

    like your video examples

    do you need a beast of a computer to edit gop1 intra files?

  • i dont have a lumix lens, but a olympus one, and have no problems ad all.

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