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MJPEG FPS setting for Timelapse on GH2
  • 128 Replies sorted by
  • tidatida
    @Luc what's about mechanical impact on your shutter and workflow if you would compare.
  • LucLuc
    The camera would love to get some shots with it's mechanical shutter ;-)
    Ok, if you just want to do some timelaps without getting the best results then it may be an acceptable methode.
  • tidatida
    @Luc sure it's far away from 4K, 5K or 8K HDR timelapse...
  • GH13TimelapserGH13Timelapser
    @Luc I don't know how accurate this is but someone apparently called Panasonic and got hold of the right person to find out what the expected life of the GH1 shutter is, 50,000 - 70,000 actuations. Panasonic never published these figures and given most DSLRs are rated for 100,000 - 150,000 it's not hard to see why. No doubt the GH2 has the same expected shutter life.

    At the low end that's a grand total of 33.3 minutes of timelapse footage at 25 fps before your camera body might die - and that's assuming you've never used your camera to take a picture.

    Given that my GH1 has just passed 69,000 actuations - you can probably guess why I investigated using video mode for timelapse and why I developed GH13Timelapser to make it actually usable.

    On top of that I find it less fiddly to set up than using an external timer and much easier to deal with after shooting. I've also had three JJC intervalometers die on me, although my Pixel-252 seems more hardy.

    If you want the absolute best results, or if you're doing professional timelapse work for broadcast and/or astrophotography you'll want to use an intervalometer, shoot RAW and spend a bunch of time in post. For the rest of us who want to get more than half an hour of timelapse footage out of our camera body or just want a simple way to play around with timelapse photography, the results in video mode are good enough.
  • tidatida
    This should result in (opt)imum between (q)uality and (s)torage (p)erformance,

    optQSP_01:

    cbrandin 44Mbps AQ4 AVCHD Patch + GH13Timelapser 2fps MJPEG
    optQSP_01.zip
    667B
  • GOODEMPIREGOODEMPIRE
    @tida sorry, is that for GH1 or GH2? thanks
  • HallvallaHallvalla
    @GH13Timelapser

    Have you heard of anybody installing your program on Mac OS X thru Wine?

    I just tried but got stuck when I had to pick a folder to install the program in.
  • toxotis70toxotis70
    @tida : How do i enable this timelapse mode in my GH2 ?
    I put your patch with the newer ptools, but icant find the way ....
  • GH13TimelapserGH13Timelapser
    @toxotis70 Not sure exactly where you are getting stuck. Did you create a firmware file and then copy it to your SD card and patch the camera? If so all you need to do is change the record mode in the menu of your GH2 to MJPEG mode and your camera will now record at 2fps.
  • GH13TimelapserGH13Timelapser
    For some reason I can't get the seta.ini file that tida posted to load in PTools 3.63d using the GH2 firmware. So if that's where you're getting stuck, you can set the firmware options manually using the instructions here - scroll down to the "How do I set this up?" section:

    http://timelapser.net/about/
  • toxotis70toxotis70
    Yes , i did that.
    I took the .ini file from here (the last one).
    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1301/official-low-gop-topic-series-3/p1

    Do i have to be in a certain mode in my GH2 ? (PASM or creative video mode)?
  • GH13TimelapserGH13Timelapser
    @toxotis70 I don't have a GH2 so I can't say for sure... Once you've selected MJPEG recording from the camera menu you'll know it's working because when you record the screen/viewfinder will only move at 2fps.
  • toxotis70toxotis70
    if anyone has GH2, please tell us if that works.
  • GH13TimelapserGH13Timelapser
    @toxotis70 plasmasmp has already posted 2fps footage from the GH2 in this thread so it works. Can you explain what the actual problem is that you're having? Is it just recording at the normal 30fps instead of 2fps?
  • toxotis70toxotis70
    Is the ini file i used the right one ? (the last one)
    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1301/official-low-gop-topic-series-3/p1

    Do i have to modify it ?
  • toxotis70toxotis70
    Ok i did it !
    i haven' t choosed the right mode (motion jpeg) ... stupid me.
  • No_SuRReNDeRNo_SuRReNDeR
    I tried changing the fps to 1 in the new ptools and shooting clouds for a time lapse test.The camera crashed at 4 minutes and the file was corrupt or something it had very small size and was in the DCIM folder for some reason? I didnt see anything in my mov folder....weird. I did change the frame size to 1920 x 1080 which may have factored in and it was set to the newest driftwood patch as well.
  • GH13TimelapserGH13Timelapser
    @toxotis70 Glad you got it working - let me know if you have any more problems.

    @No_SuRReNDeR I had similar problems with recording at 1fps on the GH1, except it would crash immediately. 2fps has proved to be 100% stable which is why I developed GH13Timelapser around 2fps footage.
  • No_SuRReNDeRNo_SuRReNDeR
    OK Ill try changing it to 2 and see what happens. :0 I love this btw doing this in the camera is such a time saver.. thank you.
  • astrabanastraban
    works perfectly : thanks for your cool tool @GH13Timelapser (my intervalometer is between china and France, so you allowed me to do my first - and forgettable ! - timelapse ever ! ;-) )
  • HallvallaHallvalla
    I wonder if you can set the MPEG to larger than 1920x1080?
  • toxotis70toxotis70
    Can someone make a new .ini file , with timelapse and 44M_32M(spanning)_GOP12_AQ4 ?
  • GH13TimelapserGH13Timelapser
    @astraban You're most welcome

    @Halvalla With the GH1 firmware in PTool, Vitaliy restricts the maximum amount for width and height at 1920x1080 - I don't know if this was imposed on Vitaliy or just common sense on his part. Loading up the GH2 firmware it seems like that restriction isn't there, people are using widths of 2160 for anamorphic lenses, for example. Who knows how high it can go. That said, there is still some evidence, unless someone can correct me, that the 1080p MJPEG mode on the GH1/2 may just scaled up from 720p. Some people swear it's resolving more detail than 720p, but there's also this:

    "however. I applied this hack to my gh2 and set the camera to ex tele mode and I noticed that even though the file reads as being 1920 by 1080, it has the exact same framing as the 72060p ex tele mode. Due to the fact that ex tele uses a 1:1 pixel ration I can only conclude that it was upscaling the footage to 1080p because it could not possibly have had enough pixels for true 1080p."

    Perhaps it's only scaling 720p when the camera is in ex tele mode? I would love to get a definitive answer on this if anyone knows... @Vitaliy_Kiselev ?
  • kanintesovakanintesova
    @Halvalla

    I have tried GH13Timelapser through Wine in Linux. It did not work. It is a cmd file i don't know how Wine handles that... but i have dual boot. Maybe viritual machine?

    Find som old free Windows XP slim
  • johnnymjohnnym
    Wouldn't there be a way to do this with taking photographs in the GH2, like there's been a feature in CHDK?
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