Beginners: Basic hacks questions

frogman

I am pretty new to the GH2 world but did hack my old T2i. It's gone and I'm a GH2 user now. I have successfully hacked my 2 cams with the most recent PTools. I'm not really interested in the 24p mode so I left those settings alone. I really only wanted to get my 1080/60i mode up to 24mbps like other cams like the HMC150. I setup it all up, saved the file and loaded it on both cams. I have tried some long recordings just to test it and make sure it was spanning properly. Tonight I tried long recordings twice with both cameras. Each time it broke the files at the 4gb limit like it should. However each time the first file numbered 000000.mts would not open but all subsequent files opened just fine.

I'm using Transcend Class 10 16gb cards. They worked great on my T2i. I formatted them in the camera before each long recording. I'm wondering if I needed to low level format them on my computer before using them to completely wipe them clean.

When I got the cams and left everything at default I recorded 3 or 4 cards full with no problems at all. Long files spanned great and all files were readable.

When I setup the update in PTools I set the FSH at 24mbp with the AQ=4. The default was 3. Would that matter?

I'm trying the same tests now with my other PNY cards I bought when I got the cams that worked fine previously.

Any ideas what happened?

Illuminat

I just registered and the only "camera" I ever owned was a disposable camera :)
On February 28th 2012 I will go on a 18 months trip. Flight from Germany to India and then travel to Australia. The plan is to make some clips in 720 60fps/50fps with c-mount lens and fader ND, mostly on Gorillapod. I don't care too much about noise or vignetting because the look should be "1970's amateur style", but I do care about clean movement. Because I'm on budget the GH1 from ebay will be the deal. Audio will be H2n, no ext mic. But as lightweight is very important the GF1 or GF2 would fit much better. (my rucksack should not be above 7 kg/15 pounds, I will take 3 T-shirts altogether :)

1. Is there a possibility to get real 720 60fps/50fps with a GF1 or could the new hack for the GF2 support that in the next 3 months?

2. I want to check the footage "on the set" with a netbook. Will a Lenovo s205 with AMD E350/450 do the job watching 720 60fps/50fps AVCHD 30-40mb/s? If not can a Broadcom Crystal HD Decoder BCM70012 help?

3. Audio is very important, can the Zoom H2n record speech properly in about 1m / 3feet distance without ext mic? Settings of video and audio have to be on the same Hz level to make postproduction less painful or can I do 24Bit48kHz on H2n and lowest possible on cam? (Planning to get about 300-400 hours footage and make a 1,5 hours clip after the trip)

By the way the work you do is amazing, donation will follow as soon as my ebay sellings stock up my paypal account again.

TraumManufaktur

@gameb What were the conditions for the $25 clipwrap deal? For that price I'll get a copy, even though most of my clips are under 1 minute.

kenoah

I reloaded the gh2 with aqua 2 by driftwood and left everything as is except i changed the dimensions of 720p to 1920x1080 . I played the 24p back in the gh2 and it played. But when i tried to playthe 720 in the gh2 it said 'this image cant be played'. I flipped back to the 24p that originally played and it gave the same error message. When i tried to delete either file it said 'disk write error'. I then used the gh2 to reformat the card and it did. I was able torepeat the experiment from the beginning and got identical results. Im using a sandisk 32gb 45mb/s card

kenoah

nevermind, I was checking out the ptool and it specifically tells you which ones wont be viewable in camera. seems to only be the 720p & 480p compression settings

kenoah

Ima buy the 64 gb sdxc card. With the driftwood hack thats getting all the attention. Will i be able to playback the videos on the gh2?

kenoah

Just read through the entire 10 pages of this topic 2 am saturday morning.

paleface

in what way does 5DtoRGB mess with gamma?

JDN

@ttancredi 5DtoRGB messes with gammas so don't use it if you can avoid it. +1 on clipwrap. Log and Transfer screws up because sometimes I find that for whatever reason one of the metadata files (found in those gazillion other folders) fails to write and FCP can't square it away. So clipwrap to prores if you can.

JDN

@tonalt two reasons, one, if you are shooting primes, you want some distance between them. The 25mm is a good "normal" lens (either the panasonic leica one or voightlander) so assuming you have that, makes sense to have 14 mm as the 20 isn't that different.

Other reason, 14 mm much better for video -- silent and fast autofocusing. 20mm (only rented it, never owned) was very slow and loud.

That said, nokton has a 12mm f 1.4 that is not much more than the 14mm -- I almost regretted getting the 14mm until I remembered that is my go to lens for my glidecam (focusing doesn't seem to shift weight in the slightest). But I'll probably get the 12mm at some point as it is the most cinematic you can get without getting into anamorphics.

driftwood

micro four thirds!

tonalt

What is mFT?

itimjim

There's a big difference between 14mm and 20mm on mFT.

paleface

it's the wider shots that sometimes count, some people prefer even the 9-18 lens even though it is only F4.0-5.6 but it is W-I-D-E!

tonalt

Why do so many prefer Lumix 14mm f2.5 instead of Lumix 20mm f1.7? I thought that bigger aperture hole is always better.

Lanzar

@flash, there is a hdmi to composite adapter that works but the adapter is powered. I can give u the info but need to check the company that makes it

glebnagorny

Hi,

Just bought GH2 and have a question.

Can I set the EVF to behave in stills mode in the same way as in the movie mode? By that I mean, I would really prefer a darker image (like in movie mode) in EVF, than brighter and slower (as it is now in stills mode) for low-light situations.

Thanks.

gameb

Try ClipWrap, I tried several others, this was the best for me, very basic and straight forward, all codecs for FCP, no generation loss at all, ask for discount, they give you right now 50% off ($25 instead of $50), even recovered some .mts files without the whole private folder! Trial version one minute without logo.

ttancredi

@traumManufaktur thanks again for your help.
after trying, testing and reading a lot, I can almost conclude the problem is with my FCP. I'll have the installer in about 2 weeks and after re-installing will try log&transfer again. I am positive it will work fine.
Yes, meanwhile I have been using clipwrap trial- as most of my footage has been shorter than a minute and I am policing myself to shoot shortlenght shots-which is a kind of ridiculous but pratical situation for the upcoming weeks.

I'll still badly need media converter for the longer footages - As it won't be a direct transfer, can I assume I'll loose some quality on the process? (I'll test it tonight) - What codec would be most appropriated? H264?

5DtoRGB is working fine, I just didn't find a way to use it as a normal converter instead of a program to flatten the image. I'll be using footage almost straight from camera. I am not sure whether it would be better using 5DtoRGB once I'll be trying to reach something similar to my .mts files - allthough I may use it as a last solution.

Thanks for helping! Really appreciate it.

p.s: anyone aware of other programs with free trials? Pavtube and other programs I tried are terrible and transcode the footage with their logo in the middle. haha, disapointing!

JDN

@twistedtape even on my new maxed out macbook air with ssd vlc and quicktime can't read the avchd driftwood files fast enough always -- which speaks to @driftwood's killer work. Download the free MplayerX -- its my go to solution for screening rushes -- not only does it not choke, it automatically cues up the next file in your folder so you can roll through footage really quick.

JDN

@sanzadez, you need an external recorder. As @stevgol correctly points out, external monitoring is essential. Also, you really want 24 bit sample depth (not the 14 bit of the gh2). The audio hacks are nice, especially for providing better emergency backup sound (which can happen anytime -- believe it or not, we've even had sound get corrupted once on a freaking alexa and had to pull from the gh2 with a small shotgun on it); but it should never be you primary source. DR-40 is a pretty decent budget recorder, only drawback over dr 100/zoom is that you can't individually adjust input levels but that's not a bit deal if you're eventually planning to run a shotgun / lav setup seeing as most lavs will allow you to adjust their levels after you've dialed in the shotgun. $200 online.

Generally, buy the best gear you can afford and buy it once. You'll never regret it. Make sure if you can possibly afford it that it has balanced xlr inputs; you'll eventually add a "real" microphone to the kit, and if it doesn't have these, you'll have to buy a new recorder too.

stevgol

The most important thing in audio recording (besides good mics placed off camera) is being able to monitor the audio. If you are using a GH! and cannot monitor the audio you need an external recorder.

Steve

sanzadez

Just a quick question. Hopefully someone can help me out. I'm looking into an external audio recorder right now, tascam dr-07, as I am on a really tight budget. I was told by someone that the AC3 compression hack in ptools makes it so that an external recorder isn't needed. I will be using it along with a rode videomic. So just wondering, does the AC3 compression settings at 448000bps make an external recorder such as the tascam dr-07 unnecessary? Thanks in advance.

twistedtape

Cheers bud, will keep that in mind. Thanks again for the help.

driftwood

always copy the whole private folder over to your hard disk - thats what you need, you can always remove mts files which arent needed later.

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