@redpaw @proaudio4 so it seems were are stuck with our older monitors and PAL recording. Could this be an evil way to trick us into buying new stuff and/or switch to NTSC recording? :) :)

@LongJohnSilver External HDMI monitoring works absolutely fine.

...but is external HDMI recording fine?

The idea behind this behavior is not so stupid: Panny tried to make image in the viewfinder as contrasty and bright as possible for focusing under bad conditions – on the expense of all the disadvantages mentioned here. You can make yourself a setting with very low data rates and have the camera recording internally at the same time. This will fix most of the issues. That said, I didn't find much of an advantage recording the HDMI output (Ninja in my case) when compared to the best settings from Driftwood.

@Fohdeesha maybe you and this guy should have a chat. He is stating the exact opposite.

@Rafa did you get a chance to test it yet?

@Fohdeesha where did you post the test results? As I said may 13th I'm really interested to see your findings!

It would be interesting to all to see if your tests can result in some sort of CLUT to get on-set monitoring as close as possible to the actual end result.

Although some of my findings do not exactly relate to the problems discussed here, I noticed some stuff. When playing back on my beamer (without hack) all the blacks were crushed, (main character wore a black sweater) and there was almost no detail. So I edited and exported it etc etc. The movie will be playing in a movie theater, so this week I had a chance to play it on a 4K projector. The amount of detail in the blacks was absolutely amazing, all the way through editing (and viewing through HMDI at beamer) I was sad that I saw no detail in the blacks. When played on the 4K projector the shadows had shitloads amount of detail, without any noise. One shot contained only a small diffuse light around a handgrip from a door, everything else was crushed black (on HDMI and while editing), yet when viewed on the 4K projector the whole room was visible, almost no blacks whatsoever, and no noise. I was amazed and wondered if the final movie on the 4K projector all along was the 'true' image?

Has anyone tested converting the HDMI out during hack use to SDI through say Blackmagics products to monitor on a 17" Panasonic monitor for set work? I would like to be able to do that than cause trouble for the crew huddling around the camera.

Since July 2011, the date when this thread started to today, the GH2 HDMI out issue of changing Recording Mode is still unresolved. I tested today once again: PTool v3.64d, balazer's later patch. As soon as I connect the HDMI to any monitor or HDTV, the Recording Mode gets disable and it changes, records by default from 720p to 1080i.

Is there any updated solution to this issue? Thanks in advance.

Is it possible at all? I am planing my own rig now, and if I knew that one day I could shoot 720p with external screen attached it would solve me alot headache.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev

Thank you for everything you have done and for not causing me to brick my camera. Have you ever bricked one in testing these features out?

Have you ever bricked one in testing these features out?

Nope. Near bricked many times, but not.