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GH2 vs GH3 HDMI Monitor Output?
  • The only feature that would make me jump and upgrade from GH2 to GH3 is the limitation in the GH2 of output monitoring though the HDMI to an external monitor. When using an external monitor during recording, spanning gets interrupted no matter what spanning patch is being used. The GH2 just stops recording.

    Accordingly to the last response I got from V. Kiselev in this forum was that it hasn't been fixed. Then, accurate focus is the biggest issue I have been encountering with the GH2, specially for run and gun type of shooting. I'm hoping that the GH3 doesn't have this issue.

  • 9 Replies sorted by
  • I always shoot with hdmi external monitor, quantum9 patch, and i had only the 4gb limitation (camera stop to record after +/- 4 minutes) No other problems encountered.

  • Jean71, thanks for your reply. My venue is multicam for live concerts and events. Some of them are seminars that last for 8 hours. What you have mentioned is good for music videos and short documentaries. It won't ether work for extended documentary interviews.

  • Jean71, is this your experience with the GH2 or GH3? Thanks.

  • @alfred

    I did not specified gh2 because i told i use quantum 9b patch (gh3 is not yet hackered :-) )

    @willianaleman

    You have right. I think q9b stops even without ext hdmi because is an high bitrate patch. Try to ask @Vitaliy , maybe there are more stable patches that works in the way you need to.

  • I shot on the weekend with Flowmotion as the patch, ran the GH2 for an hour at a time (15 times) into a ATEM switcher. I am assuming that spanning went as expected, I have no use for the in-camera footage, just pressed record to get rid of overlays, I formatted the card between acts.

  • Thanks guys for the extra info. Since a while ago, the patch that we have tried and gives us better spanning stabilization (without the external monitor) is balazer's version 2.3. We use it all the time with three to 4 GH2.

    Vitaliy recently responded in a another thread to the external HDMI monitoring issue related to spanning by saying that it hasn't been fixed.

  • Does it fail with stock firmware? It is funny how everyone's first reaction when their camera fails to record anything is to try a different hack. With a camera that is totally static and I assume shooting wide field wouldn't reliability your biggest concern if not your only concern?

  • Didn't even know about this issue till I read this thread. No issues here using Canis Majoris Night on a Sandisk 64GB 95MB/s card with a Swivi monitor.

  • BlueBomerTurbo: What is the longer recording time you have gone? If you are recording four to five minutes per shot you are not going to run into this issue. We need at least 40 minutes spanning, and the patch we use does it, again, without an external monitor attached to the HDMI. Instead, most of the time we are using non - electronic view finder for critical focus.