Hi, I have a hacked GH1 and like it because of the blackout-powel native 24p hack that allows the native 24p where I don't have to do any fiddling with pulldown bla bla stuff at all. Problem with GH1 is that I can't have HDMI live out monitoring, so it is almost impossible for me to keep eyes in focus with a manual lens since I can't make out details well enough on the lcd screen alone. I can setup the focus sharp using the focus assist zoom at first, but if someone moves a tiny bit after recording starts then the shot is basically no good to use. I am hoping the GH2 can help me with this but I have a question about it.

Q: If I get a GH2, and hack it with the GH2 version of the blackout-powell native 24p patch, can I hook up my hdmi computer monitor to it and be able to monitor the output live with that 24p patch installed (at 1080p)? I want the live HDMI out so that I can easily see when the focus goes out and be able to keep adjusting the manual lens as I look at the hdmi computer monitor while recording. My question is I don't know if after I hack the GH2 into 24p native if it will have a live HDMI monitoring feed that is useable direct into an hdmi computer monitor or not. I read that the output from the GH2 only works in 1080i mode, so from that I was thinking if I hack it and put on the 24p native patch the hdmi out may then not work, and that I may be forced to keep it in 1080i mode only if I want to get a live HDMI feed that works into a computer monitor while recording.

I hope everyone can advise me on this if you have tried what I am talking about and know what the results are. Since I don't yet have a GH2 I can't test this and don't want to buy one unless I know I can do this because I don't want to ever again work with anything except native 24p footage, and I don't ever want to work with any new camera that can't do that and give me a live 1080 output that I can use as a focus aid while recording, since the lcd is not sufficient to visually see well enough to focus at a professional level of exactness.

The live hdmi 1080 will probably work as i or p, as long as it is true 1080 out, since I am not recording the live output to a recorder, I just need it for a visual focus aid to magnify the image into a big computer monitor so I can get better focus whenever someone moves a bit out of focus.

Thanks very much.