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Just got my hands on a GH2, what do I need to know ?
  • KhayyamKhayyam

    Hi everyone,

    I own a T2i and have learned to use it over the last couple years. I've been curious about the GH2 since the hacking stuff became popular and all over YT and Vimeo. Now I met a guy who's lending me his GH2 (with a Nokton 25) for a week. I will be shooting a wedding on Saturday and I don't want to go there not knowing the camera (I'll have the T2i on me anyway but I really want to play with this beast).

    The menu is not very intuitive but I don't think I need to mess with it anyway. I chose 24p CINEMA and Smooth mode (-2,-2,-2,-2,). My friend tells me it's already hacked and I wonder what hack he is using. Is it possible to know ? I tried to shoot something and play it back on my mac and MBP couldn't handle that much glory I guess. The video just kept freezing. Is that normal for a raw MTS file to be unreadable before conversion ? BTW, is there an easy way to find the bitrate of a video file ?

    Thank you for your attention !

  • 5 Replies sorted by
  • balazerbalazer

    http://www.personal-view.com/faqs/gh2-usage/gh2-usage

    http://www.personal-view.com/faqs/gh2-hack/gh2-hack-faq

    I suggest you pick some hack settings and hack the camera yourself. There's no reliable way to know what hack is already on the camera. And the hacks are quite different. Not all of them will suit your needs.

    Some computers and decoders have trouble playing high bit rate recordings. VLC will show you the bit rate.

  • SangyeSangye

    It's difficult to determine what hack is on a camera, but we could come up with a range of guesses if you tell us the total recording time on an empty card, plus the size of that card. Also if you record a very short clip (a few seconds) and upload the original file, someone could analyze it in streamparser to tell you about the GOP configuration.

  • KhayyamKhayyam

    Okay just checked on VLC, it's around 70MB. Something is odd though, the Frame Rate says 47.95 (approx). I thought I was in 24p. Also, the videos are playing fine now that I copied them on the HD before playing them (duh...).

    I'd rather not hack the GH2 myself because I don't feel confortable around it yet. And also because I'm giving it back to its owner in less than a week..

    The recording time on a empty 64 GB card is 1h34m

    Here is the raw MTS file for a quick video I just shot : http://tbf.me/a/slH8u

  • inqb8trinqb8tr

    The file from the link:

    Bit rate : 69.5 Mbps Maximum bit rate : 90.0 Mbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate : 23.976 fps ...

    It is not stock firmware judging by the bit rate.

  • Brian_SianoBrian_Siano

    At the wedding, you may want to shoot long takes, so test the camera and the memory card for spanning. Some hacks with high bit rates don't span on lesser memory cards. Or, make sure you're using an Sandisk Extreme Pro 64-gig card, which seems to be the only one that spans reliably.

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