Hacking the GH2?

S

Scorer

My GH2 is on the way. When I get it, I am going to film a "warm-up" short to get to know it. This will be filmed with the stock firmware. After this, however, I would like to hack it for my actual production.

Here is the catch:
If this camera gets messed up, I won't be buying another for a while.

So my question is, how risky is the hack? I know many people warn against it if it isn't a "spare" type situation. But what are the odds of it messing up the camera, and have any of you ever heard of anyone's camera going bad over it?

I have seen hacked footage and it looks incredible. Really hoping I can use it.
 
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Hi Scorer - congrats on the GH2. I've never heard of anyone bricking their camera, but I never hacked mine. To be honest, I'm just very nervous about running out of batteries in the middle of a firmware load - or putting in SD card "A" when I meant to put in SD card "B" :)

...so I just went ahead and bought a GH3. I am not ordinarily tech-adverse, but I have a mental block when it comes to treating my camera like a computer (maybe that's because I have a stack of dead computers in my office - and yes, officer, I killed them - I killed them all ;))

Good luck with your stock firmware project - would love to see it when you're finished.

Best,

Bill
 
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The hack process is as simple as writing a file to an SD card with ptool (easily found with google) and letting the camera sit for 5-10 minutes or so. I haven't had any issues with mine, though only changed firmware 4 or 5 times at most over the life of the camera. Probably more like 3 or 4.

The failure rate is very low, and I think the folks who were bricking cameras were doing hack development or testing dozens of different firmware configs and stressing the system harder than a few changes over a longer period of time would. Or maybe I just got lucky. :D

You do have to start on a fresh battery, but given the battery life its not an issue. The firmware change is done in minutes. The bigger problem is the wasted time trying to determine which one to use, or getting too caught up in the more "extreme" hacks with massive bitrate numbers since there is only so much bitrate you can throw at a ~7stop camera in an 8bit color space and still be improving things.
 
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hacked once, still running the aquamotion 44mb hack.. good enough for me. A stock gh3 would be cool. I think if I had another gh2 Id be hacking more... but like David said, testing hacks can suck all your productivity into NON CREATIVE effort... so meh... better to spend that time writing a screen play, or how to light a shot..
 
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I see. I wonder what the bit rate limit for when the hacks stop providing improvements. I don't plan on going hack crazy, just something to beef up the quality. I have seen some pretty impressive videos.

I will have a wall outlet power source as well. I wonder if that might be better to use.
 
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no, wall power is NOT advised. Your much more likely to lose power to the camera that way!

Losing power in the middle of the hack is much more likely to cause damage then anything else.

Plugged into the wall, subjects you to weather, lighting, crazy drunk drivers, forgetting to pay bills, all of which can lead to an unexpected interruption of power to your outlet.

A battery is either working or not, there are not a lot of failure modes...

The stock battery fully charged is best. Dont use after market battery for this.
 
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Fully charge your battery and just do it. It's a very simple process. I do it atleast once a month to test out Driftwood's patches in different flavours.
@wheatgrinder. Please try 'Moon' patch once. It makes your camera better than GH3 in 24p.
 
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right you are about that. Focus should always be on the craft and never the tools but just once in a while check on internet for some major development that might help your craft and storytelling only. For ex- new patches gave me latitude to shoot in really bad low light situations where I had means to get lights in. :)

wheatgrinder said:
hacked once, still running the aquamotion 44mb hack.. good enough for me. A stock gh3 would be cool. I think if I had another gh2 Id be hacking more... but like David said, testing hacks can suck all your productivity into NON CREATIVE effort... so meh... better to spend that time writing a screen play, or how to light a shot..
Click to expand...
 
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