Panasonic GH2 general and hack info base

Vojec

Member
I now get Live-Preview from the GH2 HDMI output through a new HDMI converter. Evidently the HDMI converter was to blame all along.

My thanks go to whoever it was who posted THIS LINK to this petite, plastic cased HDMI converter. It is perfect. Small, light, cheap and it works.

How do you power it with lipo 2S, 3S? No spec voltage with usb power? Must modify wire for power it?
 

MombasaFlash

Heli's & Tele's bloke
Yes, as with everything there is a pain-in-the-butt element and with this it is the USB power socket. I have taken out the row of phono sockets and hardwired a three-way radio cable to feed it with 5volts and take out the video using the Iftron Stinger transmitter camera socket.

This is far and away the best current HDMI converter solution for MR's as it does not involve trying to find somewhere to mount that sodding great circuit board of the other one that comes in a heavy metal casing.
 

Mactadpole

Member
Yes, as with everything there is a pain-in-the-butt element and with this it is the USB power socket. I have taken out the row of phono sockets and hardwired a three-way radio cable to feed it with 5volts and take out the video using the Iftron Stinger transmitter camera socket.

This is far and away the best current HDMI converter solution for MR's as it does not involve trying to find somewhere to mount that sodding great circuit board of the other one that comes in a heavy metal casing.

Would you mind posting a pic of how you have it all hooked up whenever you have a chance? I just ordered one and a reference would be great! BTW-how long did it take to show up?

Thanks, Shawn
 

MombasaFlash

Heli's & Tele's bloke
If you took the 'Free Shipping' option ... find a lengthy project to keep yourself occupied for a month. It took so long I was starting to think it was a scam site. It took over month for them to stick it in the post, but then it arrived within four days. Pics below show it mounted. I didn't want to split the casing again to show where the wires connect because without a doubt I would have cracked the plastic or something.

The case does split - start with a corner at the phono connector end - it has two little tabs on each side with the male 'bump' on the lower casing, i.e. the bit that needs to be pushed in to release the top half. The USB connector power pin is the one on the left when looking at it from above with the phono connectors to the right. However, as it is barely possible to even see such a miniscule object, let alone wade in with a big fat solder iron, you need another place to solder a wire to supply 5v. Easiest is the +ve leg of the capacitor to the left of the USB connector. Earth/-ve can be any of the connector casing lugs and the video out is obvious - centre pin of the yellow phono connector. Good Luck (with GoodLuckBuy :) AND the installation).

I am wondering how long the HDMI connectors of the GH2 and the converter are going to last with all the plugging/unplugging and bending around for 90° vertical shots etc.





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56.hdmibox_4.jpg
 


holco

Member
Its a pity that you don't have 720P 50/60fps with the HDMI converter, when you connect the converter the GH2 will switch back to 1080i 25/30fps :(

For photo's only its works perfect tho :)
 

Mactadpole

Member
Its a pity that you don't have 720P 50/60fps with the HDMI converter, when you connect the converter the GH2 will switch back to 1080i 25/30fps :(

For photo's only its works perfect tho :)

Well, that does suck! Guess it's back to figuring out how to get an fpv cam fixed and focused on the GH2 display screen. Gonna see if I can cancel my order from GLB.

Shawn
 

MombasaFlash

Heli's & Tele's bloke
Even with photos there is an issue when using an HDMI converter. I don't know how universal this is but it certainly affects the NEX-5n and the GH2. Remote shutter release is disabled when the camera is left in Auto-Focus with the HDMI connected. Switch to Manual Focus and remote shutter works every time. OR, leave in Auto-Focus and remove the HDMI.

I must try it on the 5D to determine whether it too displays this weird behaviour.
 

holco

Member
Auto-focus works perfect in my case, I put it on burst mode with a fixed high shutter-speed and when I hit the switch its take's about 5 photo's in the first two seconds
and then slows down to every two second one photo.
 




MombasaFlash

Heli's & Tele's bloke
Would you mind posting a pic of how you have it all hooked up whenever you have a chance? I just ordered one and a reference would be great! BTW-how long did it take to show up?

Thanks, Shawn

I ordered a second Mini-HDMI converter on 31st May and it arrived this morning. GoodLuckBuy must have been out of stock with the first order.
 

MombasaFlash

Heli's & Tele's bloke
So, with the myriad of other things to attend to I have only now got around to looking at these GH2 patches.

First off, let's try the Sanity5, it being recommended as a 'soft' hack that "... at least improves upon the stock firmware but does not place any real strain on the data transfer process, even permitting use of standard class 10 SD cards. A quick look at the changed options shows FSH bitrates increased to 44MB from the stock 16MB.

Having already recorded two tripod mounted 10 second clips on a Sandisk Extreme Class 10, 45MB/s, 16GB SD with the standard firmware I then recorded two more identical clips, FSH and HBR, with the Sanity5 patch. Oddly, the movie file sizes were smaller for both Sanity5 options:

Original FSH: 149.6MB
Sanity5 FSH: 147.7MB
Original HBR: 150.4MB
Sanity5 HBR: 149.1MB

Playing them back full screen in FCP I was damned if I could see any appreciable difference between Original FSH and Sanity5 FSH or Original HBR and Sanity5 HBR. In fact the best looking image of all of them was Original FSH !!

Okay, so now let's try a big boy. EOSHD Vanilla 44 with the super expensive Sandisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s, 64GB. It lasted about 17 seconds (this is on a tripod remember) before the Write Error came up and froze the whole camera. So I initialised the card using the SD Formatter that someone here linked to and tried again. No change.

The PTool has two sets of Patches, 'users' and 'testers'. One assumes from this that the 'user patches' are the safe ones and that the 'tester patches' are for the more adventurous types with loads of available geek time. Personally, I don't go near the 'tester' patches because the thing I am the utmost fervently disinterested in in this the whole wide world is computer programming parameter $hit. I want a camera that prodiuces a good usable image with as least fuss as possible and it has to be 100% reliable. Simple.

So, precisely what is great about these famous GH2 patches?
 

BorisS

Drone Enthusiast
Yeah same here. I never got the higher bitrate patches working just like you tried with the 95MB/s card. Never did any comparisons though with the other patches that worked to the original.

Boris
 

zeng

Member
Try looking at the dark regions (macroblocking in them), banding in the sky, and fine detail in the elements that easily break compression codecs - running water, moving grass/hair. All the difference is subtle but it's there.
 

yeehaanow

Member
+1 Zeng! @Mombasa. Shoot something with lot's of moving detail and that's where you will see most of the differences. Also, shoot something with shadow areas and bring them up in post. The stock patches will show complete garbage while the best patches retain shadow detail.
I could go into a lot of detail, but time won't allow. Suffice to say that the patches are all optimized, as is the GH2, for 24p. The quality from 60/30p will never be as good as 24p.
I would never use anything from EOSHD because I think they are just repackaged and altered patches from the guys that know what they're doing at Personal-view. Go to the source. You have to do the legwork to understand what is best for you.

From my tests so far, if you want the best quality and so far 100% stable for me*, use the Sedna Sanity combo.
However, for shooting mainly 30/60p, try the new Flowmotion. Been stable for my ground shooting, but I haven't put it in the air yet.

*Still has quirks, and requires the 64g 95/s card, but has never failed recording.
 


MombasaFlash

Heli's & Tele's bloke
For the time being I have left Sanity5 on there. The biggest problem here is the weather. Just A-ppalling, so very difficult to find flying opportunities. Will check out Sedna.
 

Vojec

Member
However, for shooting mainly 30/60p, try the new Flowmotion. Been stable for my ground shooting, but I haven't put it in the air yet.

Today have short flowmotion test in the air. Shooting FSH 30p mode and shooting well for about 10 min constant recording. Using 30G/45Mb SanDisk card.

From my tests so far, if you want the best quality and so far 100% stable for me*, use the Sedna Sanity combo.

Could I use with my 45Mb 30G card? Did you made that Sedna sanity Combo? Search in personal view with no luck? Need 24P best quality without error while recording.

Thanks,
 

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