Panasonic GH1 Firmware Hack
I have a soft spot for the micro four thirds cameras. I appreciate that several companies worked together to develop a new system that advances camera design and functionality by removing the mirror box and using on electronic viewfinders instead. The analog mechanical nature of the DSLR design is a hold over from when electronic viewfinders just weren’t possible. I know a lot of people still like looking through the lens but with the advances in lcd screen technology, it isn’t really necessary anymore. Once the mechanical bits are removed, cameras become straight electronic devices that roughly follow Moore’s Law becoming easier and cheaper to manufacture.
Panasonic has had some success with their GH1 camera and have created a solid game plan for the GH2 and a micro four thirds video camera called the AG-AF100.
One of the things holding them back is the bit rate and codec. The GH1 shoots 17Mbps AVCHD and 720p MJPEG. The video quality seems more compressed and artifacty (new word) than the video coming out of the Canon HDSLRs. Talented filmmakers like Liam Finn have been able to successfully use the GH1 to shoot an entire movie but Canon has gotten most of the convergence attention.
That could start changing since a group of enterprising filmmakers on the dvxuser forums have come up with a firmware hack for the GH1 that allow up to 50Mbit 1080p MJPEG. EOSHD.com has a sample video, links to a GH1 firmware hack wiki, and a nice summary:
Summary, what is means for the none-techno-geek
- Hugely better image quality. 50MBit MJPEG shows zero compression artefacts, zero mud and much more photo-like gradients, tones and textures
- It’s better looking than the 5D Mark II’s H.264 and less compressed
MPEG 50Mbit shows low noise and the noise is of a finer grain, more film-like- The workflow improvements are immeasurable. The 50Mbit MJPEG, this can be edited directly, no transcoding required. As for AVCHD, thanks to Tester13 the native 24p can go straight into Log & Transfer without pulldown or deinterlacing work. Before I was waiting around 6 or 7 hours per project for Voltaic to transcode and deinterlace the GH1′s AVCHD to ProRes. Now the same amount of footage can be done in one step in Final Cut Pro Log & Transfer and takes 30 minutes.
- Non-native 24p 32Mbit AVCHD (60i) can be played back in-camera. Focus assist works in both AVCHD and MJPEG mode. It’s expected playback of native 24p AVCHD can be fixed in the near future once a patch is released by Abed.
- A JPEG is saved containing shot EXIF info, shutter speed, ISO, etc.
- The image is smoother looking and better scaled from the 12MP CMOS compared to the 5D Mark II which has 22MP to deal with. Pixel binning is in action, not line skipping.
Firmware hacks can be risky and usually void your warranty and this one is no exception. There are also some tradeoffs with recording time since one of the reasons the movie files are compressed is to enable the files to quickly and efficiently be written to flash based storage media. That being said, I like the idea of an inexpensive camera that can shoot high bit rate video using almost any lens made for 35mm stills or motion cameras.
