Why hacking the GH2 does not make a better camera. HDMI recording still superior.

I have been doing many hours of testing and measuring with the different types of recordings made with the GH2. I have one GH2 with the original firmware and one with the hacked firmware, both that can be connected to the Atomos Ninja.

I will post my findings in a number of future posts, but want to make one important fact clear.

People have asked me several times if the hacked avchd footage is better than the Ninja recorded footage, and this is my answer:

The Ninja recording still dwarfs the GH2 avchd, even the hacked version. There is a lot of  processing going on before it reaches the codec on the avchd part and the hdmi signal follows another path through the camera’s hard- and software.

I for example can understand if panasonic has digital lowpass filters installed in their 10-to-8 bit conversion, because that’s what you do when downsampling to another bitrate.

You can hack the camera’s codec, but should look further down the processing line.

It’s a bit simplistic to think that you can upgrade a camera’s quality by just raising the codec’s bitrate; you’ll need to upgrade the limiting factors along the processing line all down to the sensor.

I’m afraid that there are also hardware components involved that can’t be hacked.

More news to come…

Jorgen.