BTM_Pix

So as I've hinted more than a few times in the other thread, the discovery of the Cinelike D and other bits and pieces for the GX80 etc was actually a bit of a happy accident while I was trying to do understand the Panasonic wifi stuff for something else. And here is that something else. Well at least a prototype of it but it is fully functioning and will just be finessed a bit more. Basically, its a wireless hardware remote for the G series cameras that operates over wifi and can currently control record start/stop, shutter speed as well as aperture and focus if you're using a native lens, including a single shot AF switch. For the non-Cinelike D cameras that can now be hacked to have Cinelike D there is also a dedicated button to toggle it on and off so you don't need to mess about with browsers and computers or smartphones anymore. Focus and aperture control are done on a joystick and everything else is switches. I'll be putting a layer switch on so that it can be toggled back and forth to a different control mode for ISO, WB and other stuff. As this is the prototype it is nowhere near the finished piece and it will be reduced in form factor to just be about the size of the control board. Power is by any USB source so there are billions of options. There is a lot more finessing and feature enhancement to go on with regard to the focus control (and yes, I know exactly what you'll all want it to do !) but the hard part is done now. It does support the display of the values on a screen and I'll be sorting some options out for that. The purpose of this gadget is primarily for use with a gimbal but it can also be really useful on a tripod bar for anyone shooting live event stuff. For cameras with inbuilt lenses I'm going to add a zoom mode on the joystick. A very quick very rough demo so you can see it in action. Any lag you might see between me operating the controller and the camera video is just a sync issue between me throwing the two recordings on very quickly

I'm about to start a new thread with a practical application of all of this poking around that some of you may be interested in.......

Mmmm.....complete red herring with this. Seems that European cameras can't be switched to Australian region. Sorry about that ! Guide for booting up to get 30p and 60p modes here though For G7 owners, there seems to be some odd way of doing this to permanently lift the 30 minute limit but it seems quite temperamental //////EDIT///// Tried it on my G7 and I can get the 30/60p but not the extended recording time. Definitely seems to be different things these cameras can do depending on what mode they are in when you try them. //////

I think someone has done a live viewfinder app for smartphones based on it but to be perfectly honest as a recording proposition I think it poses far more questions than it answers. Considering how much you'd need to invest in the hardware to do it and creating the software to control it and the storage situation if you wanted it to be in a portable format (i.e. a smartphone) then, as with the higher bitrate HD quest, the Atomos Ninja Star at less than £200 is a far better proposition for me to eek extra value out of these cameras.

I've got one from a GH4. Its not an app controllable function on there so without having a thorough poke around with an actual GH4 its a bit of a dead end I'm afraid. However..... Panasonic do an iOS app for the DVX200 (which is basically a GH4) that does allow it to be controlled. If someone had a DVX200 and a packet sniffer then, well, maybe..... http://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/4k_camcorder/ag_rop/index.html

I can't see any reference to the master pedestal control in the G7 files. It would be very useful to have control of it though because I suspect it might be what prevents Cinelike D from working properly on the LX100.

And you switched the camera to Australian region too? I was told their version did not have the limitation It is a quirky stream of jpegs that a computer can be persuaded to display but it requires quite a lot of configuration to achieve

Thanks, I only had a G7 to hand at the time and just dug my GX80 out and it takes the ISO commands but doesn't action them in video mode. ISO50000 in stills is a go though! The Cinelike D Hue controls are definitely working on my GX80 though and I think I've seen a GX85 user confirm them on his somewhere else in the thread.

Which reminds me.... Updated html attached that will now let you have ISO100 in video mode. Unfortunately, this setting does not persist on power cycle and can't be saved in the C settings so if you need it then you will have to deploy it through a browser each time. For now at least.... ///// EDIT /////// The GX80 accepts but does not action these extended ISO modes in video so it is ISO200 to ISO6400 only for that. Thanks to @Rizky Ramadhan for the update ISO50000 works for stills on GX80 The extended ISOs are working for me on a G7 so please feel free to chime in with results from other models /////////////////////// DEPLOY CINELIKE D V HUE EXTENDED ISO V2.html

Fuji need Nikon's long lenses thats for sure. Or more to the point, my Fuji's need my Nikon long lenses on them! Which you could turn round and say means Nikon need Fuji's mirrorless bodies for their lenses. Fuji want to get into the sports and photojournalism game in a big way and Nikon want to stay at the front of it with Canon (who you feel could push out a mirrorless quickly if the potential Sony threat actually materialises) so its a partnership that would get both of them where they want to be a bit quicker from that point of view. If all that ever came of it was an autofocus F to X mount adapter it'd be worth it ! Sounds more like a deal that is to do with 'Japan stuff' (for want of a better way of describing cultural and/or political nuances that don't always seem obvious to Westerners like me) than it does with actual products though?

Octopus boot up mode and change to Australian region should be your friend for that The last html file I put up should be enough to establish whether it can talk to the GH 5. Put the camera in WiFi mode, attach computer or phone to its wifi network, select handshake and then connect It will probably fail first time while it stores the connection Just repeat the handshake and connect steps again and then it will connect Then just try the iso and cinelike commands to make sure it selects them. That will establish if we can talk to it (which we defo will be able to) The real bounty will then be in harvesting its commands and the best way to do that is with an android phone with an app called Packet Capture which is free on the play store. Get the basic thing going first and we'll take it from there !

The ISO trick works in video mode as well so you can have up to 50000 if you fancy it. Higher shutter speeds than 4000 can be formed and sent to it and it will respond correctly to them if its in electronic mode but it won't go beyond 16000. The flash sync speed is not something I've looked at. Is it an explicitly set value in any Lumix camera ? Tele mode is something I've looked at brielfy but it didn't work as I expected it might but don't rule it out as I need it for my gadget so I'll be looking at it again. Battery saving mode isnt something I've looked at as I don't think it's changeable from the app and is a camera only selection? ////// EDIT ///// For those wanting extended ISO New updated HTML file with Cineline D, V, Hue controls and switchable extended ISOs of 6400/12800/25600/50000 DEPLOY CINELIKE D V HUE EXTENDED ISO.html

I think you'd have to go some way to beat this

Great effort. The ed ones are for cameras such as the FZ2000 that can have the high bit rate. These are what Panasonic refer to as editing type of formats and switch those cameras into MP4(LPCM) mode that the other cameras don't have. From this systematic testing I think we can probably now put it to bed at least with the G7 regarding activating these different formats. Unless there is some interaction when switching from a 'semi legal' format (the ones that say OK but dont go to the 4K24p setting) to a different 'semi legal' format but the number of permutations to test then becomes like adding another rotor wheel on the Enigma machine. My view is that it confirms that it gets itself very confused by those MP4(LPCM) based formats and doesn't know what to do. This is supported by the G7 being unable to play a legitimate recording from one of these modes from an FZ2000.

At the moment, we don't have 100% coverage of all the permutations. The only way we can do that is to start from a single point 4k24p for an example selected on the camera and then switch to all of the other possible values in sequence from there and see what happens. And then repeat that from 4K25p and then from HD25p etc etc We have had a few incidents where this state has happened but we don't know exactly from which combinations it can be produced. Until we know that then we won't be able to reliably reproduce it and see if we can do something with it in that state. Testing each possibility from each starting point will provide the answer to that. Whilst so far there hasn't been a combination that has been useful (ie a non corrupted file) that doesn't mean that there isn't one that we haven't come across yet that is. As I have said a number of times on this thread, I'm not convinced at all that there will be but at least it will show definitively for those that want to keep going at it if there is or not.

There is no killer app for my curent purposes on PC but it wouldn't bother me to change back if there was, as there has been in the past. Ditto with ios, it does have killer apps for the majority of my current purposes but I have no hesitation in using android when I want to do stuff that Apple don't approve of. I basically just go where the functionality is. Fortunately, where I need to supplement my usual system to get that extra stuff there is no price premium because Android stuff is dead cheap. It would be a right twat if it was the other way round though!

Excellent! If you get a runaway recording, let me know the combination and I'll get on to it with a G7.

Yes those would be expected to fail at the moment. There is some combination of video quality switch that puts the camera into an interesting runaway recording mode that could do with some structured testing if you have the inclination? It basically needs testing in the following way 1) Put the camera into a 'legal' mode such as 4K25p 2) Use that html file to switch to the first mode in its list 3) Observe the return from the camera in the browser 4) If it says OK then press record on the camera and then stop again. If you get a runaway recording that needs the battery pulling then repeat from the starting point which combination it was. Unfortunately, to be comprehensive this test needs to be repeated for every single format in that html file. And then ALL of that repeated with the starting point in step 1 being the next 'legal' format (ie 4K24p). And then ALL of the ALL being repeated with it being in AVCHD mode and all its legal formats. Because selecting a non-AVCHD format being sent to it causes it to change mode automatically, you still need to do all of the non-AVCHD modes and vice versa as it might well be this entire switching of mode that triggers something interesting. That is a LOT of tests with not anywhere near approaching a guarantee of it working. But its exactly this sort of structured matrix of tests that needs doing if everyone wants to chase this down. Stumbling upon it is fine - and shows that maybe there is something there - but it needs to be repeatable to move forward and also exhaustive in case there is a combination that takes this from 'interesting' to 'usable'. Because of the extent of the testing needed, my advice would be to split it up amongst interested parties so someone takes the 4K25p starting point, someone else takes the 4K24p starting point etc

Yes, this is a perfectly valid way to do it. However, for me, I also felt it was much easier to accidentally overwrite when using other profiles and mean you have to fire up a computer or smartphone to redeploy if you want Cinelike D back. Depending on where you are when you do this, it may not always be that practical and certainly not fast to do that. This is true of using the C functions as well of course but its a far more deliberate process to overwrite those as you need to go and navigate through the menus to get there and do that so I felt it was a bit safer. You could certainly use both approaches though and just save Cinelike D into the custom profile slot (along with any tweaks of its additional parameters as you would do using that function with the other profiles)and also save it in its flat format into C1 so if you did overwrite it then you could get it back easily. And that approach definitely saves having to use an additional C slot too.

I think its a good bit of reverse psychology myself. Anyone who is deranged enough to walk round like that is probably too much of a risk for your average mugger to bother with

This could get messy

The iLugger with wheels is pretty good for transporting iMacs The Lavolta is about a third of the price but is a bit less discrete....

If you could find a GH4 that hasn't been upgraded then what I would be tempted to try is do the initial octopus boot up sequence and then go to the ROM backup menu that appears when you do this and do the backup to SD function. Then get your updated GH4 and do the same and back its ROM up to SD. These are plain text files though ideally you would open them both in a hex editor and do a compare between the old one and your upgraded one. There might be a clue in there as to how you could do something that would allow the old firmware to be put on the GH4 with the newer one..... Please note that I'm not in any way telling you to be brave and just go into the ROM backup menu and then load the file from the older version onto the GH4. Its precisely the sort of reckless thing I would do of course

Seeing as this hack was about combining features from other cameras by harvesting commands, its quite apt to see it being used to shoot combine harvesters !

Yes, its an absolute value so you have to change it to a specific figure rather than just having a plus or minus button that you can hit. And yes with it being a hidden function it won't show up on the camera screen to be edited. Well, my forthcoming gadget will be able to do that way of course ...........