kidzrevil

My take on a travel camera is one that you don't have to baby or worry about, it just does its job and gets out of the way. GH4 fits the perfectly. I have left it out overnight in the rain with the 12-35 doing a timelapse and it was fine. And this was a slightly abused, used camera before I bought it. Video quality is great, you get 1.5hrs on a 64gb card (and not u3 cards, cheap u1 cards work fine). Battery will last probably three times that of continuous recording. Plus a usable slow mo!
 
As for photo quality being a con, I totally disagree. I think we are at a point where you can use virtually any camera for photos and it will do a good job. GH4 especially with Pana lenses has decent tracking AF and perfect single AF. Raws are versatile, there are lots of small lenses too. It's what I would take if I could only have one body.

(1) and (2): Some explanations.
Scripts are stored on the SD card. SD cards are optimized for sustained writes and generally slower than internal emmc flash, especially for mixed read/writes. When you start to mix script reads and video writes you are confusing the sdcard (internal) flash memory controller and since the card is optimized for large writes it will behave badly for short reads like those of scripts. Especially when these are comparatively rare in between long sustained writes. The ARM core running Tizen and the user interface is single threaded and not very fast (the fast ones are running the non-Tizen T-Kernel operating the camera hardware). You WILL see slowness because the UI has to wait for the keyscan to finish which in turn waits for the scripts to finish which in turn get read from a (comparatively) slow card the SD before it (the UI) can continue with whatever it was doing. the scripts heavily use the Linux shell, launching it every single time a script is launched (and remember for us scripts are launching other scripts - nested scripts). Bottom line, there are several things someone will need to do before you will get better performance:
RUN, don't walk, from storing any script/mod/hack on SD card. This is the single greatest reason for slowness, and to make things worse, it is highly dependent on card model (and more expensive cards will not necessarily make things better because it may happen that high end cards will work less well for small reads than cheaper "non-optimized for writes" cards. Otto is doing something about this but AFAIK it is still experimental although not rocket science. But you will also have to overcome your fear of storing mods internally. After all, once you did the BT mod, you basically did 95% of what is required anyway and successfully passed the "dangerous" phase of changing camera rootfs. I do think that we need to improve that mod to enable mod bypass during boot just in case something goes wrong with any of the internal mods, and that we need to have a "mod witness" permanently on the screen to show that mods are enabled, but this is minor. Eliminate multiple scripts from "production" mods. Scripts are fantastic for getting functionality in your hands and to allow fast test turnaround and mod interface evolution but ultimately there needs to be a consolidated mod that sits in ONE binary. This is, by the way, I think, one of the reasons for the fat di-camera-app that runs the entire camera UI. Script support needs to stay (both card and internal) but over time, all mods should aspire to be part of a main mod binary. Ideally, a mod should go through multiple stages: SD card based while it is evaluated and goes through fast changes and updates and while we are NOT CERTAIN that it will not damage the camera internal when determined as safe for camera and changes are not so frequent once stable and generally accepted, optimize and integrate as binary (non-shell script) in a main executable mod for fastest speed. There you go.
Also, from what I can see in the firmware, it seems that the data flow in the camera goes: Sensor => DRIME (that is operated by T-Kernel) => Tizen kernel => write on card. The reason Tizen and not T-Kernel writes on card is that you cannot have multiple operating systems write on the card at the same time. This means that if we bloat memory use on Tizen, its capacity to maintain sustained writes is lowered compared to what it might achieve with more free RAM. In turn, this means: avoid shell scripts or heavy programs (like my gdb bitrate mod version).
This, IMO, is also the reason the "poker" method allows faster performance than the "gdb" method. It is also the reason I am working towards an even better method than "poker" which will consolidate the "memory change" mods in one binary without the need to stop the di-camera-app multiple times (which is very time consuming for the CPU).
Finally: Would anyone mind starting something like a gofundme campaign for a NX500. Mine needs a replacement power button (I kind of abused mine I guess) and I am reluctant to keep working on it after I get it repaired.
It is too bad because with time, based on what I see in the camera, and if there was a developer community built around it, the hardware could achieve wonders. And to be clear, Otto, Kino Seed, Chant, and me do not "community" make IMO, like for example Magic Lantern. If you guys want anything close to ML you will need to do a lot more about spreading the word and competing for developers time/recruiting new ones.
Regards
Vasile

kidz, the latest vs uses ev+ok to summon menu. and has no bugs,as far as I can say!

I personally hope they manage to disable the NR because I did some downscaling and tests with the ones they already uploaded and even though the ISO is worse at lower resolution compared to 1440p and 2160p it still is superior to the old 1080p footage with the NR in place.

Just caught up with this thread, are most people formatting with the windows/other os format program?

Ive been using https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
For the longest time it has worked way better than anything windows does, as my first test with a sandisk extreme pro 32GBs uhs-1 gave me 200mbs right off the bat. Try this and reformat the cards and see if you gain speed. Might work for the uhs-2 card that seem slower than they should.

Still sorting through firmware and dumping data from the camera. My day job has gotten busy so I have not had the time to post here but I have not slowed down my work. But whats happened is amazing, seems like more people are finding these mods, maybe samsung will notice.

@kidzrevil 
You just need to follow instructions on the dpr page, but I can put them here:
How to install:
1) start with a clean memory card (no files)
2) unzip the contents of the zip into the root of the sdcard
3) put card in camera, and restart
x) to uninstall mod - from custom menu> settings> Uninstall Mod
To change bitrate start the camera wait for [loading complete] message push EV button see menu and take "bitrate" option. There you can insert all numbers for each quality option, also you can push "current" and change current bitrate which camera operates right now, e.g. your last settings

I can confirm Outerbeats findings. I was lurking in the shadows until something bigger happens, but my video assignment for today made me to step forward and try to install the hack.
To my findings it was super easy and the hack works perfectly with my budget card Transcend Ultimate 600x 64GB SDXC 90MB/s Class 10 (which offeres best price/performance for the lowest price). The card heats up, but as others said already, until its hot to melting point (which won't happen), no problem at all. With that NX1 can do
- 200mbit for 6 sec
- 195mbit for aprox. 6,5 minut
- 190mbit no stopping after 12 minutes.. 

Not sure what changed, but great job guys, very much so!

@Pavel D Prichystal thanks for feedback especially about sd-card and timings! Vasile, Otto K and Kino Seed did all the job on this, I just provide some debug for NX1, since there is no NX1 was available for guys at the moment. 200 mbps is sweet bonus actually, you never know ))

Nice footage there, what was the grade / LUT?
High bitrates looking great.

I use the 1/4 black pro mist to take the edge off sometimes. I like what it does for the highlights with rolloff and blooms. I got an 82mm one for 17.50 used  

I use a Tiffen Digital Diffusion FX filter on every 4K shoot that I do. Sometimes Pro Mist if it's on female talent or a beauty(ish) shoot.
I've done tests with the filter vs post diffusion and there's definitely a difference. I haven't tried the Tiffen version above though. Maybe it's great.

So many discussion about this - 4K too sharp sometimes.
Filters on your camera/lens - all sorts out there.
There's a really good topic/s on the RED/Scarlet forum, with lots of info from David Mullen:
http://www.scarletuser.com/showthread.php?t=5941
The next one is long, but sooo useful for a number of things:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?2714-Ask-David-Mullen-ANYTHING

So it looks like I might be moving to 4k soon. I have used the LX100 a bit and there's definitely something to be said for 4k. It's like looking at real life. It's a surreal feeling actually. But anyway, in certain situations I do think a softer image is more appropriate. I find that when shooting 1080p as opposed to 4k with the same camera you lose a little bit of the noise performance, colour pot and dynamic range. So what do you guys do soften the image? What filters? Post production methods?
BTW I also wanted to mention that I have developed some LUTs for the LX100. The camera has a different colour science to other Panasonic cameras and so must be treated differently. My LUTs create a more neutral look for footage from the camera, which can be used alone or with other stylistic looks (which usually make the footage look nuclear if used alone). I will be releasing it at a later time.

Not my clip, but impressive. 
 

Sure will be doing!

The car going by at the end is still jerky. I didn't realize the sky had the blue-green color in your original footage! It looks strange...
Definitely, the footage looks very crisp, and DR potential is evident. I think my plan will be to shoot 2.5k for any scene with cars/fast action and 4k for closeups and people centric things or wide openings. 

@kidzrevil fine footage, there is no dropped frames I think, just hand-record without DIS and this is cool. I liked your grading not maybe in terms of aestetic but in technical way that shows pretty much wide possibilities of camera+bitrate. Without hack it can't go so well after hand-shooting it must be far more jerky and "strobed" as it seems now I think

At first my Sandisk Extreme Pro can do only 160 mbps, and I shoot all my stuff in 150 mbps for little headroom, it works vwry well without crashing or lags. After some time situation changes, now I run with 180 mbps, but tested 190 and it goes well on the same sd-card. Maybe you can try this too, but maybe it just some deviation, not much to say
How is it appears? Little delayed reaction between you press the record button and it actually stops the video? If so - count me in, same experience here
And this one is the "motion cadence" also
 

hope you find it useful ;-)

Fine details are much better with 160mb. I guess that's a sweet spot for 8bit 420. Would be really great to see 10bit and 422, but I doubt it's feasible. 

Found this on Facebook's NX1 user group. The difference is pretty amazing imo.
 

Compressed video usually only records the change in pixels compared to a reference frame.
http://www.axis.com/global/en/learning/web-articles/technical-guide-to-network-video/video-compression-guide
So a very detailed scene could have the same bitrate as a pure black scene as long as nothing is moving in either. Every few seconds a new reference frame is encoded witch would cause the bitrate to jump especially in a very detailed scene.
Honestly I am a pretty big noob when it comes to all this stuff and there are a lot of people on here who know and understand this stuff alot better than me but this is how I understand it.

Christ the NX1 and NX500 shoots some truly sexy colours with the various picture profiles, I am going to use them way more from now on imao.
Almost brings me back to the film, you just shot it and did not care much about the colour because it looked pleasant to begin with.

It's just about sd-cards mostly. This bitrate is perfectly utilize nowadays sd-cards speed and works without errors or lags. I've tested now like ten 64 GB sd-cards wide variety of prices and vendors, they pretty much the same when it comes to speed of NX1 sd-card driver (? idk how it calls) and top bitrate which I can use is no more 190 for now, but I'm going to test further  
Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS I 95MB/s 64GB is fastest one that I've tested. I can use it with 190 mbps easily, it works fine, but to be sure I just fly with 180 mbps.
Strange thing, when I did first testing of bitrate hack, all of my cards goes with "card is too slow" message when I tried to record video, and first bitrate, that any card allowed me is 140-160 mbps. But IDK how, when after some shooting with 140-160 mbps bitrate I've put the same sd-card but with 180-190 mbps option, run record, it goes with same error after 3-4 secons video... and after that allows you to go with 180-190. After that it goes smooth and pretty fine with 190. Can't say the reason, I don't know it, but I can recommend this way to any testers - just go first with 200 mbps, wait for "card is too slow" message, go second time, go third, if message still appears, turn off the camera, set 190 mbps, run 1-2 record with error message, and maybe now you can do 190. If not - go to settings and decrease bitrate one step more, repeat previous step "with 1-2 errors"..
Second sweet spot of bitrates - is size of sd-card. Actually, this one works with "record limit" hack. This hack allows you to record more than 30 min video. For UHD@30 it's 76 minutes with sound and not limited without audio (one user on dpreview said that but I didn't test this yet). So, now you have 76 minutes limit, ok. And now we can set 120 mbps bitrate for UHD@30 and this is a truly sweet spot for this two hacks - now you can record like 74-75 minutes 120 mbps UHD@30 video without any fear to get the error message or crash without message at all (NX1 did this with 4K video that exceed time limit 76 min). It is very cool!
One page before I've posted the test results of my bitrate hack test. There is 4K video file that I create from two 4K footages one 80 and other 150 mbps. They just heavily destructed (only luma curve + brightness + contrast) for more visual reference, left side - 150 mbps source, right side - 80. Both recorded in UHD@30 with identical setting and environment, only difference is the bitrate. Scale to 300% for better proof and to eliminate influence of export bitrate. Can you see the difference between them? For me it's obvious, and this test - is how I actually open my eyes to see all the power of High Efficiency Video Codec implemented in H265. Highly recommend to learn about it, worth knowing. 
If by "motion cadence" cinematorgaphers means some sort of undescribed mixture of shutter speed, framerate and limits of modern encoding process, but from "artistic point of view", then I can tell, bitrate hack definitely improve this, yep. I'd say HEVC theoretically wins in this field when it comes to any lossy codec, and it improves greatily from bitrate hack. Overall quality of picture is improved, each frame is far more stable in terms of color, light - all this parameters, that goes to codec and being encoded, and this goes more smoothly, this also applies to the serial set of frames.

Tonight's challenge for you all - see at end of this post:http://***URL removed***/forums/post/57665536
And a bonus: if you read the rest of that post you might also see some other interesting stuff...
Vasile