IDK if it is the MOST stable, but I have tried almost all of the hacks with no issues and im using the Sandisk Extreme 45mb/s cards

yeah the extreme pro if that is the one thats does 45 NOT 30... I have the 45 and its great

@RJH Are you using a 3rd party battery? I'm really thinking your issue is not the fault of the card.

I hope its even faster than the 45... and as for @RJH idk what to tell you here my friend... Im not having any issues and Ive run all but on of @driftwoods patches... as a matter of fact @driftwood I would like to know if your newest intra GOP1 for all but the GOP3 720 60p is the 24p mode the same as quant me baby... Im shooting a short film this weekend ND WOULD LOVE TO HAVE THE 24P OF QUANTMEBABY and better 72060p of the newest one...

I'm making an attempt to get something going with 1080 60i and 720 60P. Here is a Stream Parser pict of a 66M GOP6 1080 60i patch. It starts out great, then quickly clamps down. I have no idea how to proceed. Any suggestions of which parameters to adjust would be welcome.

@No_SuRReNDeR I've tried it the original Panasonic battery and also with a third party battery, but it still throws up the same errors.

@driftwood Is a low level format simply formatting the card in camera? If so I have done that about 4 times. I had no idea new cards were around the corner, that's just typical!

@PerryWilson you haven't had any problems even with the 60p mode? It may be a silly question but does the hack enable PAL cameras to record with NTSC settings and vica versa? If so I would like to try it with 60p to see if I still encounter the same errors.

Well I'm in NTSC land as well, so perhaps PAL has something to do with it, however I would say stay away from the 3rd party batteries I have a feeling they mess things up somehow.

@Ralph_B would really need to see your settings file, what stable patch did you base it on ? The 720p and the 1080i seem to share settings parameters so its more dificult than the 24H+L to get stable. Also, I'm only guessing based on my own attempts to up their bitrates at their original GOP, that there are very definite, much lower limits on frame limit, FBs and top/bottom settings. Breaking these can result in some very odd behaviour, such as recordings that refuse to stop without battery removal. Nope, I don't know what the limits are, but I'm pretty sure we won't be able to get really high bitrates similar to the 24H settings out of them. But, yeah, these are only guesses based on my own attempts today and a few weeks ago (when I gave up originally).

I think the best approach is to try and get them stable at AQ0 first.

@sohus Meh, The only bad mistake there is claiming that its better for post work, which is very difficult to prove, (he did call it AVCHD-Intra not AVC-Intra as per his image graphic. Also transcoding to prores 4:4:4 from a 4:2:0 source is batshit crazy in my view, 4:2:2 is enough) Running all I-frames results in higher I-Frame compression, at GOP12 it is quite possible to get to the current max I-Frame size of 1,180,000 and the subsequent B and P frames can maintain the IQ at a lower bitrate. GOP1 has to compress more in order to fit into the bandwidth. As I showed in another test, the difference between the 176M GOP1 in post and the cbrandin 66M AQ2 is indistinguishable. In fact to my eyes, the 176M had slightly larger blocks visible when you cranked it up with curves.

Also, IIRC Ralph_B did a test on the earlier 240M GOP1 and said it was very similar to the 66M AQ2, no big leap in quality compared to the HDMI out. Also green screen work is only going to benefit from 4:2:2 something we can't do. What the GOP1 does give is very different (arguably better) motion rendering, and less smeared noise (undoubtedly). If you're shooting a lot of fast motion then yeah, it probably will be a lot better in post. If not, no difference really to a longer GOP at a lower bitrate in post.

Edit: And yeah, AVC-Intra with its 4:2:2 10bit space is massively different really. what we're getting is High 8 Intra (something completely new then) with more bitrate than High 10 Intra usually has. Also isn't AVC-Intra CBR at either 50 or 100 ?

Ha, thinking about it, driftwood is right to say GOP1 creates a more consistent frame to frame bitrate, though the I-Frame size itself is smaller. Sooo.. if you had motion in shadows then maybe a long GOP would do a poorer job, but I'm not sure and it would need testing. Another thing I was thinking/wondering if you really tightened up the variation settings strictly limiting the available quantiser settings you may get close to something like CBR. Or it may just screw up and run out of bandwidth as its lost flexibility.

Actually, no scratch that thought about GOP1 doing better holding detail in shadows if there is motion. It can't really unless its running at a constant bit rate if you think about it. I guess thats why AVC-Intra is CBR.

I think a lot of people have hacked to the GOP1 and have never really looked at (or hacked too) the image quality you get out of any of the long GOP settings.

@Stray - "I think a lot of people have hacked to the GOP1 and have never really looked at (or hacked too) the image quality you get out of any of the long GOP settings."

Can you name any? I think most of us using GOP1 are in fact heading there after trying all the longer gop alternatives.

@driftwood keep up the good work... I use Driftwood ONLY settings, because they are the best, in the real world and in my tests

I just tested the last patch of @Driftwood for a commercial. the quality is wonderful and the movements are extras! This is the best! In reality you just have a good SD Card Extreme Pro 45

I know it is GOP1. Calling it AVCHD Intra and an i-frame codec helps communicate that better than GOP1 which means nothing to most people. If you read the article properly I don't call it AVC Intra, I explain that it is AVCHD Intra and that is a phrase I coined myself. @sohus you know nothing about blogging!