@Franger: In M Mode (Photo not Manual Movie) the camera will capture using 1080i50/60 or 720p25/30 according to the quality settings.

In a quick and dirty, static, well illuminated and soft subject, 1060i60 is using about ~10Mbps which shakes my theory that the AVCHD modes other than 24p weren't compromised in any other way than GOP, but OTOH the P-Frames are a healthy 50% size of the I frames. I've yet to determine if I'm impairing them with the quantizer tables (which would be logical).

(EDIT) I have tested and P-Frames are not impaired in 1080i60 nor in 720p, which makes sense after all since there are separate Quantizer Tables for 1080p24 and 50, for 1080i60 and for 720p. :)

So I was probably using 1080i50 when that happened.

Yesterday I performed a few tests to clarify whether the Timebuster settings were impairing the 1080i60 mode.

Well it's good news, they don't. The quantizer tables are only shared between 1080p24 and 1080i50, you can expect the same quality on 1080i60 and 720p as in LPowell's Flow Motion settings, so:

• If you want to quickly switch from a timelapse to a FHD mode to capture at full speed and full IQ, you can! Just make sure your camera is set to NTSC.

Quickly after that I went on to test a few other QPs (quantizer parameter) for 1080p and that's when I made an amazing realization about I-Frames which I will come to in a while. Reading http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/37576#Comment_37576 , I was wondering whether I should make these settings more flexible by allowing the QP to be lowered and trade recording length for even more quality. I began by raising the 1080p24 Frame Limit to 10,000,000 (which @cbrandin says is the highest value that has any real effect ) and then I measured I-Frames which were pretty hefty topping at little over 1MB. When I lowered the QP from 20 to 16, little change occurred in I-Frame size. I then lowered it to 10. Same size as before. I couldn't get them any bigger no matter what I tried and not even close to 10,000,000! It then occurred to me to compare them to @driftwood 's Quantum or @bkmcwd 's GOP3ILLA and that's when it came to me:

• I-Frame size in Timebuster @2fps is already as high as it gets. This means the same IQ or higher than the craziest bitrate patches out there. :) Probably as consequence of the very low fps and low P-Frame bitrate usage, the I-Frames already received enough bitrate to top their limit.

P.S. I'm waiting for the next version of Lpowell's Flow Motion to adapt and release Timebuster v2. Meanwhile if you want to make use of these very little changes you just need to pick v1.2 and change the following:

Quantizer for 720 modes=21 (was 20)

1080p24 Frame Limit=10000000 (was 8800000)

@duartix your findings are very interesting with the HBR mode. However, even for PAL land there is no need for the 25fps mode in case of timelapses. The resulting 2fps counts....

TimeBuster 1.3 is out with a lot of significant changes:

• Ported to PTTools 3.64d

• Savings on P-Frames is now accomplished by using a Scaling Table that is full of 0xFFFF for 1080p modes.

• Quantizer boundaries were removed since they are now much more dependent on the new Quantizer Tables.

• Redesigned for merging, these definitions try to be as independent as possible from their re-packaging definitions (in this case FlowMotion 1.1) and are published in two flavors: Timebuster 1.3 Base (for merging) and Timebuster 1.3 FloMo (merged with FlowMotion 1.1)

Timebuster Base 1.3 was merge tested with @LPowell 's FlowMotion 1.1, @Balazer 's Cake 1.2 and Nick @Driftwood 's Quantum X (v2) with minimal impact on all modes except for 1080p. I recommend FlowMotion or Cake for the simple reason that the 1080p24 Frame Limit is set to a much higher value in these settings. In fact, if you care for nothing other than the 24p timelapse IQ and don't mind impacting some of the other modes, you should set it to 10,000,000.

Merging Timebuster Base 1.3 with other settings is easiest done by loading Timebuster Base 1.3 first and then Alt+Clicking your choice of merger.

The day is not over. :)

Thanks @Vitaliy but the credit goes to you. With the new Scaling Tables my settings on AVCHD are now as simple as changing only 3 settings.

The result (flatlines.png) is a beautiful flatline with Monster I-Frames and microscopic P-Frames that could almost hide behind the audio frames (which now I wish that could be disabled altogether).

As a side note, I have to confess I developed a funny tendency to look up to some of the members of this community as the Three Musketeers:

@Driftwood : The I-Frames (short GOP) Musketeer. :)

@LPowell : The B-Frames Musketeer. :)

@Balazer : The P-Frames Musketeer. :)

Well, I really never had a choice. This (P vs B.png) is FlowMotion with totally trashing Scaling Tables (full of 0xFFFF) for P & B frames. It's obvious why I went with P.

WoW, very nice job! You are the P+B-Frame killer! Al

@duartix You dont have to bother with scalers to inhibit B frames, just do this. Encdoer Setting 4 720 = 2 or 1. Oh yeah I repeated myself! ... lost my memory in the myriad of pm requests methinks. sorry!

@driftwood : I do use Encoder Setting=2 to inhibit B-Frames (it was you who let me into that trick a few weeks ago), but then I also use the Scaler Tables to trash P-Frames, I have to trash them both, you see? This way I end up with 99% of the bitrate devoted to top IQ I-Frames very close to Frame Limit. The other 0,9% is Audio :( and the other 0,09% is P-Frames. ;)

@RawB : No problem, .MTS is not a recognized extension so, in the File Open Dialog, type *.* in the filename and then Enter. You should see the .MTS files now. ;)

@Kyle_167MX : The answer hasn't changed. You use what shutter speeds (SSs) you like best, however the settings as posted, are "married" to 1/2s by way of Parameter: 1080i50 and 1080p24 GOP Size=13. If you want other SSs, you should adjust that very GOP parameter according to this post: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/39686#Comment_39686

I was about to post an advice but I haven't finished testing and I'll explain it later, for now just take my word for it, if you care about motion fluidity, DON'T USE: 1/4s, 1/8s, 1/10s, 1/15s or 1/20s on 24p. Some of these have capture interruption that goes almost to 29%!!! This means that 1/3rd of the time the camera isn't capturing anything! :( But that will make it to another post!

Goddammit! Preliminary tests seem to indicate that HBR 25p is a lot more fluid than 24p. I might have to reconsider which mode to target...

@driftwood : where it comes to settings, is HBR married to 24p or 1080i?

Thanks @LPowell , you've just made me dedicate another weekend to "the cause". :)

@Everyone following this thread:

In the making of this timelapse dedicated settings package, I've sacrificed 24p due to an initial hurdle in changing 1080i. After I've run a few preliminary tests with HBR 25p, everything points to the motion being much more fluid in HBR, so I'm standing on the wall right now and leaning to sacrifice 1080i instead.

What we have now is:

• Fully featured 720p

• Fully featured 1080i

• Seriously impaired 24p (fully dedicated to timelapses with "state of the art" IQ but pretty much useless for regular video at normal speed)

• Fully featured HBR (with Long GOP on PAL 25p)

• Even though there are some useful Shutter Speeds (SS), none below 1/25s is completely fluid (and I'll publish my findings in a dedicated thread)

In other words these are specialized settings that work well on extreme timings short or long, but that are not the best you can achieve for regular video where you would have to use 1080i50/60 or HBR. This means you should be repatching every time if you want top Quality on both kinds of video. This isn't much of a nuisance if you have the patches on different cards and can afford to wait 3m for a repatch in situ.

What we could have in the future is:

• Fully featured 720p

• Fully featured 24p

• Seriously impaired 1080i & HBR (fully dedicated to timelapses with "state of the art" IQ but pretty much useless for anything else - like 1080i60 which may be dear to some of you)

• Wide choice of completely fluid SS under 1/25s.

In other words, these are less specialized settings that work well on both 24p Cinema, timelapses and 720p60, even though they are not the best you can have if you need extreme speed motion and 1080i50/60 is dear to you or if you need to use 25/30p a lot. But this also means that you are immediately ready to shoot all kinds of video with top IQ, and that you could have a long lasting settings package in the camera that is a Jack of all trades. The cherry on top is perfectly fluid motion on a good choice of SS.

Now, which path?

@KeithLommel agreed - thx @duartix