I'm so confused with all these new patches guys! I've ben using Boom Cluster V9 and really like the results. Is there really a big difference between this and the new patches (MOON, Cluster X, Spizz, etc). What's going on? PLease help :)

Just started testing the Intravenus 2 hack. What kind of spanning are people getting with this one? A brief test this morning has the camera stop recording after a few moments at 24fps, in 24H mode. Using 32gig Extreme pro memory card, 95mbps data rate.

@vicharris That's starting to seem like the story for the 24H and HBR settings. the only patch I've found that spans reliably is Sanity 5.1, but only on the 24fps 24L setting. Is there a patch that reliably spans at those rates for a 32 gig card? I'd be happy with bitrates in the 40-50 mbps range.

@vicharris I've tried FM 2, but that wa sinconclusive, so I'll play with it tomorrow. And I can appreciate your comment about arguments.

For everyone: I just tried it again, and here's what I have. 32 gig card Extreme Pro (95mbps write speed).

I ran the camera at 24H, and it ran for 3:49 before stopping. That was 00000.MTS, file size 4,194,304, Windows reporting a bitrate of 149Mbps I ran the camera at 24L, and it ran for 5:01 before stopping. five minutes and stopped. That was 00002.MTS, file size 4,194,304, bitrate 113mbps.

So okay, neither setting spans on an Extreme Pro 32gig card. But what happened to 00001.MTS? Did the camera merely skip a file number, or did it munge up a whole file?

Oh yeah, you'll never get spanning from that card. In the Wiki Facts somewhere here it even states the only card that's guaranteed to span is the 64gb 95mb/s one. But I'm sure 64 other people will say otherwise :)

*** NEWS ***

A very tasty looking Cluster X Series 'Nebula' Trial 6 is about to be released with hi bitrate top quality QP12 on 1080p24 H modes with 80% mode support plus QP12 on 720p & 1080i/HBR. Its pushing 6 GOP to extremes and delivering tremendous quality - with the surprising ommission of ptools Low/Hi Top/Bottom settings :-) Checkitout shortly...

I'm really excited by this setting but I got no daylight to try it out here! :-)

Go to the Cluster X Thread to find the new setting.

@mirrorkisser I'll have to try Moon, then.

For what it's worth, here's what I've found. I only have a Sandisk Extreme Pro 32 gig and two Transcend 32 gig cards (class 10), so my results are a little limited.

Best overall patch is Cake 2.3, which spans in all modes, and offers substantially higher bit rates.

For live events, where I need a lot of continuous shooting, I could use the basic firmware, or Sanity 5.1 in 24L mode. This is solely because it gives me 2 hours and 21 minutes on a card. (Flow Motion handles spanning in 24L as well.) But neither of these patches span at the higher rates and speeds for me.

If I need VERY high bit rates, I can't span at all, so I'm limited to takes of no longer than 3 minutes. Right now, Intravenus 2 seems to be the best in this regard.

@Brian_Siano I havent tested any of the latest Cake settings but what I remember Balazer got it wrong on the buffer charts. He assumed that if the buffer went incredibly low despite not showing any Overruns or under runs files are ok. But if analysed, and the buffer goes incredibly low the quantisation jumps to an incredibly poor set of QP values. Thats why all of my settings MUST remain high and stable on the buffers - as seen in all the Cluster X series.

Great Quantisation (Quality) / bitrates plus spanning? You cant have both in my opinion (though you can get good spanning results on my settings with the fastest known card - the 64Gb 95Mbps Sandisk). The combination of the cpu internal memory, and write speed of the buffers in the GH2 are not measured for the high quality settings - theyre built around low values for a reason.

I will be taking a look at a special Cluster X setting for maybe one or two of the different GOPs which offers the best quant/bitrate without span failing shortly.

@Brian_Siano I have 2-64GB Sandisk Extreme 45MB/s cards that I purchased based on the recommendation of osgfilms.com prior to finding this website. I know that these are not the recommended cards for Driftwood patches based on the information from this website but wanted to share my experience with the Driftwood patches as well as the cards.

I have tested most of the Cluster X series patches on the probably flawed methodology of placing the camera in front of my HDTV and hitting the record button. My goal was to record at the highest quality setting and at the same time be able to record for a minimum of 1/2 hr in all modes. The Cluster X series patches ( Drewnet, Nebula, Moon ) that I tried were able to record @24H for 1/2hr so no problem there, but the other modes were sporadic in terms of recording for at least 1/2 hr the camera would sometimes freeze etc. So I stopped testing and came to the conclusion that I would have to use Cake for spanning or recording for at least 1/2hr and Driftwood for the best quality but limit recording to about 10 minutes.

Then I tried the latest trial patch of Nebula6b :) this patch was able to record in all modes for at least 1/2hr. Thank you so much Driftwood for your tireless effort in perfecting these patches. I look forward to the final release of the Cluster X series. Please do not buy 45mb/s card based on my post or experience. I am only using these cards because I already have them, if I didn't already have these cards I would purchase the 64GB-95mb/s and not even consider the 64GB-45mb/s cards.

@Azo, thanks for your test! I have 3 of those cards and am also very happy with them, as they are cheaper. There are also some tricks how you can further optimise those cards with formating them first in the pc with a full format and then in the camera. (there is a thread on that here)

Real nice nick

@driftwood !

@jhonnyskulls I just again came across the clip you posted on Jan 24 of the Intravenus II test. Really liked the look of it. Curious to know if you remember what settings (Standard, Smooth, etc) and (-2,-2,-2,-2, etc) you used? Thanks