@Grunf who's settings you using? chris's?

@Stray I have the 32 GB 45Mbs Extreme Pro card and got the unable to write to disk error in all modes. I had to set the camera to NTSC, format the card and reboot. (I tried PAL again later but no joy). Something odd. I bought the card from Amazon in the UK so I'm not expecting it to be a fake.

@watkinm Weird, I've have no problem with an 8gb card. Maybe the smaller cards let you get away with it. But yeah, I'm buying different cards now, got some Extreme 30Mbps the other day. Saw someone mention some class 6 cards they were using with the 66M AQ2 I will have to find the post.

So I've read this whole thread (*whew*), and I'm very excited to start hacking my GH2, but I'm worried about the spanning issues because I shoot a lot of interview stuff. I'm a bit confused right now. Are there ANY hacked settings that improve quality without any issues at this time? People keep mentioning cbrandin's 44mb settings, but at one point I read there were spanning issues, and I never read anywhere else that they had been overcome, unless I just missed it.

@Tristan
The 44mb setting also comes with a 32mb setting that is the 24L menu spot. The 32mb setting has been good for most people when it comes to spanning.

I have been away for 20 days, filming in the Ardeche, France.
Used a combi of Lpowells in camera anamorphic and moderate/slightly adjusted Ptools 1.62 settings.
Results look promising and now i would like to test cbrandin's 44 mbs settings in combi with Lpowells anamorphic settings.
Is there any way that one of you guys can post this combi as a patch file so i can flash both simultaniously?
THANX!

@stonebat @Brian202020 @bdegazio

Awesome, thanks. I'll give that a shot.

What do you think are the possibilities of the spanning issue being solved eventually with the higher bit rates? Is it a hardware limitation, or just will take time experimenting and/or a ptools update?

Here's my favourite settings. 'Beautiful buffers' - maximum use of bandwidth = highest quality AQ2 for 1080p24 and AQ4 for 720p. Great 720p/1080p24. 1080i is nice too (though had to make 1080i LONG GOP - never harmed Sony ;-) ).

Includes: 132M Short GOP 3, 56M 1080i FSH Long GOP/1080p60SH default GOP, 48M 1080i/60FH & 108060pH - GOPs as above respectively.

Try 'em out. ;-)

Note: Low settings have to be fairly high (ie close to highest bitrate settings) to get stability of buffers. No other settings required. The only thing which may need testing is the cadence issue. The buffer charts for all settings are beautiful and peaking to highest bandwidth.

* Over 200 tests done to get matching settings working. All tests done on manual setting so report back. If they fail at SH try H - its still close.

Tip: If 56M video bitrate FSH/SH setting causes a few crashes, just drop it down 1M to 55M. Nothing else.

Ralph,
You have done a lot to help us here.
One thing that I constantly hear from some GH2 users that they are hesitant in going with the hack since there are few tests that show the difference in image quality between stock settings and the hack.

Is it possible to offer a couple more tests that compare say Chris's 66Mb AQ2 to stock for motion and static?
One test could be at ISO160, another maybe at ISO800. I mention ISO800 since it's somewhat of a higher ISO, but not real high and can be considered a useable ISO. ISO800 is high enough to introduce a fair amount of noise and cause some demand on AVCHD, but not so high that someone may say I would never use it.

Recorded my first video with hacked firmware on GH2. Used @cbrandin 's 44 settings and recorded an 11 second shot. no problem. plays back fine on camera. Settings were 24H, Cinema, nostalgic, iso160 imported to adobe premier pro v5.0 project set up to AVCHD 1080p 23.976fps setting, and it wont play correctly, I recorded panning across a room and there are major blurry streaks and distortion in the clip.
Any help appreciated!!

inital test of driftwood's latest showed good stability. 720 and 1080i have often been unstable with card errors.
I always test with 14-140 lens and big zooms and pans with autofocus. These all handled that.

When the default gop rate is doubled, as the 1080i in driftwood's latest, the bitrate is halved, correct? So the 1080i bitrate is actually 29. I'm not sure how that actually affects quality.

But it all looks good. And stable so far.

@chauncy I took a leaf out of Sony's book on using LONG GOP for 1080i. Its very messy at GH2 stock settings and causes havoc with the buffers when lifting bitrate. There are many threads basing their opinion on low bitrate Long GOP - so long as the i frames are high and good they can often outperform Intra i/ short GOP with higher bitrates - and should in theory be easier on the NLE.

Panasonic seem pretty useless on their own default settings - they all exhibit cpb_delay errors so Ive just pushed ahead with getting stable buffers (I have to work to constants on the buffer analysis because I'm after settings which will work all the time)

@diftwood........Thanks a lot for the hard work the quality is as sweet as (a word is yet to be invented how sweet it is). These are more than enough to produce some professional videos. Maybe even broadcast quality who knows.