GH2 Flow Motion v2 - 100Mbps Fast Action Performance & Reliability for Class 10 SD cards

safari

Love the AVCHD 24H.. looks like a winner will do some testing tonight. 720-60....shuts down on card speed error after about 10 sec. I am using 64g 95 cards. 1080/24p is more important for me so its not a big deal...would be nice for the occasional slow motion clip when needed though... Thank You! @LPowell

LPowell

@peternap With Flow Motion v2, the only advantage I've seen to using Class 10 SD cards rated higher than 30MB/sec is better reliability in 4GB file-spanning at 100Mbps peak bitrates. (With standard Class 10 30MB/sec cards, file-spanning is supported in FM2's 60Mbps 24L, FH, and H modes.)

The flat-to-busy-scene issue is one of several reliability hazards that high bitrate patches must handle, though it is one of the most severe stability tests. I use very sharp lenses with a variety of SD cards for reliability testing, with ISO 200-6400, midrange apertures, 1/50-1/60 shutter speeds, and exposure levels no more than one-stop overexposed. If you see recording failures with exposure settings outside these ranges, it's very helpful to include those details in your report.

soundgh2

@LPowell bizzarely I find the Sandisk cards are more flaky than the 433x Pretec 64Gb card - will try and do locked off definitive comparison tomorrow - the Pretec has offered zero resistance in capture or transfer, whereas the 30 Mb and 45 Mb Sandisk cards have been occasionally twitchy H&L modes - some clips will not open, after zero recording error in use. Sure it is card error - not implementation error. AFAIK they are genuine Sandisk cards. 24 H&L modes

towi

@LPowell

at first glance these modified settings seem to fix HBR/25p (needs more testing, of course):

1080i50 GOP Table=2, 3, 3, 2, 24, 24
1080i50 GOPx2=12
1080i Top Setting=92000

LPowell

@towi I haven't been able to provoke any recording failures so far in any of the PAL video modes. If you're seeing repeatable failure patterns using freshly formatted SD cards, I'd need a detailed description of your test procedure in order to reproduce the problem.

luxis

I used a 16gb 95mbs Extreme pro original sand disk and had no problems whatsoever on shorter clips with some panning,movement and lots of details( i just stopped them since i had enough footage for what i needed) i am in pal lands.

edit: i didn't mention that i used only the 720 50p mode and some times with 4000 shutter speed just pushing it to the extreme yet no problems.

stoney

@mpgxsvcd Usually hight bitrate settings are not AFC friendly.

soundgh2

Initially viewing this week - all variations shot so far are totally lacking in blocking or any (for me) blocking artifacts - pixel peeping (which I find strange - i.e. would you open a dialogue moaning at Johhny Marr's use of the Gibson 335 for Smiths songs, instead of another guitar) etc etc Looking at this hack - loving it, as in nothing is distracting me from what I'm pointing at. Much as we wibble on - in real life broadcast or film, they (as in the people paying you) want the best they can get before the delivery date with zero shit - they really dont care about your bitrate :)

LPowell

@stonebat While I haven't found any reliability issues using AFC on the Lumix 45-200mm zoom with Flow Motion v2, the bitrate can fluctuate dramatically when the lens seeks focus. This is not a malfunction, though, it's typical for the bitrate to drop when the lens goes out of focus.

stoney

@LPowell Have you set PRE AF to Q-AF or C-AF?

I was pleasantly surprised about good AFC performance of Leica DG 25mm 1.4. Once stopping down to 2.8 onwards, it's pretty good. I'm gonna try it... tonight.

peternap

@LPowell I'm not sure how anyone got this to crash in 720-60, but damned if I can. I drove into town and since it's a holiday Saturday night, there was a fair amount of traffic. I spent 2 hours videoing everything that had a light..parking lots, lighted flags the only stop light and cars. Finally I put it in 720 and set the tripod at the intersection, started it when there were no cars, just dark, then let it run for 6 minutes with car headlights and taillights hitting the camera.

Still no crash so I started panning the cars and did that for another couple of minutes. I just couldn't get it to go down.

The bitrate in 720 was low averaging 14. I was afraid I'd loaded the stock firmware until I looked at the 24P which was running around 44.

Since I was just trying to shock it into bogging down I wasn't paying a lot of attention but when I watched the video's, they were damn good considering. I would put any of them on the news site as is although a little neat video would make them great.

I'll try the same thing in the daylight and a higher Bitrate but so far, I really like this.

Zaven13

@peternap. Averaging bitrate of 14 in 720p is nothing. I have averaged up to 50 and it worked fine. It is when you go above 50 when it starts to fail. Let us know the results when you do daylight shooting with detail.

stoney

@LPowell Nice. 14mm 2.5, 25mm 1.4, and 14-140mm AFC worked fine for both "M" and "P" exposure modes. Super.

oscillian

@stonebat Great find! Gonna try my 14 in M mode.

DeShonDixon

I used 2.0 for a shoot today and had no errors and everything went fine even with 60p and 24p

No_SuRReNDeR

Im going to the Cayman Islands next week and will try the patch out there. Should gets some amazing footage I think.

mozes

I did use the "A" exposure mode, don't no if that had anything to do with it.
stupid that i not was thinking about changing that in the field, i shoot always in PRE AF with C-AF.
@LPowell the freezes becomes when i set my lens to 35/55mm or 135mm, and change fast from detail to nothing or visa versa.........weird.......
Olympus M. Zuiko Digital ED 14-150mm 1:4-5.6

towi

@LPowell

"I haven't been able to provoke any recording failures so far in any of the PAL video modes. If you're seeing repeatable failure patterns using freshly formatted SD cards, I'd need a detailed description of your test procedure in order to reproduce the problem"

I've shot a (picture-filling) codec torture chart (see attachement) off a monitor. High contrast (histo clipped in the blacks and the whites). This is the very first test I run with new settings. Normally this test is a little less demanding than shooting a highly detailed landscape scene in daylight. This is why I think it's a good starting point.

Lens = Zeiss 2.0/50 at f4. Camera settings = ISO400 / Smooth (-2|-2|-1|-2).

I am still tweaking the settings... I went back to your original GOP-Table for 50i (2, 2, 2, 2, 24, 24) and it works fine in conjunction with these two modifications: 1080i50 GOPx2=12 / 1080i Top Setting=92000. I now try to increase the 1080i Top Setting again a little bit ... but the 95000 in your original setting definitely seems to be too high (repeated write speed errors on SanDisk 30MB/s and 95MB/s cards).

As to the GOPx2 length... for interlaced modes the default is twice the fields count for each GOP. Default GOP length for 24p/50i is 12GOP; the respective GOPx2 setting = 48. So I think for 3GOP the 1080i GOPx2 setting should be set to 12 (instead of 6). At least I use this pattern in several settings without issues.

Hope this helps ...

5min

I think I've found as solution for preventing the crashes (PAL user)

Flash the firmware back to the original 1.0 FW
Uprgrade to the original 1.1 FW
Flash with FlowMotion 2.0

I've tried all the situations where it crashed yesterday (SH and HBR daylight with a lot of details), and it works like a charm now, no more crashes until now :-) No problem too with Towi's death chart.

I'm curious to know if it works for you? Hope that helps.

towi

@5min

thanks for the tip!

Unfortunately it doesn't work for me (still the same issue).

These changes seem to work fine for PAL modes (HBR/25p, FSH/50i, SH/720p50) after initial tests.

Video Bitrate FSH/SH=96000000
1080i50 GOPx2=12
1080i Top Setting=92000

I'll start to actually test the settings now. From first impressions I'd say FM2 looks damn good!

safari

@5min .....good detective work..I am not using PAL but I will try this out....where did you find the original 1.0 FW ? Thanks!

5min

@towi : I did flash back to FW 1.0 without incrementing in Ptool, just the original 1.0 FW copied directly on the SD card, then upgraded to 1.1 without using Ptool again. Then flash to FlowMotion 2.0 and format the SD card. Did you made the same? Sorry if it doesn't work for you...

@safari Here it is http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/330/new-gh2-firmware-leak

towi

@5Min

yes, I did it exactly the way you've suggested...

karl

I repeated my "moving tree leaves in the sun"-test with FM 2.0 in 720p60 today, using a SanDisk 64G 95 MB/s card.

The resulting bitrate was ~67MBit/s on average. IQ looked very good, but not visibly better than the samples I had recorded with GOLGOP3 and GOP3ZILLA, earlier (which had an average bit rate of ~50 MBit/s).

Alas, recording using FM 2.0 stopped after several seconds to minutes, usually when the wind became stronger (so the leaves would present a larger amount of motion).

Since GOLGOP3 and GOP3ZILLA never aborted for me in 720p60 mode, I guess I will try to merge its 720p60 settings with the 1080p settings of FM 2.0.

(I did not try p25, p50 or interlaced modes, as I don't use them at all.)

xav25

Is this normale that i cant acces the high iso stuff with the new flowmotion?

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