I set my encoder at 35Megabit (24P). I recorded my drive home from work through the front window, as I figured alot of the details would be rapidly changing.

At some point the camera froze. The image was frozen on the last scene recorded. Power off, nothing. Remove battery and replace, it reboots. Comes right back up.

When I look at the file I see that it is just over the 4GB mark (4.19GB).

The file plays fine and the footage is great. Not sure why it froze up, but if I were using this at an event, I suppose I'd just have to figure a time before the 4GB limit and stop and start very quickly.

Other than this, the settings have been solid for me so far. I see a little pixelation at beginning of play on the camera, but otherwise looks great. I'll need to film some high motion objects to see how the artifacts are in 720/60P.

Avg bitrate was ~22Mb...

@swen24

Thanks, works great,
i increased Video Bitrate FSH/SH=28000000 to 32,
also tested gop6 and gop3 no problems works great on 1080i/50

@feha
32 is not stable using the 14-140 kit lens in 720p and 1080i, especially if you are zooming. I dont think its a problem for the cam to choose the right time/shutter/iso, but its the lens-correction.
Why lower Gops? Only on testing 720p with b-frames it seems to be better to reduce GOP to 12 to avoid cardspeed error. But this is far away from stable now.
At 1080p24 you can set bitrate higher, no problem.

@kay @bartolomeo "Stable is anything that do not result in card speed errors or freezzing."
Tester only settings can be stable.

@swen24,
you'r right i don't own lens 14-140,
tested with 14-42 kit lens and 20 1.7 pancake ...
also works better with GOP12 (just tested 3 and 6, no crashes on my side).
Attached below my settings ....

I did another test on the drive into work today. The file was slightly smaller than the last, but I believe there was more data (The trip to work took less time so more data in less time). The total avg bitrate as 32Mb/sec, whereas it was slightly lesser yesterday.

The camera did not freeze during this test.

My bitrate setting was 35, instead of the suggested 32, and GOP was 6.

@kae If he's tested the settings on high detail scenes with a non-legacy lens without crashing/memory card problems, I think its fair enough to call it stable

In the spirit of ""Stable is anything that do not result in card speed errors or freezing" the following seem pretty damn 'stable' at this point.

These are the 65M Extreme settings and ONLY affect 1080 24P at 3 GOP - all other modes are set to stock (except 1080i/50 as the GOP is locked to the 24P GOP).

You can then modify the other mode settings at will. The 65M extreme settings are targeted at the digital filmmaker who is looking for the best performance and highest quality out of the GH2 in 24P. It IS NOT targeted at the event shooter who needs to do hour long takes, etc.

Sometimes in 1080 24P I can only write a 4 gig file if writing the death chart, it MAY not span. This will give you roughly 7min 13 secs on the death chart and probably 10 minute takes on normal shots (similar to film). More than enough for a filmmaker but lousy for an event shooter. On shots with a normal data rate of 58-60 mb/s with these same settings it's spanning fine.

The 7 minute death chart clips MAY not play back in your cameras but most NORMAL footage in this mode will.

Please start with a freshly formatted Class 10 card. To get JUST these 65M 1080 24P 3 GOP in your INIs all you need to change are these settings:

Video Bitrate 24H=65000000
Video Bitrate 24L=35000000
1080i50 and 1080p24 GOP Size=3
Video buffer 24p=0x3600000
1080p24 High Top Setting=42418
1080p24 High Bottom Setting=29692
1080p24 Low Top Setting=31178
1080p24 Low Bottom Setting=21824

If you want GOP 6 or 12 just change '1080i50 and 1080p24 GOP Size=' (GOP of 2, 4 and 5 will not work in 24P).

UPDATE: July 30 - Just did a 30 minute drive test inspired by jfro with the 65mb/s settings in heavy traffic, 14-140 set to wide, blue sky, lots of trees on each side of freeway, camera angled a bit down to record every groove, divet and pothole, OIS on, Dynamic mode with every setting at 0, 320iso, ND6, F 6.3, auto shutter, GH2 was hot in direct sunlight mounted on the dash of a SMART on the I5, the bumpiest freeway in California and the file spanned perfectly, never glitched. Played back perfect in USB slot of Sony Blu-ray BDP-BX57 to HDTV and on desktop and in-cam. Indistinguishable from film for me at these settings, could shoot driving plates for process with these settings for a feature in a heartbeat.

I'm convinced now if you are getting write errors with this 1080 24p setting it's your card.

@kae Cheers, sorry if that came across as argumentative, but if they're stable... :P

I can second those settings as being stable, at least I was unable to make them fall over. What are you using as a death chart?

@surfr1121
Just put the file (named seta.ini, setb.ini, etc.) into the same folder as the ptool361.exe application before launching it. The settings will become available by clicking on the corresponding circular button at the bottom of the window after you load the firmware file.

@Ptchaw
'What are you using as a death chart?'

This bad boy here...

And I think by Thursday (L.A. time) I'll be able to post a combo settings file here that gives the same 65M in 24P while giving stable 35Mb/s in 1080i and 720P modes with 12 GOP. It's now up for testing in the low GOP thread.

@ aljimenez
I have not tested ETC.

@kae
The idea to set top/bottom values to double comes from reading in some toppic here.
First i set Bitrate also to 32/44 but that does not work for me, like many other tests.
I know there is much more to do in testing. But i think here are some people, like me, using kit lens and only want a better quality with a setting that does not crash in most scenes.
We are testers and i think nobody has a "copyright" of any setting. :-)

@ Shield
in 24p you can use a much higher bitrate, only for me 32Mbit is enough