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GH2 Hacked - SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB - Video stops at varying time without error
  • Hi guys,

    I searched the forum and the whole internet for this problem, but didn't find any post or anyone having this problem, so I started a new topic for this and hope I didn't search for the wrong keywords... ;). I am using the GH2 for video shooting very short time and all I am doing these days is not really working well. I know that it should be easy to use firmware patches but for me it turns out not to be that easy as it maybe should. I used a few patches and tested around with each for quite a bit and tried to check wether the patch is working fine or if there are occuring errors while recording. I would need a very stable patch since I always need to record longer footage... not just 15min, but most of the time 2-3 hours. I found that SD card speed is a thing which is why I bought the SanDisk Extreme Pro with 95MB/sec. Used the Sanity 4.1 Patch which should be stable, but the cam stops recording video after some time (I couldn't specify when it does) without any error. It just stops recording and doesn't write the file completely to the card. Used the Quantum X SpanMyBitchUp and I get the same error. Also tried some other patches, some came up with errors that the card is not fast enough, some didn't... most of them didn't...

    Since I can't tell why that is and I don't know how to find out why the cam stops recording I am not sure what to do next. Fact is that the patches really do enhance the quality which I would not love to miss ;).

    Can anyone help me with this? All the best from Hamburg, Thomas

  • 29 Replies sorted by
  • Hi Thomas, I sent you a message.

  • i have the same problem

  • Always start here and go up from there as the need arises.

  • Same problem with the no adverse effects patch... recording on nostalgic FSH...

  • stops at about 15 minutes recording...

  • same problem here, PAL, sedna HBR / noadverseeffects HBR / eoshd unified 88. I always use an hdmi device connected, you too ?

  • I also have the same problem but only occurs with Driftwood Sedna a on 720p 60p mode :/

  • download sd formatter here - https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/

    run an overwrite format. this is going to take a long while. my sandisk cards became somewhat error-free after doing this. make sure to format it again in your camera.

  • Yes I have the same problem in HBR mode, PAL. I found Flow Motion to be the only one that doesn't do this so far.... maybe I'm missing something.

  • I too have used the SD association formatter utility and recommend it. It should be used for all NEW cards before first use. It can be used if you are having problems with your card. And periodically to tune it up (how often depends on how much you use the card). And as kapemuna said, after using the utility, format again in the camera before using it.

  • the same problem. even after repeated formatting

  • Its simply the GH2 stream running out of steam - whilst a better card can improve longer writes in certain conditions - defragging, reformatting too etc... like all forms of memory devices - once a certain limit is met problems begin to occur. High detail or High ISO introduce more information to the encoder which has to work extra hard to keep up. This is often the cause of an automatically stopped recording. However, the file is normally written with a final GOP up until its crash point and should be fine to view and edit.

    The computations of the GH2 as it encodes into AVCHD are fairly complex, taking into consideration bandwidth/ total allocated bitrate amongst the myriad of settings we input into ptools to push it further - therefore its pretty hard to predict exactly when its going to fail or to stop recording. We try to test on death charts, bushes of death etc... but settings which pass these can meet their match.

    In other cases the camera just hangs with the usual message and a battery pull is the only solution to reset the device - subsequently a 0 (zero) size file is written to the card.

    The best card out there at the moment is indeed the 64GB Extreme Pro 95MB/s SDXC 1 card. This card alone gives much more success but cannot guarantee to work 100% with settings. Some settings push the quality envelope, others push the reliability envenlope and now in recent months work has been achieved on a number of settings that try to bring both together.

  • Same problem here, even using the 64GB Extreme Pro 95MB/s SanDisk. I think I had the No Adverse Effects patch in operation, shooting 1080/50i AVCHD PAL (By the way is there any way to verify which patch is on your camera????)

  • Aight, I started figuring out that changing batteries or in my case using external batteries helped with this problem. The cam now runs with the (still newest? think its version 5) Sanity patch (which looks awesome and has pretty low bitrate at 38mbit)... The external batterie I use is the DC Station from Sinoele... at 9volts. The normal battery runs at 8,4volts as far as I remember. Changing batteries to that one again and problems start again. It's not a fine solution but may be worth a try! Careful with external batts. Higher voltages than 9,4V cause main damage on the cam!!! Read the guide/main posts in this forum about that! There are voltage stabilizers out there wich you should use!

    I hope that helped a little...

  • Same problem here. Runtimes are too short with the highest performing cards. When I'm asked by other broadcast colleagues about the hacked GH2 I advise them to use official firmware. This is such a shame.

  • @thomasklosinsky

    You may be onto something here! I used Timebuster on one occasion with the internal battery and it stopped after a few minutes. Normally I use an external battery for longer shooting and it never happened with that one.

  • I record for hours on my recordings, personally the only hack I’ll put faith in for long recordings is Cake, it’s not let me down yet: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2123/gh2-cake-v2.3-reliability-and-spanning-in-720p-hbr-24p-and-vmm-at-2-2.5x-stock-bit-rates

  • @headstate +1 on cake for reliability / quality. Cake is my go-to hack. I bought a new card the other day (cheap-ish class 10 - just about - and 32GB capacity) and on cake, on a part-used battery it recorded (and spanned) a scene with lots of movement without a hitch for just over an hour until the card ran out.

    @thomasklosinsky If you want to know what causes card lockups, it's usual high ISOs (ie noisy images) and subject or camera motion, particularly at high shutter speeds (low speeds smear the image, and that doesn't stress the codec as much as high speeds). So what @driftwood says, basically.

    If you don't think that's what's causing the lockups in your shots, then here are some other questions:

    Are you using genuine batteries (apologies if you've said you are and I missed it) because obviously the camera needs to know it is running low so it can shut down gracefully, rather than just stop. If not, that could be an issue.

    If you are having random stop issues on all patches (sorry, "settings") then I'm assuming (but worth a mention anyway) that you've checked that the card / camera card slot contacts are free of any dirt or debris (vacuum cleaner can remove any small bits of plastic etc from inside the camera slot) and are thus making good contact. It's very easy for little bits of plastic (such as around the edge of the card, near the write-protect switch or between the contacts) to break off the card after a while, and of course they live happily in your card slot where they cause random problems.

    And once you have verified that there is no debris in the slot, clean the contacts by inserting and removing the card a few times. That will do the job of cleaning the contacts in both card slot and the card itself.

    If none of that works, I don't know!

  • Here is one other suggestion. Get the formatting utility from the SD card association's web site. https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/ Format your card in a card reader with this utility. Select Options Overwrite and Format Size Adjustments ON. Then put the card in the camera and format it with the camera. Try it again. Worth a try.

  • My finding is this- Someone please tell me if I'm wrong. All patches I've tried cut out when the clip reaches 4GBs on my PAL HBR GH2. The duration of the clips varies obviously with the patch and how much motion is in the shot. Flow Motion seems to keep recording without stopping. In fact it's actually just creating a series of 4GB clips. 32 minutes of footage with Flow Motion equals approx. 4 x 4GB clips.

  • Just tried Flow Motion and Cake. The 4GB clips span without fault on moderate motion - trees waving in the wind. I used a Sandisk Extreme Pro 32GB 95mb/s card. All other patches I've tried except the ones mentioned above, don't span after the 4GB limit.

  • Hello. I'm new in this group and also in using GH2. I've put the Sanity 4.1 PAL Hack in my firmware and now I've got a 1080i bitrate of 36Mbit/s. Very nice. But the camera stops usually after about 15 minutes. I'm using a Sony SDXC 64 GB Class 10 card. I also tried to format with SD-Formatter as suggested but camera stops at 15 min. I also tried other hacks like driftwood with the same result. Why doesy GH2 stops at 15 min.?

  • So glad this was brought up I'm having the same problem with all my hacks... I thought I was doing something wrong!

  • try flowmotion

  • Using four different sandisk 95 sdxcs on two different gh2s with flowmotion 2.3. Spanning works but invariably if filming long takes after 20 to 30 minutes the camera will stop recording ive tested this is the most mundane stationary filming scenarios and it happens every time in 720p sh. Ive read to film in h mode. Doesnt that defeat the purpose? Is flowmotion on h mode better looking than say cake 2.3 on sh mode? I ask because cake spans on anything