I have a question in regards to spanning... I don't understand why the spanning works in 24H with pretty much all of the Driftwood patches, but when I change the mode to HBR30p or 720P the spanning becomes unreliable. This does not make sense to me because generally speaking the bit rates are higher in 24H then the other modes. I would really appreciate if someone could explain why this is so.

I am currently using Nebula Trial 6B because this patch spans in all of the modes and is very reliable, however I would prefer to use Moon Trial 5 if I could figure out the spanning issue.

@Azo You didn't mention which card you are using. Are you using the SanDisk 64GB 95MB/s or something else?

The settings are specified independently - authors can specify crazy 24H settings and moderate HBR or 720P mode settings as they see fit and there are many, many more variables than bitrate that are specified in each setting.

In general, I have had much better luck with 720P modes recently than late 2011, for instance. At that point in time, I routinely ran Driftwood settings in 24H that would not work 720P modes - even when the bitrate was much higher (as you mention) in 24H.

Anyway, the best advice I can give in understanding it is to start thinking of bitrate as only one factor in the difficulty presented to the camera/memory card during recording, as opposed to the single determinant of success. The number of frames recorded per second, the frame limit, the quantizer, etc., are all variables that can make a difference as well.

By the way, have you tried using 24L in those settings? Often it has a better chance of spanning.

@dado023 Yes, that is exactly what I suggest. I've done it several times with great results, even though I use the standard 24P output from the mode far more often. As long as your software is setup properly and doesn't try to drop/blend/interpolate frames, there is no loss in quality. Just remember that the mode does not record sound.

As an example of how to use it: in Sony Vegas all you have to do is click on "Properties" for the clip in the timeline, check the box for "disable resample" and change the playback rate to 1.250. The reason is that 30/24 frames second = 1.25.

Anyway, as far as HBR - yes, it just is not as robust as 24H/24L and settings authors will normally have far more optmized 24H/24L settings available.

But if you need 30P with synced sound, HBR is your only option on the GH2.

@thepalalias Thanks for taking the time to answer thoroughly, it is much appreciated.

@cjdincer I am trying to understand what is meant by this. Does it love light as an absolute quality or does a sensor fare better with objects that reflect more light? I'm just having a hard time understanding because those monitors were not in the dark or shadows. I regret now not having taken a spot reading of them as now it's too late to tell how many stops lower they were than the incident reading, though I can confirm - having calibrated my light meter to the GH2's sensor on a number of different profiles - that smooth has a DR of 6.3 stops at ISO200 (.1 of a stop less than ISO160 which makes it a no-brainer default setting). Shian was dead right about this figure and has been repeating it since before he even made his Expose in the Zone (or whatever it was called) video.

Here was my first trial using the DrewNet trial 8 but like my last drewnet patch, this keeps happening. Anyone know why this is happening or how to fix it? (artifacts, pausing, etc.) Here's a link to the video.

Why does this happen? GH2 from Jay on Vimeo.

Patch: Trial 8 DrewNet, Panasonic 20mm panny

I had something new happen over the weekend with my GH2 using drewnet beta 8. Everything records fine, but the video file didn't show up in the playback menu. the GH2 just ignored the file, even though it was in there when I imported the files to my PC later. I thought they were gone/deleted until I did the import.

@bheath Yeah, I think I'm going to single out problem areas in post with masks and deal with them individually. How far under 0 EV would you say the noise starts becoming a problem? (BTW, reference to Noir just for the sake of discussion as it involves extreme lighting) Thanks for your input.

Is there a patch that has a finer noise pattern than others in underexposed areas? I ask here as there are just way too many patches to read every single thread and try to map people's evolving opinions are patches are/were released.

@spacewig The finest noise patterns depend slightly on the subject matter and shooting style. For a high detail subject at a moderate ISO to high ISO, Moon 5 has been having the finest noise pattern in my testing (with the difference most noticeable in the lower right hand corner, for reasons Driftwood explains earlier in the thread). In lower detail scenes IntraVenus V1 has the most aggressive bitrate of the modern settings I have tested (though others like Sedna and IntraVenus V2 are also pleasing and not too far behind depending on the material). Canis Majoris Night has a slightly different approach - it is a little less gradual in some of the color but better at separating noise from detail in lowlight. It is slightly more prone to banding (at least it anecdotally seemed that way, I need to confirm).

All of these settings are GOP1, which means they have the same amount of detail available to use on each frame regardless of how much motion there was in the frame before. This makes them just as good at high motion shots as stationary ones and especially good at noise patterns since they do not try to interpolate noise between frames, which can lead to inconsistent update patterns. Higher GOP settings allow for greater potential detail in stationary shots where not too much changes from frame to frame.

So for noise, I would suggest trying Moon 5, IntraVenus (v1 for more detail or V2 for smoother), Sedna and CM Night. Right now I use Moon 5 the most.

Edit: By the way, the bitrates for Moon vary dramtically by content. I average 72 mbps on moderate detail (IntraVenus V1 was a lot higher) but over 140 mbps on high detail (where IntraVenus V1 was the same or lower). I also have not tried earlier versions of Moon, only Trial 5.

I shot one continuos 23 minute take using moon 5 and when I tried copying the Private folder from my SDHC card (32GB 45mb/s) onto my desktop it gave me an error and couldn't finish copying the file. I tried several times do copy but get the same error. I will post the screenshot when I get the error again.

Files spanned fine and the camera didn't stop during recording. There are several 4GB files - is this how it's supposed to be?

EDIT: This is the error message I get.

@cjdincer yes, it's 32GB 45mb/s. I just got home and trying to copy the private folder using my home computer. So far it looks that it will complete the job! Perhaps it was the hard drive on the other Mac? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

EDIT: The files copied just fine! What a relief. I thought it was the SDHC card

@cjdincer sony SDHC cards are cheaper than SanDisk as well. Although haven't tried them myself

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-UHS-1-Memory-SF64UX-TQ/dp/B008PO60F2

94mb/s read, but doesn't specify write speed

@joofmagoof Whats your transcode method?