@driftwood. No issues with both 24p H and L modes on Quantum V2 today.

One interesting late day find was no issues with Sandisk 45/mbs card and a quick test on a 32 gb/ class 10 Sandisk. Then found that my blue label Class 10 16gb Transcend card worked in 24p H mode, but my 3 yellow labeled Transcend class 10 16gb cards got fairly quick write errors. Also, 2 clips from 16-20 clips on the Transcend 16gb class 10 blue card, show the clip length to be much longer than actual clip and playback is jumpy, but does show proper length in editor although play back isn't smooth. Can be rendered out and is ok.....

More testing tomorrow on some other modes.

My feeling about 2x Anamorphic is that the lower resulting resolution in the stretched dimension gives that anamorphic film feel. Likewise, the explanation that de-squeezing the image off the sensor before the compression, is a better option than doing it in post after running through compression.

@ka00
Yes, but it only works in MJPEG mode.

@B3Guy
MJPEG mode is currently the only way to shoot at a 30p frame rate with synced audio. I find it very useful for conforming down the footage 20% to 24p, producing a very subtle effect that doesn't look like obvious slow motion. Plus, it's inherently Intra, which is all to the good.

When shooting anamorphic, it is very helpful to see your exact framing in the viewfinder. With a 1920x810 image in the LCD, I can judge exactly how to frame each scene without guessing. In addition, when the camera does the scaling, it works on uncompressed data from the sensor, rather than the compressed 4:2:0 data stored in the file.

I still don't understand the advantages of shooting these specialty anamorphic settings. Someone enlighten me. Would it not be best to just shoot the best quality currently possible from the sensor (INTRA or other), and do stretching (horizontally) or compressing (vertically) in post? Is the only benefit of these specialty settings that it is pre-converted from squashed anamorphic state right off the camera? what gives? I don't get it. What's on the LVF shouldn't matter, there are monitors that can desqueeze for your live viewing benefit if that's what you're after. If you shoot full 1920x1080 and stretch horizontally with good software, you should get a very good, very large image, no? If 2x is too wide, lop a bit off either side of the bastard, or even use it to pan and scan a bit . . . but why these settings that compromise vertical resolution? Seems backwards to me. Am I missing something?

@Sage

That looks good. I had a tweak myself, hope you don't mind. Was going for a look inspired by "Musgo".

Cheers
Sam

@CraftyClown
My experience has been that patching the camera to pack more than 1920 pixels into each horizontal line puts excessive stress on the MJPEG encoder. This forces you to reduce the MJPEG bitrate to preserve stability, and that lowers the image quality.

With the GH2 in VGA mode, a 2x anamorphic will produce an image that has a native 2.67:1 aspect ratio. Since this is wider than the desired widescreen frame, you have to crop the sides accordingly. In HD mode it's even more mismatched - a 2x anamorphic produces a native aspect ratio of 3.56:1.

In VGA mode, 2160x810 would be the ideal frame size for a 2x anamorphic, allowing you to produce a 1920x810 cropped frame without any frame-stretching in post. My 100Mbps MJPEG patch does work reliably at this resolution:

http://www.personal-view.com./talks/discussion/479/gh2-mjpeg-100mbps-low-light-1080p-patch/p1

@LPowell So just to clarify, you think 1920 x 720 in HD mode would give the best image quality for 2x anamorphics. Would this still give us a super wide aspect ratio? I presume the only way to get a more film like aspect is to switch to vga and accept the quality loss?

@CraftyClown
The 4:3 VGA mode has less horizontal sensor resolution than the 16:9 HD mode, and the images are not quite as sharp. However, with a 2x anamorphic, the 2880x1080 VGA frame size allows you to use 90% of the width of the lens, with a cropped 2560x1080 widescreen frame. In HD mode, you would need to use a 3840x1080 frame size, with only 67% of the lens width retained in the cropped widescreen frame.

For best image quality using anamorphic lenses, I recommend setting MJPEG width to 1920 pixels, and scaling the MJPEG height to match the anamorphic's squeeze factor:

1.33x lens HD mode: 1920x810
1.5x lens HD mode: 1920x720
2x lens VGA mode: 1920x720

These frame sizes produce geometrically correct square pixels that do not require frame-stretching in post-production.

@FGCU Went back to look at the saturated frames Quantum does have less grey blocks in the shadows great work I'm going in with this patch thanks @driftwood @VK lol...

@FGCU Great test.. thanks for posting. Can't wait to hear if it Spans with the 45mb/s card..

@Sage Ha, he's about to cry because it looks sooo good!

@driftwood
Is there a change to 24H Quantum v2 beta over the previous?
I hope not, since like yourself, I'm after the best quality!

It certainly appear FGCU shows the benefit of AQ4 setting.

Also, do you believe your changes with Quantum to help 24L span may have affected the quality for 24H?

I know there's many that want 24L to span on slower SDHC cards, but I would not trade that for a hit on 24H quality. Also, I 'm hearing the new 64GB SDXC is spanning with the 24H settings for SeaQuake, I also imagine it will also span with Quantum 24H.