@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

@Sage

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

Cheers
Sam

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?

@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.

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

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.

@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.

@driftwood @LPowell

I second LPowell on shooting 2x anamorphic VGA at 2160x810. I like it. If higher res would be possible, then fine, but i suspect not much gain from higher resolutions, so this in-camera solution would be great if optimized.

Like @Oedipax says 30p isn't really interesting for VGA mode. So it would be nice if there could be changes made to the frame rate. Right now i just slow it down to 24p, but of course that isn't a very workable solution when shooting anything else than leaves. :)
Now maybe the new firmware might make something like this possible? Anyone know already?

@driftwood
Just bought a 2nd GH2 body for a cheap price so I can start testing your awesome patches again. Going to try out Quantum V2 the coming days.

Do I need to use TerrAQuake on Transcend Ultra 32GB class 10 or can I use Quantum/SeAQuake as well?

I did some further testing with bitrates and SD cards today outdoors in daylight shooting freeway traffic and golf course. I used SeaQuake 24H at 166mbs and 24L at 100mbs recording on a Transcend 64GB SDXC class 10 card. Both 24H and 24L spanned with no problems. However, the 80% slomo failed. I also tested the same scenarios with a Sandisk 32GB Extreme HD 30mbs class 10 card and the results were just the opposite. 24H and 24L recordings did not span and stopped at 4GB limit but the 80% slomo at 24L 100mbs worked fine. At least for the time being, I can cover all shooting variations using these two cards. Cheers,

@driftwood - did some testing with your latest 'Quantum' ver 2 BETA settings @ 24L this night.
Now there is intra below 80mbs i am in! Streamparser showed a significant drop in framerate after 12 frames with the 24L settings. Footage looks amazing though - very clean @ 800 iso with my Leica 1.4!
Thanks again mate!

@driftwood
Yes now intra GOP1 is available @ a lower bitrates i am in! I have two GH2's - one with cbrandins 44mbs/2fps mjpeg settings and one with your latest's GOP1. This is videoheaven!
The weakest point of the GH2 for me is the drop of sharpness @ 24p when doing slow horizontal panning/steadicam. Many times i shoot these @ 50fps. I am very curious what follows here after the new Panny firmware update!

Where can i find "cbrandins 66mbs/2fps mjpeg settings" ?
Or any that allows 2fps for timelapse ?