@duartix. Ok, I will try. As for the difference between hbr and 1080i25p, I was able to check on my tv. HBR appears to be flashier, more video. Am I right or is it the vision of a novice.

@balazer. I tried two settings. 1st Creative mode on Manual movie mode, then on Motion picture: Rec Mode AVCHD (1080i) and Rec Quality: FSH. 2nd mode is HBR (don't have to select anything on "Motion Picture) Both are seen by StreamParser as 1080/50i. My GH2 is a pal one. Hope it's clear. About stress it appears on my last test that the bitrate was the highest as i was shooting in an almost completely dark room with almost no motion. Is bitrate meaningful in term of stress? Sorry for the candid question.

@balazer. Thanks a million for the info and for the work. 12 years ago I stopped working as assistant director on feature films and my last short movie is 20 years old and shot in super 16, so video is very new to me. I am planning to shoot a documentary in pal, so I will set it HBR pal. Thanks again.

@balazer. Haven't tried Cake 2.0 because I use 1.2 and love it. Is 2.0 better for 24p (I'm talking image / motion quality here)? And if so, how exactly? Looks like the bitrate is lower in 2.0 so that's why I ask.

I would like to settle on a good setting, because at some point you have to stop trying these different settings and actually use them for real. For me, Cake 1.2 is the one I've been really happy with and the one I always return to.

Thank balazer for creating the most ideal patch so far!

Inspired by your dynamic quantizer, I've created such a patch for my GF2 (I don't have a GH1/2). I don't like GOP 3, so I use GOP 6 and make the B frames as good as I and P like LPowell's Flow Motion (another most inspiring patch so far). To make 1080i60 absolutely stable (panning quickly from a very dark area to a very bright and detailed area such as pavement), I have to change the GOP table from:

10 20 20 10 0 0

to:

10 20 20 10 10 10

or:

8 16 16 8 8 8

What's interesting is: not just no more crash, the video look better with more contrasty (or darker) and sharper. I like this result, just wonder why. Balazer and others, could you please explain?

My other key changes:

FSH/SH Bitrate: 99000000 All Top Setting: 90000 All Bottom Setting: 80000 All Scaling Fallback: same as I/P/B

The idea is to make no any other bitrate limiting other than GOP table. The average peak data rate is about 48Mbps, absolutely stable so far, no failure yet even at the most difficult conditions where failed before, 4GB spanning fine with a 32GB Samsung microSD class-10 card. Even class-4 cards work fine, just no spanning.

I've tried 44000000 AQ4, 66000000 QP 30 worse B-frame and QP 35 same I/P/B and played with many other settings, nothing compares to this GOP table method.

My GF2 is now like a new born. Clicking on the donate button... few dollars make my $200 camera a $$$$ video gear, the freedom of configuring my own device and so much fun!

Mark, yes, Cake v2 really is better for 24p than previous versions are. I've lowered the quantizer setting from 22 to 18, which improves image quality when the video can be encoded at the lower quantization level within the bit rate limit. When the encoder operates at the bit rate limit, adaptive quantization looks much better than fallback mode. I-frames and P-frames will still be encoded with equal quality and maintain the ratio of frame sizes (I-frames larger than P-frames by some factor). Fallback mode doesn't do that. Using fallback mode for rate control was a nice trick, but only since I didn't know how to make the rate control work properly at the time. Even with v2 operating at slightly lower max bit rates, the picture looks better with the different rate control scheme. The difference is not huge in 24p, but it is huge in HBR. All of this work was motivated by HBR, because it simply did not look good before, and now it looks very good. I know people have settings fatigue, with so many different choices and frequent changes. I went out of my way to make sure that v2 would be rock solid, and so far at least, I can say I have not had a single write error, lockup, or spanning failure, and no one has reported any. I hadn't with v1.2 in 24p either, but I think spanning failures were a possibility with the way I had set the bit rate limits. Fallback mode is slow to kick in. Several GOPs will pass before it starts to limit the bit rate, and before that happens, with the GOP length and quantizer setting I'd used the bit rate could go as high as 100 or 110 Mbps, which would be enough to cause a spanning failure at GOP3 using an Extreme card if that were to happen at the moment of spanning. I did experience spanning failures in HBR mode in Cake 95. Adaptive quantization reacts very quickly to bit rate changes, setting the quantization level for the next frame after a change in the bit rate of the last few frames. So I can get closer to the spanning limit using adaptive quantization than with fallback mode. But even with adaptive quantization's fast response, the camera can't predict how large the next frame will be when coded with a certain quantization level, so you can still encounter bit rate peaks above the max average bit rate. But those peaks will be very short - generally limited to one GOP, and I've set the bit rate such that the highest peak I'd ever seen in all of my testing is still low enough to span.

I don't anticipate making any more changes to 24p, VMM, 1080i, and HBR. I do plan to go back and make 720p span.

PVdog, I don't have a GF2, so I can't say exactly what is happening there. Increasing the GOP length will decrease the maximum average bit rate. Increasing the values in the GOP table will decrease the maximum average bit rate. The values in the GOP table are counts per half second of the following:

1. I-frame (progressive) or I-frame first field (slice 1, intra coded)
2. P-frame (progressive) or P-frame first field
3. P-frame second field
4. I-frame second field (slice 2, p-coded)
5. B-frame (progressive) or B-frame first field (slice 1)
6. B-frame second field (slice 2)

If you use a GOP length different from stock or a mix of P- and B-frames that is different from stock, the encoder will not use the stock bit rate. Changing the values in the GOP tables is a way to compensate for that and get whatever max average bit rate you want at any particular GOP length. I try to keep the GOP table values in the ratio of actual frame/field counts per second of video. The Top bit rate setting should then be set to the max average bit rate you've achieved, or slightly below it, and the bit rate setting and Bottom bit rate should be set relatively.

@balazer : Thanks for the explanation. Very clear and useful in wiki challenged times.

pvdog, it wasn't a mistake. My settings are GOP6 for 720p/60, which makes the ratio of I-frames to P-frames is 1:5. It's GOP5 for 720p/50, so the ratio of I-frames to P-frames is 1:4. I'm not certain if the ratio really matters, or just the totals or just the P-frame values. I just like to keep the ratios correct, and it did what I wanted. I believe the Opt2 GOP tables are for 720p using P-frames, and the Opt1 tables are for 720p using B-frames.

@pvdog Amazing, i must get an GF2 as B camera, great video, high quality ...

@jam: "Be careful that you reload the original firmware or reset all options before you run PTools"

How can options be reset before running PTool? I have to reset options >within< PTool and therefor it has to run already. Or do I get something wrong here?

i have trasender class 10 and dont have a problem with this

Other Class 10 cards should work, but I only guarantee spanning with SanDisk Extreme cards.

rsquires, 720p H mode probably will span, and SH mode probably won't.

sir_danish, to reset settings in PTool you uncheck all of the boxes. It's easier to just reload PTool.

Cake v2.0 1080 24p using Nostalgic -2 X 4.

AF100 was main camera (working on a complimentary profile for the GH2) using an Olympus 14-35mm f/2.0.

GH2 lenses were 25mm Voigtlander f/.095 (filming from the left) and LOMO OKC1-50-1 f/2.0 (filming from the right.)

3200K white balance, 200 ISO.

Slight color adjustment, Spanned fine using SanDisk 95mbps 64Gb cards.