Hi,

Here's my own hack I think it might be usefull to others. The purpose of my setup is for my vacations in USA next month: I'll do a personal souvenir little video, instead of the usual photos.

I wanted: • all in Full-HD 1920x1080 at 24im/s so that I can show it nicely on the plasma TV. • solid 35Mbps+ average for quality encoding and have 2 hours of time on a 32GB card. • timelapse mode to be able to do the traditionnal sunset/sunrise & night views. • ultra reliable (don't want to see any error message during my vacation) / plays in-camera (so that I can do some daily cleanup without a computer).

I mixed several settings from the forum (thanks all!) and managed to do it!

So it's on my GH1 (from UK), using a Sandisk 32GB SDHC UHC-1 card (rated 45MB/s). (I have the 25mm/f1.4 and 14-45mm lenses)

The settings: (file attached) • NTSC mode & 30mn limit unblocked (camera set in NTSC mode for 24im/s) • bitrate set at 40Mbps / 44Mbps peek (giving a 37Mbps average) for AVCHD Full-HD mode (24im/s wrapped in 1920x1080i/60) • MJPEG mode configured at Full-HD (1920x1080) at 2im/s only, allowing a 1/2s exposure / 2im/s filming with very good bitrate (needs manual mode + manual focus). Converted to 24p it is equivalent to 54Mbps bitrate (with 4:2:2 color sampling). That compression level will allow 1 hour of filming (2GB limit). Awesome!

It can run the deadlies charts for 10mn without any issue, giving a solid 37Mbps average on those death charts & nature on tripod (trees from my window), and plays in camera as needed.

It's still having a long GOP (1/2s = 12 frames GOP) and using the standard 1080i/60 wrapper, for reliability, but that's not an issue for me: Premiere can handle that very nicely to produce the 1080p/24 in the end.

And from the 1 hour (realtime) 2im/s MJPEG, using http://timelapser.net/ tool, I'll be able to make a 5 minutes timelapse (once converted from 2 to 24im/s) ... or even faster using Timelapser frames blending.

All tests are working perfectly and all. I can't wait my vacations next month! (will go to Washington DC, San Francisco / Monterey, and New-York)