@alcomposer, well I suppose the hack is great for people like me and others who cannot spend £2000 on a hard disk recorder. Year hopefully the new Ptools will have some new features to solve these small issues. I not sure if the GH2 can do 1080p progressive or AVCHD 2 but if it can well.... yahoo!
Just any min now Vitaliy will spring among us "stop talking crap you two" :-)
I can confirm @Rambo report that Sandisk Extreme 30mb/s Video SDHC-I (UHS-I) card does indeed work at high bitrates (at least for me). Done a few short tests with @Driftwood 176 settings. Will test with longer recordings but at least for now 60 sec recordings at 640 ISO seem to work.
Can anyone confirm which variation is best. I find 2 Sandisk Extreme Pro SD cards. I've read that some of the 45/mb card have problems. Also are either discontinued? In a search on B&H it shows discontinued.
I've just received my 32 Extreme Sandisk HD VIDEO (uhs-1 :x) Card ... So I will be taking it for a spin in a few hours- (I do have to sleep sometimes- possibly Sunday...)
My 32gb San Disc Extreme Pro works fine on C Brandin's 44MB but I'll admit I have some crashes and playback issues with the 176MB gop1 patch.I did HYBRID this with 720p settings but all the parameters I set for 24p were including the Frame buffer were exact as in the patch set.Still... Its enough to make me jump back to the 44MB patch tomorrow.
I have been using the Sandisk 45mbit/s cards on all of driftwood patches with NO issues, and I know mine is a legit card because its right from BH... been reading a lot about these cards being faked
The old discontinued SanDisk Extreme and Extreme III "30 MB/s Edition" cards support a SanDisk-proprietary signaling spec that is 50% faster than the normal SD HS-mode spec. Only some SanDisk card readers and Nikon cameras support the proprietary signaling mode. In any other camera or card reader, including our GH1s and GH2s, you will get HS-mode speeds of up to ~20 MB/sec, not 30 MB/sec.
And if I'm not mistaken, our GH1s and GH2s also do not support UHS. They are HS devices, which means card performance will never exceed the HS top speed of 20 MB/sec or so.
Thus for our purposes there is not a huge difference between SanDisk's discontinued "30 MB/s Edition" cards, and the UHS "Extreme HD Video" cards and "Extreme Pro" cards. When you benchmark your cards, make sure you are not using a UHS card reader or a 30 MB/s card reader like the ImageMate.
You might be able to write 176 Mbps GOP1 all day long, but have you looked at the instantaneous bit rates of the streams it generates? They go up to 130, maybe 140 or 150 Mbps - still under 20 MB/sec. A full 176 Mbps, if you could achieve that, is 21 MB/sec.
Avoid buying memory cards from Amazon, unless the item is listed as "sold by Amazon.com". Third-party Amazon sellers are no better than random eBay sellers. Actually I think it's best to buy from a SanDisk-authorized retailers: http://sandisk.com/sandisk-support/find-a-retailer-us
Are these as reliable as the older card without 'HD Video' printed on it? And at least as reliable as the new Extreme Pro 45MB/s card? There seems to be many differing opinions...maybe know one knows for sure.
I just got two Sandisk Extreme 30MB/s from B&H and have been testing with Driftwoods 176mbit patches... tried switching to Sandisk from everyone's recommendation because of reliability reports. My previous Transcend 32GB class 10 could not handle it. I thought the Sandisks would be a huge improvement... and it seems they record fine, but I cannot get them to play back in my camera. Has anyone else been able to record with this card, but not playback?
@drogo- make sure that after the FW update you format the card in camera. This helps- sometimes I will get the odd one that doesn't playback- probably bit rate to high? (but first try the format)
Yes, I formatted the card in the camera several times to be sure. I also tried with a 16GB Transcend class 10 that will also record fine, but will not play back in camera. Also, the Log and Transfer function in Final Cut pro is not able to recognize the files or directory structure... but I can play them back in VLC no problem.
@drogo your issue is starting to sound strange... I have had no issue with 176mb/s and log and transfer in FCP. Sounds like your card is corrupt - maybe its a 'bad' card? If FCP is not recognizing the structure- and the camera is no playing it back this is quite serious. (for the card)
For import into FCP- try using the Panasonic AVCHD repair software.
I think I might have discovered the root of the problem. Previously I was allowing the recording to stop on their own once they reached the 4GB file spanning limit (the camera just automatically stops recording). I didn't think that would have a negative effect on the file, but I can see now this might have caused the problems.
I just did a recording of about 1min long, started and stopped it manually, and now it plays back in camera fine, and also is working with FCP log and transfer. SO... it appears if you do not stop the recording manually, it corrupts the file somehow. Can anyone else confirm this? These a brand new genuine Sandisk Extreme 30MB/s cards.
So just per-say, if I were to buy a SD card to use with Driftwoods 176Mb/s patches, any of them, which cards would work flawlessly no matter the motion or what's recorded? 'Cause no matter what, nobody here gets anything clear, and before buying, I want to be sure. The options are:
Sandisk HD Video UHS-1 30Mb/s Sandisk HD Video 30Mb/s (the one at BH Photo) Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS-1 45MB/s
I've read a lot of stuff about GH2 not being compatible with UHS-1 standard so they actually get slower, but nobody has actually made a comparisson of UHS-1 and standard 30Mb/s cards from in-camera recordings (time, and testing with Driftoowd's patches). I believe the discussion has gone no way as to where it was intended.
I know the usual answer in this forums is "try yourself" but asking for a piece of advice is always good as to safe money. We all know it's not good times...so thanks for your help, but please let's get it straight so that no more nonsense is written about which works, which doesn't, mine does, or whatever, it'll get crazier and crazier. Hope you understand me.
Thanks for the answer, that's what I wanted to know. Discussion about UHS-1 or non USH-1 has gone way too confusing for most of us, as some say it works, some say it doesn't but I believe we need facts and knowing where people bought the cards is also very important to verify if it might be a copy, or if it's original 100% guaranteed (stuff from BH or Amazon itself are for example trusted ones).
Reading from the people who write the most here, those 3 cards I mentioned are known as to being reliable for any patch, so I guess there should be no more brainers about it. If I missunderstood anything please just tell me, but I guess I'm not the only one a little bit fed up with the discussion on wether a card works or not. It's an important matter for the hack itself as well as the firmware creators and testers to know which cards are fully reliable.