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GH2 Cake v2.3: reliability and spanning in 720p, HBR, 24p, and VMM at 2-2.5x stock bit rates
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  • luxisluxis

    @frerichs nice one! i cannot tell the difference between the two. but i sure can in the price of the two cameras ; ) btw, what card did you use in the gh2?

  • fehafeha

    @balazer, great, thank you. So it means no impact in motion, panning ... I use Cake now in both, GF2 and GH2. Thank you for your great work.

  • frerichsfrerichs

    @luxis, I used the Sandisk 95mbps extreme card.

  • frerichsfrerichs

    @kazuo, I didn't set the pan correctly before exporting the video to Vimeo. Thanks!

  • Caliban_17Caliban_17

    For amusement, my friends and I shoot multicam coverage of local bands playing at my local bar. This week on my GH2, I used Cake 2.2 and last month I used Cake 1.2. I am very impressed with both, especially the low-light capabilities and handling the extreme colours in LED rock lighting, but I have what is probably a real noob question. Do these hacks in any way affect the autofocus function? I only ask because this week I noticed a hell of a lot of hunting and it seemed to take much longer in general to find focus than last month – with similar to identical lighting,ISO etc? Obviously I could shoot manual focus, but in general I used to like the way auto function worked on the GH2. The only difference in camera set up was last month I shot 24p Cinema and this month 25p HBR. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers.

  • balazerbalazer

    The settings shouldn't affect autofocus behavior. I've never observed autofocus behaving differently.

  • dtrdtr

    Hey, I've been happily using Cake2.2 in 720p60 SH mode for a while. Working great. Then I tried HBR 30p once and it stopped recording after 7 minutes, at 2.2GB so not even at spanning point. Manual focus, ISO 4000, shutter speed 40 (yeah I was recording light rays in mist in the dark...). Sandisk Extreme 64GB 45MB/s card.

  • balazerbalazer

    It just stopped? No error? Or were you not looking at the screen when it stopped? What was the average bit rate of the recording? Have you tried a different card? I haven't had any problems in HBR mode with the settings. If anything, the problem with HBR 30p mode is that it is easy to make the camera lock up.

    I don't have any 64-GB cards or any 45 MB/s cards, so I'm not sure if those are factors. My cards are 30 MB/s and 95 MB/s. The 95 MB/s cards are the fastest cards in the GH2, and I definitely recommend them if you are needing the highest reliability or are running into problems.

    Try a different card. There are differences between cards that really matter (even cards of the same type), and can contribute to write failures and spanning failures. For that card, the only thing I can suggest is to use the SD Card Association SD Formatter utility with the format type option set to Full-erase or Full-overwrite. Do that two or three times. Yes, it actually makes a difference. My most used card, which had been used for literally thousands of test recordings, started giving me spanning failures, and this utility brought it back to life. One formatting wasn't enough - that only fixed the problem temporarily.

    Otherwise, the only thing I would know how to do to is to lower the bit rate - something I'm not going to do given the quality constraints of HBR mode and the reliability I've observed so far in HBR mode.

  • dtrdtr

    It just stopped? No error? Or were you not looking at the screen when it stopped?

    I wasn't looking. I was doing a performance. Set the camera to record before starting and when I was done it was in sleep mode.

    Average bitrate is 42.5 Mb/s.

    I'll give it some more testing. Might just revert to 24H/L for 1080p work.

  • balazerbalazer

    If it went into sleep mode when you weren't looking, that means there was a write error. The choice of memory card really matters. These days there's no reason not to use a 95 MB/s card.

  • SuperRoachSuperRoach

    Used cake 2.2 720p (H) just in the past week for recording my wedding speeches! :) And honeymoon videos at the fiji resort. Handled 30 Minutes / ~15gig of 720p@24p Cinema mode , and fantastic detail capturing of a fijian firedance (Defocused amber/coal sparks look fantastic by the way). If there is any interest I took some short clips I can put up when I get back home too :)

  • balazerbalazer

    I am removing the beta designation from Cake v2.3 beta 3.

    Cake v2.3

    • Improved rate control in 24H

    http://personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2123/gh2-cake-v2.3-reliability-and-spanning-in-720p-hbr-24p-and-vmm-at-2-2.5x-stock-bit-rates/p1#Item_2

    Version 2.3 improves the quality in 24H mode on high detail, low noise, low motion scenes that push the encoder into fallback mode.

  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp

    @balazer Thank you for your continuing work on Cake - I will update my GH2 with this new one. I like the way Cake handles! Cheers!

  • luxisluxis

    @balazer so its just the name, right? no need to load it again since i have the Cake v2.3 beta 3 on my camera now.

    thanks!

  • gamebgameb

    @balazer @Mark_the_Harp, "update"??, I understood Cake 2.3 its the same as Cake v2.3 beta 3, balazer just removed the "beta" denomination? Or is it a new one?

  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp

    @gameb Ah - what I meant was that I will update it from the earlier version of Cake I had on my camera. Sorry if that misled!

  • balazerbalazer

    Yes, only the name has changed. 2.3 is the same as 2.3 beta 3.

  • fehafeha

    @balazer, any chance adding B-frames ? It seams like they help with motion, panning.

  • balazerbalazer

    No, I won't add B-frames. They help efficiency a bit, but they hurt frame-to-frame consistency. The bit rates I'm targeting are high enough to overcome the loss of efficiency in not using B-frames, but not high enough to minimize the differences between the quantization levels of the B-frames and the other frames in the GH2. B-frames in the GH2 make sense for very high bit rates, like what Golgop uses, and for very low bit rates, like stock, but not in between.

  • fehafeha

    @balazer, thank you for clarification, great and most stable settings.

  • tonalttonalt

    Cake 2.3 beta aka 2.3 is stable with GH2 (25p, Sandisk Extreme 30MB/s) and GF2 (50i, Sandisk Extreme Pro 45MB/s). Spanning works on both cameras. I did almost 40 minute test run. Thanks balazer!

  • sdbestsdbest

    Just shot some screen tests with Cake 2.2. Used SanDisk Extreme 45MB/s 32 GB card. Numerous bad frames. At least one or two in every take. Apart from that excellent images.

    Is this a Cake issue or a card issue? Thoughts? Advice?

  • balazerbalazer

    You'll have to explain or post samples. MTS files are best. Also, Cake 2.3 is the current version.

  • sdbestsdbest

    Password is "cakeframes"

    @balazer the above was shot on Cake 2.2, a day before 2.3 was released. A sample of the bad frames. Thoughts? These bad frames are also on the MTS files.

  • balazerbalazer

    Please make an MTS file available. I can't say much from just looking at the video. I've never seen anything like that from the GH2 before.

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