Here's a comparison shot of the Nikon D5100, with Picture and White Balance settings adjusted for a close match with the GH2 in 24H mode, using Flow Motion v2.02:

Nikon D5100

Panasonic GH2

Nikon D5100 Daylight Settings:

ISO -1/3 stop slower than GH2

Picture Control - NL

Sharpness 3

Contrast 0

Brightness -1

Saturation -1

Hue 0

WB Sunlight

A+3

M-1

GH2 Daylight Settings:

Film Mode Smooth

Contrast -2

Sharpness -2

Saturation -1

Noise Reduce -2

WB Daylight

A-3

M-2

@Lambo Real nice Lambo! What lens, setting and post did you use/do?

Another ridiculous flow motion test.

@Loganm187 Thanks for your report. It would be helpful if you could detail the GH2 setup and exposure settings you were using at the time the camera stopped recording. This would allow me to better narrow down the possible causes.

The cases where the camera stopped recording after running for 20 minutes or more are very likely file-spanning failures. This is one of the more fragile features of the GH2 and has been very time-consuming to test. You may be able to determine if this was the case by examining the length of the last MTS file the camera recorded before it stopped. If it is either close to 4GB in size, or is a very short file immediately following a 4GB file, then it is a file-spanning failure.

I documented the potential for recording failures when using Lumix auto-focus lenses in 720p60 SH modes in the first post of this thread. This behavior is consistent with your report of the camera working faultlessly with manual-focus lenses, but not with Lumix lenses.

For reliable recording in both the file-spanning and 720p cases, I recommend using Flow Motion's 60Mbps 24L, FH, or H video modes rather than the 100Mbps 24H, HBR, FSH and SH modes. Aside from being safely limited to a 60Mbps peak bitrate, 24L, FH, and H video modes work exactly the same as FM2's 100Mbps modes, producing excellent motion picture quality with just a notch tighter compression.

@Loganm187 I think the additional strain on the processor just makes it tired. I've never had a failure in FM using anything other than electronic lenses.

It gets worse in TE mode.

This happens once in a while with FM2X (Never had it in the old FM), in all of Nicks settings and everything except Sanity.

I keep preloaded cheap SD cards with all the settings I use. FM2.2 is my all around setting I keep in one camera...Sedna, CM Night and Sanity are the others that get swapped around in the other camera.

it happened on a shoot yesterday multiple times stopping about 10 or 15 seconds in until after about 4 tries it recording long enough for us to capture the shot. it was the only time in the entire shoot we used a native m 4/3rd lens (14mm 2.5) I was shooting with flowmotion on 24p H mode. This morning I put the lens on to test it and it went 24 minutes befor stopping. Panny battery was full at the same settings. I then changed setting to 720p 60 and after about 20 it stopped as well. I now put a samyang 35mm on with adapter and it's been running staring at the tv on 720p 60 settings for over one hour just fine.

I am using flowmotion for an event coming up running 3 gh2's and while doing tests to make sure the cam will stay stable during the capturing when using any native m 4/3rd the camera will just stop recording randomly from 10 seconds to 30 minutes it will just stop recording randomly. When using a non native lens it seems to run fine for hours. Is this typical of this patch or all of them? kinda scares me a little.

@Lpowell

I just installed the patch. I am running with a 45MB/sec 32 GB card. How long (timewise) can I typically expect to record without running into spanning issues in 24p H? Also, how much footage (time) would you estimate can be recorded?

I am intending on getting some major testing done this weekend, so your estimates will help me immensely.

@Lpowell thx for your great settings. Is it possible to set the HBR mode to peak bitrate of 40Mbps? When yes?, witch setting in the ini File? greetings René

Hello @LPowell and thanks for your excellent settings.
I was wondering how much I could lower the bitrate of the 'lower' settings (24L) and still get good results. I use my camera for events (weddings, concerts, etc) and also for short ficticional work.
Flow Motion would be an ideal setting if I could use 24H for fiction and 24L for events, but I would need to lower the bitrate down to about 40 Mbps. Would I still get good results? (better than stock or other low bitrate settings as Sanity 5)

@LPowell i also run cine-like d but have drs on 1. Have master ped at around -2 when DRS 1 is enabled. Detail i have at 0

@L1N3ARX I didn't notice any frame rate issues after the GH2 set in the sun a few hours. It shut itself off spontaneously and after I turned it back on, it failed to flash the ROM with new firmware. No permanent damage though.

Hmm, no matter what setting, AF100 just seems inherently soft.

Yea, there's allot of blocking and mud as well. You really cannot do any "artistic" underexposing or shooting in dark areas. The tonality and rendering of shadows are abysmal. Couple that with the known highlight issues... and you've got about as much workable DR as an iphone4s. And the motion has always looked like that 60i embedded 24p stuff... like the 24f mode on my old canon camcorders. It just doesn't have that true progressive look to the motion. It's hard to describe... but I picked the GH2 over the AF-100 because the GH2 always looked like "motion-images"... where the AF-100 looks like a "video-stream".

Af100 has a lot more settings than gh2 to tune to get the picture you like.

...and the GH2 has 6x the data so you can do that ish in post... where it's meant to be done. :)

I own, and shoot allot, with the Sigma 30mm 1.4 and have never seen motion trails on any setting. I've never even seem them on my GH2 at all.