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Overwhelmed with topics need basic help plz GH2 for weddings
  • BarryflecknellBarryflecknell

    Hi all sorry but had to post just got a GH2, and have looked at a lot of posts but there's so many different posts topics and views, I just hope someone can spare a few minutes to help a newbie.

    I wish to Apply a hack to the gh2 , I plan to use it to record at a wedding, I need something stable so I won't have the worry of it crashing, and I need it to remove the 30 min record time. I have noticed people add a few hacks together (how to do u that) and is it needed ? I would like to get the best quality I can, and have been looking forward to getting a gh2. I can't find a link which says which each hack does, so have been a bit confused.

    hope someone can spare a few mins to help, any help would be much appreciated.

  • 7 Replies sorted by
  • CFreakCFreak

    Shot using Sanity 5.1 from a balcony. Almost 2 hours uninterrupted Manual glass, looks like I had an internal battery in, but usually I would use an external 12v battery to a step-down voltage regulator to 9 volts (not 8.4v -recordings would fail due to low battery...) and the GH2 dummy battery (you need to check polarity if setting this up for yourself, if you get it wrong you can fry the camera). A few times I recorded 4 hours using the external battery.

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  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    I usually don't do long clips, so I'm not sure, but test to see if it works for you. Also, there is a topic/thread for Sanity 5.1 on this site. Check that out for discussion of spanning and how long you can record. Generally I use ~100 Mb/s hack settings and I get about 57 minutes per 64 GB card. So if you end up using a 50 Mb/s hack setting, you'd get close to 2 hours...assuming battery lasts that long. I think Sanity 5.1 is a variable bitrate..so not sure what it tends to average. Tests will clear all up.

    (On a separate note, I like to have multiple SD cards on a shoot, in case I fill up my 1st card. You can then use laptop and SD card reader to transfer footage of that 1st card to computer or external hard drive. This can be done as you now use your 2nd SD card. You could in theory keep rotating cards and be all set.)

  • BarryflecknellBarryflecknell

    Thankyou so much for taking the time to explian I have just ordered the card you recommended from amazon, im gonna try sanity 5.1 as from what I ready seems the most stable? Will this allow me to record until the battery Runs out? Also how much footage would a 64gb card hold? Thx

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    1) Buy a SanDisk SD Card that is 64 GB and is rated to 95MB/s. They're called Extreme Pro. They're only $35 on Amazon or at B&H. These have been tested by this community as being the most reliable. I use them.

    2) You only use one hack setting at a time. You can read this site's FAQs to see how to install on your camera. Once you install you can use a program called Streamparser to confirm you've got the hack setting on your cam. Streamparser lets you take a video clip you shot, and it will tell you the bitrate. The GH2 will normally max around 21-24 Mb/s. The hack settings will get you higher to 50, 100, or higher. So when you apply hack setting, take a test shot, and put that clip into Streamparser. If the clip is at 24 or below, you failed to properly install hack setting. If it's 40 or higher, you now successfully have installed hack setting.

    3) As others have said, test the BaJesus out of your setup. That said, in 3 years, I've only had 1 or 2 errors, and I was using high bitrate settings (110Mb/s). I trust my setup for paid work.

    4) Have fun - you have great camera now!

  • CFreakCFreak

    +1 What @brudney said and my 2 cents:

    I used Sanity 5.1 for long events, using basic and midlevel class 10 cards (as time went on I got better cards for insurance). Never tried Sanity X. Test the sh*t out of it before taking it on a paying job. Check on any un-manned/rolling cameras, every chance you get, in case a file fails to span and recording stops. I used manual glass and never had one stop recording on Sanity 5.1.

    As I understand it, If you use electronic glass, the added bandwidth to talk to the lens can clog things up at the moment of spanning and cause the recording to fail, if the card isn't fast enough. That's why people would test using these crazy animated charts (Crunchy's Chart....?) and shoot high detail stuff like green grass for 30 minutes (must span to a 2nd file), to try and clog things up before going on a shoot. If it passed your own tests, it probably wouldn't fail you on a job. That was the logic.

    It's a choice, b/c stock, the camera wasn't all that bad (for events), if you don't have time to test.

    Wedding are low light situations. Fast glass is your friend with stock bit rates or hacked. With manual glass the best focussing tool is found in the eyepiece as there is no peaking and the flip out screen is good for the era, but, not the best either. If you are delivering in 1080 this is very important: The only way to be sure about focus was to stop recording, punch in digitally on the screen/eyepiece, get the focus for certain, hit record. But to do this at an event and capture every moment you need more than 1 camera rolling and to be able to do a multicam edit.

    If delivering in SD (DVD format) stuff that is slightly (I mean only very slightly) soft can be helped in post with "sharpening" and adding a little contrast, by the time it is reduced to SD it can be passable, but, you don't want to have this problem on a shot of a bride, if you can avoid it...

    • use an external monitor with peaking if you have one.
  • BarryflecknellBarryflecknell

    thankyou for the reply would they both give me the best quailty and is it just one or do they work together and where can i find these files thx

  • brudneybrudney

    If you need spanning and small file sizes you probably wanna take a look at Sanity and Cake (maybe also one of Driftwoods latest gop 12 patches). I wouldn't go for high bitrate gop 1 hacks as you'll usually get ~1gig/minute and spanning most likely won't be reliable.

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