@Davidz Flow Motion v2.0 is almost ready for release, and I think you'll find it a significant improvement in both reliability and motion picture quality. I've been subjecting it to a variety of brutal test cases, and have found that in some circumstances the bitrate demands of FSH 1800i60 mode are even higher than HBR mode. In addition to its high data rate (due to operating at 30fps), the internal P-field that is embedded in each FSH I-frame requires finer quantization to maintain image quality comparable to I-frame macroblocks. Balancing these requirements with failsafe reliability in the complete range of video modes has turned out to be one of the most challenging aspects of optimizing the GH2 for operation at 100Mbps.

Sounds very nice, Lee! :)

Gentlemen:

Thank you sooooo much for your helpful responses. Regret the delay in getting back, but I've been involved in some long overdue bookkeeping (ugh), and simply lying down, just beginning recovery from a lumbar vertebral compression fracture of a week ago (ouch).

@towi - thank you for the PTools Sanity V3.1 attatchment. After I've had a chance to throughly test out four hacks I've already downloaded to cards ready to install in the GH2 (including Cake, that I've heard so much about, and a couple of Sednas) I'll give the Sanity 3.1 a run through. Incidentally, I had already earlier tried out the Sanity 4.1, and along with many other hacks, it was an immediate crash.

@LPowell - I, as many others, have been watching and waiting for the v2.0. I find your comments about the demands of 1080 60i FSH very interesting and informative, in view of the frequent and almost insurmountable problems I've had in getting 1080 60i FSH to work at all with any of the hacks for this camera.

My associates, who all shoot in 24p have found my issues a total puzzle - many of them are using the GH2 as a primary, secondary, or tertiary camera, with hardly nary a problem. And incidentally, when I ran my last tests with the Flow Motion, I was very pleased with everything that I successfully took in 1080 60i FSH, but I very quickly gave up on the HDR setting, since though the shots were often as sharp as the 1080 60i FSH, the HDR exhibited some very serious banding problems, the likes of which I've never seen before from any of my other cameras or any GH2 hacks set to 1080 60i FSH!

If it's of interest to any of you others who are attempting to shoot 1080 at any data rates, I'll post here some summary results of what has worked (if anything), and what hasn't.

@LPowell , any news on Flow Motion 2.0 ?

@LPowell , WOW, that looks great, much less (almost no) macro blocking , can't wait to test it out. Hope a HBR mode get also some improvement ...

@LPowell

Man... I am really looking forward to testing FM2!!!

Just to clarify, the video above was not shot in Flow Motion; it is an HBR 1080p30 file using an all-Intra patch. If you download the original MTS file and examine it in Stream Parser, you'll see something like this:

This is an example of what is sometimes euphemistically called a "CBR patch", as it certainly does display a constant bitrate. The reason for that, however, is because after the initial I-frame, the encoder immediately collapses into a crippled, low-quality Fallback Mode with extremely unbalanced macroblock quantization levels. An examination of the detailed Stream Parser report reveals QP factors ranging from 18-43 within each frame, which indicates pathological encoder operation. In addition, the reported DC value of 2 indicates the quantizer Scaling Tables are being flattened into gross amounts of overkill. (As cbrandin has explained, once DC value drops to 4 or lower, the encoder is forced to waste bitrate on excessively precise data that produces no visible improvement in image detail.)

For those who have Elecard Streameye, a detailed examination of individual macroblocks shows what is amiss with this patch in HBR mode. As in all HBR videos, the encoder divides each I-frame into an interleaved pair of fields, an I-field and a P-field (which is derived from the I-field). In order to preserve optimal static image quality, the P-field should be encoded at the same average quantization level as the I-field. In this case, the P-field (blue lined) is encoded with a QP range of 20-26 (good quality), while the I-field (red lined) is encoded over a QP range of around 32-48 (poor quality). What's also disturbing is that the quantization levels get coarser toward the bottom half of the frame, indicating that the encoder overestimated its available bitrate, and was forced to reduce the bitrate with coarser quantization before it was able to complete the frame.

While this dysfunctional behavior is not an inherent drawback of all I-frame patches, it highlights the compromises that 24p Intra-frame patches impose on HBR video mode on the GH2. This dilemma is due to the unfortunate fact that a number of patch settings are shared between 24H and HBR mode, in particular the Intra-frame GOP length of 1080p24 and 1080i50 modes. This is one of the reasons I concluded that the 3-frame GOP used in Flow Motion produces optimal motion picture quality in the broadest range of GH2 video modes.

@LongJohnSilver No problem, I just wanted to make sure no one misinterpreted your intention.

I am sorry to go off topic, but i hope you can help me with this.
its shot in 3200 iso
What are meant with skipped?...

ps. screens are not from FM .....

@LPowell thx...

@LPowell To keep this brief, while we're all waiting for V 2.0: 1) I have no idea why, but I am again shooting Flow Motion v1.1 at 1080 60i without any crashes, and with great results! and: 2) after again attempting to shoot with many very high data rate hacks, such as Driftwood's VY Canis (can that be right, with a 64 GB card, a total recording time of 3 minutes 57 seconds???!!!) in what I've been using exclusively, Creative Movie Mode, I tried them all out in HDR, with nary a crash! I had never tried HDR until I read your post (actually, I spent over a day carefully reading ALL twelve pages of this thread) indicating that HDR was 1080 60i - I also note your attitude (is disgust too strong a word?) about interlaced. I have been shooting in 1080 60i for the resulting 1080 detail at 30fps.

@towi I have done very preliminary testing of your latest, modified Sanity v3, and the results certainly look very good.

All of my detailed testing of modified Sanity v3 and many other hacks will have to await what I hope is much greater recovery from my latest fractured vertebrate, the pain of which has now become unbearable.

@Davidz Sorry to hear of your spine problem, I recently had a lumbar fusion myself, and have been steadily recovering my stamina over the past two months. As @matthere pointed out, I've released Flow Motion v2, which supercedes v1.11 with a number of significant improvements. I hope you find it meets your needs.