SANITY 4 and 5.1

mjonas67

Hey, I had the same problem last week. I shot a theater and each about 20 min my GH2 stopped filming. I had the Sanity 3 hack, at 3200 iso, in HBR, and in P for the shooting mode (it was in second camera) and with a Sandisk 64GB 95 MB/s SD card. I have another theater to shoot. What do you advise to me : charging the original GH2 firmware again or try another hack which is more stable ? In the second case which hack? according that the show I have to shot is 1h30 long ? Thank you

whynot

Was Documenting some theater last night for a client. Have always used sanity 5.1 and never had any problems with it. Last night in the last 10 mins of the performance the recording stopped and there was a write error which froze my camera. Could not turn off the camera had to get the battery out to restart.
Was shooting 1/40th sec iso: 1600 Nikon AIS lens 50mm (So no electrical contact. Sandisk extreme 95mbps card.

It was a scene which was quite busy with lots of detail. Fine see thru screen in front of actors, detailed puppets and children with glitter clothing and bubbles. Could the detail have pushed things over the edge? See image. Any ideas. Thanks

Ralph_B

@howardst

The patch is in the first post of this thread.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2642/sanity-4-and-5.1/p1

You'll see 6 files. Sanity 5.1 is the file at the far right.

howardst

where is the patch located on this site?

arvidtp

FSH/FH/SH/H has always been touchier. When the hack first came out I tried to make my own settings (before I decided to give up and defer to the masters like Ralph) and i would get write or spanning errors much more often with FSH/FH/SH/H modes.

Also I've got a feeling that more complex scenes that cause the codec to work harder for whatever reason will sometimes take too much time away from the card writing process and just tip the balance so you'll get a card write error with a card that normally is barely fast enough. I speculate that the buffering code in the GH2 firmware is just not written optimally. I've run into stuff at work developing audio gear where we need to both write to an EEPROM (which is flash so it takes time) and do digital audio streaming at the same time, and some clever coding is often required to do both those things at once in a cheap little microcontroller without interrupting the audio and causing an audible glitch.

bajonlukasz

thanks for your answer..of course i know that u can't test every card; ) its weird for me that i can record 24H/L (low light, good light no metter) but when I'm switching to FSH/FH/SH/H i get Write Error... EDIT: now I'm confused...trying again all modes and its working very well ; )

Ralph_B

@bajonlukasz

It's impossible for me to test every card out there. So, if the message says your card is too slow, then it's too slow. You can try shooting in H mode and see if that works. The difference in picture quality is almost imperceptible. And of course, you can try a different card :)

bajonlukasz

well, I first time hacked my gh2 yesterday..and i didn't test it to this moment. i decided to Sanity because of 720p/60fps (I'm shooting skateboard and I'm looking for nice smooth slow motion) but when i started to shoot in SH mode ( 720p60fps i believe) with shutter sped set to 120 (twice to frames) my shoot was stopped because of "too slow card......." i have Sandisk ultra, SDHC class 10, 30mbs 8gb - is that card really to slow? or i used some wrong settings? thanks, Lukasz Bajon EDIT: i just bought sandisk extreme 30mb/s class 10 16gb...and the same situation..trying to shoot SH mode (shutter speed 125) and after 2sec it's stopped

nosignal

I figured it was a case where my test didn't quite put the hack's power to use. I'm just now trying to understand and get my head wrapped around what all the different hacks do. hahah

Ralph_B

@nosignal

First of all, it must be said that the GH2's stock compression for 24P is pretty good. Less so for 720p and 1080i. The weakness of the stock 24P is in the deep shadows. This is where codecs traditionally throw away information because the human eye is not sensitive to this region. For the most part, it works well and fools you. But if you have to lift the shadows in grading, you will see a definite improvement by using a good hack. Another area where the hacks help is in the rendering of the noise at higher ISO's. It's cleaner and finer - less blotchy. Lastly, a good hack will render the finest detail with a bit more definition.

Admittedly, all this is in pixel peeper country. But at the end of the day, I think it's safe to say, that all of us invovled in this are simply interested in getting the most out of our equipment.

nosignal

I got curious tonight and decided to do a quick test to compare sanity and the stock firmware of the gh2. I used the same settings (shutter speed, lens, iris, iso), shot 1080i 60fps in fsh (i believe). Used the same lighting setup without moving anything.

I found a very similar image in my test results. I don't think i would have been able to pick one or the other from memory. Just wondering what others thought!

YouTube -

Vimeo -

peternap

Yep....so far, Sunday will stress it to the limit so I'll know for certain then.

Ralph_B

@peternap

Spanning has been working OK with the PNY cards?

peternap

@Ralph_B I've been testing the PNY 90mb cards lately with no problems. For those that want to save a few dollars it might be worth trying.

Ralph_B

Thanks for the report Peter. Yes, Sanity X is a small jump up, but we all seemed to be cursed with wanting the best. So, here it is!

So far, Sanity X has been bullet-proof in terms of stability. Before releasing it, I put it through my battery of torture tests, and it performed perfectly. And this was using Sandisk 30M class 10 cards!

peternap

Just my 0.02

I think I've tried every setting that's ever come on this board and some are extraordinary, but I'm not a cinematographer, I make my living getting video no one else has. Sometimes that has to get out overnight so I like to get it as close as possible right out of the camera.

I also use a lot of different cameras at once...GoPro's, GH2'S, GH3'S, AC160, Cannon, Etc...so matching it is difficult.

As a working setting I have always come back to Sanity something. It simply works every time.

I've been using Sanity X for a few weeks now and to be honest, it isn't a huge jump from 5.1...BUT....it gives me the option to switch back and forth on the fly.

The higher bitrates do give a little more detail and grades a tad better and so far hasn't given me any problems.

This Sunday, both GH2's will be loaded with X for Colonial Williamsburg's Grand Illumination. It's an all day affair for me ending with a massive fireworks display, so it covers nearly every outdoor lighting and motion situation in the book.

Thanks for putting in the time Ralph. It gives me one less thing to worry about!

Tjabo

@dj5500, fantastic looking SHARP footage! So exciting to see what the 14-42 lens is capable of.

Was this all done in 24H (I'm assuming yes), and what shutter speed were you using? Also, all manual focus?

Thanks!!! :-)

Ralph_B

In case anybody missed it, there is a new high bitrate version of Sanity available.

It's called SANITY X.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/8764/sanity-x-high-bitrate-version-of-sanity/p1

aklumix

Another Sanity 5.1 video with some applied curves.

TraumManufaktur

@Ralph_B Installed Sanity 5.1 on my GF2, planned as occasional b-camera. Here are two screen grab crops at 720p and 1080i, both taken with the Canon 50mm 1.4. Seems a bit softer, but not too bad. Have to do some skin color shots and A/B with the GH2. Cheers!

dj5500

@lloydsweden use soft style -2 -2 -2 -2 (ISO 400 - ISO 800) with lighting, edited in sony vegas

peternap

No...I'm not going anywhere Ralph, Too much knowledge here to leave. I just try to soak it up and only post when I have something that hasn't been covered.

I'm in the Doc season now and using Sanity exclusively.

Ralph_B

Good to hear from you, Peter. I thought you had disappeared.

peternap

Good to see the Sanity thread active again. It's proven to be the single most versatile setting out there. I have a Ralph B, WP file to keep his advice in. It simply works. Thanks Ralph!

lloydsweden

Well done DJ! :-) What settings?

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