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SD Cards: Most reliable for high bit rates ?
  • We have chance to test very high bit rates, settings.
    During these tests you may find that some SD cards performs better than other even they are marked class10.
    What is your experience with SD cards ?
  • 20 Replies sorted by
  • the Panasonic Gold Class10 60Mbps is "strong" stable ;)
  • My experience is, that it doesn´t matter.
    Freezer I had with all cards in 720p and 1080i mode, class 6 or class 10 45mb/s is no matter. 1080p24 65 mbit patch works also with class 6 cards, so stable 24p is no problem.

    I suspect this is due to the Processing in 720p and 1080i modes.
  • and? what about the class 10 60Mbps???
  • @Angry_C

    Have you tried to shoot longer periods ?
    As some of SD cards does not auto-split at 4Gb ...
  • gh2 does not support UHS-I cards, so they are no faster than normal class 10 cards. There are no cards that allow 1080i to work with 42 mbit or more.
  • @feha

    no I didn´t try that, but thats a different problem.
  • @Angry_C
    some SD cards splits at 4GB without break, some not at high bit rates !?
  • Transcend Class 10 32GB cards have the following Spec:

    Read 20MB/sec Write 16MB/ sec

    I found that I need a freshly formatted card to get 1080i and 720p to work on kae settings. However I still believe the card has little to do with it since 24p even on a fragmented card is stable and lays down more data.
  • @Angry_c So what your saying is my Sandisc 45mbps extreme pro card is only performing as a class 10 then?...Do I understand that correctly?
  • I use 32GB Class 10 Transcend cards. They were flawless before the hack, but I've had my camera stop filming a few times since changing firmware (Kae's high bandwidth settings plus audio up to highest setting.) I think I may scale back my data rate and look for a happy medium that improves footage but still plays back and doesn't choke my cards. I already have a pretty high investment in SDHC cards.
  • @No_SuRReNDeR

    Yes. GH2 will not profit from UHS-I.
  • has used nobody except me the Pana gold 60Mbps SDHC Class 10?
  • Can I ask a really silly question? All this stuff about cards has got me intrigued and I downloaded h2testw_1.4 (google for it) which is a brilliant utility to test card speeds. I'm assuming that's what people above have used.

    I also understand the Class is loosely based on write speed, ie class 6=6mbps or greater. I tested my existing cards, and have a class 10 that's actually only writing at 8mbps and a class 6 that's writing at 12mbps!

    Anyway...can someone explain why either card will allow me to record video files with peak data rates of 28mbps? Or is this a MBytes / Mbits thing and I'm confusing the two?
  • Here are some tests of SD cards.
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sdxc-sdhc-uhs-i,2940.html
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/compactflash-sdhc-class-10,2574.html

    As you can see even some class 4 cards are faster then some class 10 cards....

    I ordered one Kingston Ultimate XX 16 gig card, it should be very fast!

    Btw, I now use Trancsend 8gB class 6 cards and have no trouble recording the highest bit rates if I format them first (the long format, not the quick!)

  • @AmandaNL Thanks for the link. As to my other point, is the card speed quoted in Bytes, so 1 megabyte equals 8 megabits? Therefore a 10 megabyte / sec write speed is equivalent to 80 megabits / sec?
  • @Mark_the_Harp when the forum talks about bitrate, it's usually in Mbps. 100Mbps, 65Mbps, 42Mbps, etc.

    Yes 10MBps = 80Mbps.
  • @stonebat Ah - thanks so much. So capital B - Bytes, small b - bits. Thank you for explaining!!
  • I had a Panasonic gold series 22/mbps card and sold it to get the 45/mbps extreme pro. I has issues with exe-tele in 720p 60 (it would stop recording in detailed scenes and tell me the write speed of the card is too slow)...so figured the faster card would solve this. I didn't . I assume that this card will help a tad with the higher bit-rates when I get the nerve to hack my GH2 at least in terms of the time it takes FCP to Log and transfer the footage.
  • I have just recently joined the group and have been using my GH1 with the LPowell high reliability V2 patch for the last week or so. (Huge thanks to Vitaliy and LPowell - the quality is so much better than stock!) To date I've tried Lexar Platinum II CL6, PNY Professional CL10, Sandisk Ultra CL6 and Sandisk Extreme Pro 45MB/s U1 cards. I've had write errors with all of them (bright sun / poolside etc). Recorded file is OK.

    I performed a non-scientific test, writing 13 files totaling 1GB from my computer, to each of the cards installed in the camera (USB - camera cable) and got write speeds for all cards in the range 4.6 MB/s to 5.4MB/s - which might be marginal for this patch.

    Repeating the write test using the SDHC card slot on the computer and writing directly to the cards gave write speeds in the range 8 MB/sec to 10.4 MB/sec. I don't know if this means anything, or might explain the card write errors I've had? Not sure which card to try next. Any thoughts?
  • Lexar Professional 16GB/32GB SDHC 133x Class 10 using couple of them with my GH2 and my GoPro. Very reliable perf in read/write : 18MB/s.