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SANITY 4 and 5.1
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  • peternappeternap

    @Ralph_B This is a grab from a test the other day. I'm not much of a pixel peeker and don't see a lot of the "Mess" others apparently do. I just don't see any major macro blocking. Sanity 5 720-60

    Photobucket

  • peternappeternap

    @Rambo I figured as much Rambo. I expect it's a buffer issue and just has to catch up. The problem is it seems to happen when I'll lose the shot if I don't do something right then (My language also gets worse the longer I wait).

    I'll try out Lee's suggestion about using H and see how the IQ is.

    I like a lot of these patches but keep coming back here for a lot reasons, stability and the out of camera images cut so well with my camcorders are big ones. It may be different if I were an artsy person, but I'm not.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @tida

    Unfortunately, no. Sanity 5 is a unique package - everything needs to be as it is, for it to work.

  • tidatida

    @Ralph_B, could Sanity 5 be split into two patches. One into 24p/50i/60i and the other into 25p/30p/50p/60p. Would be great that it could be mixed up partly with FlowMotion, Cake, Driftwood patches etc.

    Would be great to mix long term recording (timelapses) with highest quality recording.

  • RamboRambo

    Guys, you don't need to do a battery pull, just wait after you get the card write error message for about 20-30 seconds, the message will change and then you can do a power off. I've never had to do a hard reset yet (battery pull on lockup) on GH1 or GH2.

    And yes 720p 50 is less likely to fail than 60.

  • peternappeternap

    @LPowell I haven't tried Lee. I will tomorrow though. It is an exceptional patch,especially in very low light.

  • arvidtparvidtp

    For what its worth, I crash audio DSPs and microcontrollers all the time at work (mostly because i'm a forgetful programmer). Never hurts 'em. Just reset and reboot.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @Zeko I've never seen any reports of permanent damage to a Panasonic camera through the use of any of my patches. To my knowledge, none of the early speculation about GH1 or GH2 cameras overheating or wearing out from the use of high bitrate patches has ever been backed up with any tangible evidence.

  • ZekoZeko

    @LPowell : interesting opinion, but have there been any studies/reports on hardware degradation due to record stops or camera lock down that require battery removal ? (like if now, 2012, anybody has experienced a broken/unusable GH2, possibly due to this kind of circumstances), or is the hardware super resilient ?

    This would be interesting for me to decide which patch(es) to use during my semi-pro work in fiction and documentary.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @peternap Have you tried using Flow Motion v2.02 in "H" mode for shooting in extreme situations at 720p60? This will work exactly the same as SH mode, but will safely limit the bitrate to 60Mbps peak. I provided FM2's H mode to reliably handle both the highly stressful situations you describe and also to support 4GB file-spanning on Class 10 SD cards 30MB/sec and faster.

    The 720p60 SH mode in Flow Motion v2 is not tweaked to be bulletproof under the most adverse conditions - it's designed to be failsafe. That means that even in the event of failure, it will stop recording rather than produce a corrupted video or one with degraded image quality. As I documented in my FM2 thread, many patches, including both Sanity 5 and the unhacked GH2 firmware, will surreptitiously produce coarse quality Fallback Mode videos when shooting highly detailed subjects. The only sure way to detect these corrupted videos is to examine all of your footage in Stream Parser, which is not a practical post-production workflow.

    In my view, the GH2's consumer-style Fallback Mode is completely unacceptable for semi-pro use of the camera - I'd much rather the camera stop recording than produce insidiously degraded footage.

  • peternappeternap

    @ Ralph_B I just finished testing Sanity 5 and Flow Motion V2.2 with my new 14-140. I hardly ever use electronic lenses but I have to admit I like this for some instances.

    In 720P-60 I can lock FM2.2 up every time I stress it hard. 24P isn't as bad. I have yet to lock up or have an error with Sanity 5

    By stress I mean high ISO or very bright light with very detailed outdoor scenes. I locked it up on a bear the other day at about 15 yards,

    The errors require battery removal.

    I;m using a 32 gig 95mb in the FM camera and a 32 gig 45 mb in the Sanity Camera.

    I have no idea how Rambo got his water shots using FM and the 14-140 in 720????? FM may handle 720-50 better.

    I'm going back to the Chesapeake Bay this evening with one camera using Sanity 5 and the other loaded with Sedna AQ1.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    Regarding Stability:

    One thing I learned in developing Sanity is that I had to test for stability at both ends of the ISO spectrum. Initially I thought testing at ISO 12800 was the worst case scenario (and it is as far as noise is concerned). But the exceptionally clean picture at ISO 160 can cause write errors, as well. So it was necessary for me to fine tune Sanity to be stable at both ISO extremes, and hopefully everything in the middle follows along.

    By your reports, it seems to be working.

  • safarisafari

    @mo7ies..I second that with the 90MB/s ....no problems with 24P H. Only problem I have experienced is an occasional write error in ETC mode. I am using Sanity 5 to shoot a wedding this weekend so I am trusting in it (fingers crossed...:)

  • mo7iesmo7ies

    IMHO, hacked GH2 is still an experiment as a video camera. So I would not rely on it 100% in any case.

    Having said that, Sanity v5 never let me down so far. I use it a lot and it is brilliant: no issues whatsoever on the card I use, and super reliable spanning in 24H mode. And of course very low bitrate, yet nice video quality. Love it - bravo, Ralph_B!

  • peternappeternap

    I'll go back and quote something Ralph posted, in just a second. Not to take anything away from either LPowell or Driftwood because they have come up with great patches.

    Last week I videoed a Marathon for one of the sponsors. I used three cameras because I knew what was going to happen. The 2 GH2's I was using with fairly new patches caused problems. One locked up in the middle of a pack shot and the other gave some real problems panning. I still got the whole thing on the XA10 though.

    Neither patch was Sanity but if it was...this is the quote from Ralph:

    Stability - I hate write errors - hate em', hate em', hate em'. Sanity 4 is rock stable. I use Sandisk 30M Class 10 cards and have not had any write errors in any mode, including ETC. Of course, your milage may vary, but I hope not.

    That is a major plus when you only get one shot at the clip!

  • mo7iesmo7ies

    if i need longer cinema-style video

    Actually I'd be surprised if your film takes were longer than 11min each ;) You probably don't need spanning for film sequences.

    Corporate/events, on the other hand, do tend to have long takes, at which point spanning dat bitch becomes crucial.

    Sanity v5 WILL span in 24H mode, do use the card linked above and you'll be fine. Why sacrifice quality? 24H it is.

  • ZekoZeko

    @Ralph_B and @mo7ies : thanks guys..... so if i need longer cinema-style video, i'd be kinda stuck with 24L and no electronic lens... but quality should be almost the same as 24H, if i got it right ? :) And then....would there be any point in using 24H ? (except for gaining 0.5% image quality or so ? )

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @Zeko

    Sanity 5 spans in 24P if you shoot in 24L mode. And the picture quality is almost as good as 24H.

  • mo7iesmo7ies

    @Zeko I use Ralph_B's Sanity v5 a lot. It spans in 24H, L, and 720p60 modes; and also it should span in HBR (30p) mode if you are NOT using electronic lens. Meaning, any lens via the dumb adapter should span you in HBR mode. I personally can vouch for 24H/L and 720p60 modes which span on GH2 all the time reliably, and with any lens (electronic or not), if you use this particular card: http://goo.gl/gbQf4

  • ZekoZeko

    @Ralph_B : pardon my noobish intrusion, but do your Sanity patches provide spanning in 24p also ? (from what i've read in your descriptions, they don't, if i understand it correctly of course :s ).

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    Haven't had time to look at FlowMotion in depth, so I can't really say. I know Lee has worked hard on it, so I'm sure it's a quality patch.

    But here's my take on the patches in general. If we just consider picture quality, with 100 being the absolute best possible, then the stock picture for 24P might be 85. And it might be 80 for 720P and 1080i. Now all the good patches get the quality up to the 95 - 98 range. Yes, there are differences among the patches, but those differences are slight. So to me, it's the factors other than picture quality that determine whether you use one patch over another... you know, things like: stability, file size, spanning, high quality in all shooting modes, gadability (as peternap says), etc.

    The good news is there are now high quality patches to cover just about everyone's personal mix of needs.

    Now when the GH3 gets here, we can do it all over again!

  • mo7iesmo7ies

    @Ralph_B you might be biased on this ;) but in your opinion, is there an advantage using LPowell's Flow Motion v2 vs Sanity v5?

  • peternappeternap

    @Ralph_B The bitrate isn't the most amazing part Ralph. The fact that it needs so little grading is probably the best part of Sanity.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    Yes, Sanity 5 continues to amaze. On paper it shouldn't be anywhere as good as it is. But the picture is extremely high quality, rivaling the best. Raw bitrate is simply not an indicator of picture quality. It's the specific information those bits are carrying that matters.

  • ZekoZeko

    @Superset : i also get 15K bitrate 24p when filming a scene with very little detail, and i think this is exactly the purpose of this patch, it uses only the necessary bitrate in any given situation. If the situation has little detail, then you save space on your card. (or at least i hope i got it right). Bitrate is exactly the same as microprocessor frequency... you can have quad 2,5 GHz, but i doubt this potential is used when all you do is type a text in Word, and it's better like that cuz it saves electricity :p

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