GH2 Good patch for handheld, gig, lowlight gh2

T

tipdrinker

New member
Hi all,

I have recently in the last few days finally got my hands on a gh2. All this gh3 malarkey caused a €200 price drop on the gh2 on e-bay meaning I managed to offload my old canon hv30 and get a gh2 body! I've already got a gh1 which has been hacked and uses the peak reliability 75mbps setting for most things so I'm largely familiar with the hack from this perspective and I have looked around for a few hours on those messy personal view forums and google which has made me more confused than anything else.

So I'm looking for advice on what patches I could use with my new gh2. Generally I've been using my gh1 for weddings and gigs. What they have in common is a need for slow motion, lots of handheld work, Good for low light, an ability to handle "DJ" lights in dark rooms (this even causes the peak reliability gh1 patch to stop working at times) and record for up to 2 hours without a break. I'm using 32GB Sandisk Extreme 45mb/s cards and I live in PAL land so 25p & 50p are most important.

From my limited research here's what I'm considering:

1. Sanity
2. Cake
3. SpanMyBitchUp (I think this is inter-frame which would maybe not be too good for eating up all my card space?)
4. 100mbps Flowmotion Failsafe

Am I in the right ball park? Any others I should consider? Any Help would be really appreciated!

Also to kill two birds with one stone I also may be doing some more higher end i.e. music videos in the future and was wondering for a suggestion for a high bitrate patch with i-frame, that works well with slo mo and the cards stated above. Thanks for the help and any info that can get my head around the wealth of patches in an easily digestablw manner would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.
 
Do yourself a favor and buy a GH3, the amount of time you spend figuring out which hack works best for this or that could have been made making Money. If you are shooting weddings, music videos, all other gigs then invest in your gear. GH2 with Hack is a great camera, but it takes time to figure everything out which will make you lose out on money/clients.

GH3 at such a low price with image quality like the Hacked GH2 or better and works perfect, means it's worth PEACE of Mind.....

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but honestly the GH3 is worth every amount they are charging for it.
 
I use Flowmotion v 2.02 and I'm very satisfied with it. I just put it on a friend's GH2. Took all of 3 minutes since I've done it several times before... but really, it shouldn't take you more than an hour to figure out for the first time. Download ptool, the hack you choose, and then run the software to create a custom firmware which you put on the card. Then you just put a fresh battery in, hit the green 'review' button and let it update the firmware. It's easy.

I'd recommend starting with Flowmotion. Then try another one if you want. I've never needed to try anything else.
 
First, whichever hack you settle on, get yourself the 64 GB version of those SanDisk cards. It makes a difference.

Second, I've been running tests (as well as making money) since August, and have settled on the Cluster v7 'Apocalypse Now' 12/15 GOP (DREWnet) with cbrandin '444 Soft Matrix'. It produces the best image I've seen yet, and I've had no problems using it for weddings on the above card.
 
J.F.R. said:
Do yourself a favor and buy a GH3, the amount of time you spend figuring out which hack works best for this or that could have been made making Money. If you are shooting weddings, music videos, all other gigs then invest in your gear. GH2 with Hack is a great camera, but it takes time to figure everything out which will make you lose out on money/clients.

GH3 at such a low price with image quality like the Hacked GH2 or better and works perfect, means it's worth PEACE of Mind.....

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but honestly the GH3 is worth every amount they are charging for it.
Click to expand...

Strange post.
GH2 works great.
If you don't like experimenting, then just bung on Flowmotion and you are set.
 
Fair point and if I could I would (over even a fs700 or c300) but I've spent thousands already over the last year and a half and I'm only now getting some proper paid work. I made a conscious decision in the beginning not to spend too much on camera bodies as they change so quickly anyway and have concentrated on a decent edit suite, audio equipment and other things like tripods, shoulder mounts etc. The audio equipment should last me 20 years, the edit suite 5 (fingers crossed). a gh3? 2 tops before it's superseded by something else and is worth what a gh2 is now. If I'm getting good decent work over the coming year will I get a gh3? Probably not, another gh2 maybe but I'd rather invest in decent glass. It won't depreciate like a mad yoke and when we all move to raw and 4k for weddings (lol) they'll probably still work.
 
I've also been on Flowmotion for about 6 months and I'm pretty happy with it as a solid overall choice for different projects. However, you're only going to get about an hour and a half on a 64gb card so if 2 hours is a requirement you'll need to go with something else. I haven't tried Sanity, but everything I've read here has been overwhelmingly positive.
 
I owned a GH2 and sold it and bought a GH3, trust me it's worth the price difference..... 1080 60fps looks beautiful and while 720p 60fps looks good it's not on the same level. $1300 imo is not a lot for a camera, I own glass and buy constantly. GH2 had to be modified with a Hack in order to be great, GH3 is great out of the box.

GH3 is a weather sealed camera, that alone is worth the price of admission.
GH3 battery last at least twice if not more than the GH2, that is also worth it. I recorded an entire day (10 hrs) on and off and still had half a battery left, I would have easily ran through 3 GH2 batteries.

The list goes on, but my opinion is Strong I would rather have 1 GH3 body then 2 GH2 cameras. Yes the GH2 is great and I actually used it on a recent shoot as my B cam, but the GH3 is a different beast. I love the form factor, also for low light shooting I get less noise which is very helpful. At the end it's your decision, I made mine
Peace
 
Yeah time is a big issue for me. I could get about 1hour on the 75mbps peak reliability patch on my gh1 on an 8gb card and now I need to be able to get about 3hours on my gh2 for 32gb cards, at least till I get the funds to get a few bigger cards. so sanity seems to be winning out at the moment. how is reliability on this patch?
 
Cheers JFR appreciate the comments (though I think a gh2 is a respectable upgrade from a hv30 lol). Who knows I might be getting a gh3 at some stage based on your comments. One thing that makes me hesitant though is that I'm in PAL land and that might mean the damn 30min time limit. I will be in the states in march so may do a little electronics shopping if i win big in vegas lol. Is the gh3 a global camera? i.e. 25p is available. Would be nice to shoot in 25 & 60p :)
 
I'm in JFR's camp here. It sounds like the OP is shooting dark clubs or maybe weddings. THe biggest difference to me between the Gh2 and 3 is not needing a hack. Then there is the battery life. Then the 1080/60p for your slow mo work. I've gone through the hack on the gh2. While they do improve the image on the Gh2, they have all failed one time or another. Even flowmotion. Then the ability to monitor sound, a proper 3.5mm jack for mics, battery grip, much better AF, and WAY better stills photos. All these advantages add up to more successful shoots leading to more successful pocket books.
 
jmw said:
However, you're only going to get about an hour and a half on a 64gb card so if 2 hours is a requirement you'll need to go with something else.
Click to expand...

FlowMotion ver 2.02 at 24H should provide you with about 2 hours of recording time using a 64GB card.

My longest shoot was a 90 minute shot of a symphonic musical piece, and I barely used 2/3 of the 64 GB SDXC card shooting FlowMotion at 24H.
 
Well I videod the gig there recently using the sanity settings. No crashes however when the files came to about 4 gig they stopped (didn't span I believe is the term?) which was a headache as it was only a 1 man 1 cam job. Thankfully I know they only want snippets of the gig put together but I'm worried about a wedding I have coming up soon. What do you think the problem would be. The venue was so small I couldn't use my better manual lenses, so had to utilise the 14mm on the kit lens and bump up the iso. I don't think the native electronic lenses are recommended for this patch. Was that the problem? I had hoped that the facts that the card is pretty fast (not 95mp/s like the pros) that it could cope. May be I should try the "Highest Quality No adverse affects" patch from now on? Seems a shame considering I forked out a decent amount for the higher speed card. What I did/Used:

14-42 lens
Shot at iso 1600
25fps@1080p
Handheld
Sanity Patch
Sandisk 32gig Extreme 45mb/s (can't afford pro)

I did get just over 2hrs of footage which was good so I'm happy with that.
 
tipdrinker said:
Sandisk 32gig Extreme 45mb/s (can't afford pro)
Click to expand...

32GB cards do not span at the higher bitrates. You have to use 64GB SDXC UHS-I cards to span.

The cheapest card that will span at higher bitrates is the Patriot EP 64GB SDXC UHS-I, which sells for about $47 at NewEgg.com
 
good to know. it seems strange how the record times are diminished vs the gh1 (the camera I'm used to). I could get an hour on my 8gig cards with no spanning issues even though I was using a 75mbps patch on that one. Is it something to do with me having to use hbr25p? I'm guessing I need to use a higher gop patch. I was thinking of this one: Cluster DREWnet (12/15 GOP) v9 Boom
 
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tipdrinker said:
I could get an hour on my 8gig cards with no spanning issues even though I was using a 75mbps patch on that one
Click to expand...

75mbps = 9.375 MB/sec

9.375 MB/sec * 60 secs * 60 minutes = 33 GB per hour

So if you were getting a whole hour of footage on an 8 GB card, you were definitely not recording at 75mbps.
 
Jim Simon said:
First, whichever hack you settle on, get yourself the 64 GB version of those SanDisk cards. It makes a difference.

Second, I've been running tests (as well as making money) since August, and have settled on the Cluster v7 'Apocalypse Now' 12/15 GOP (DREWnet) with cbrandin '444 Soft Matrix'. It produces the best image I've seen yet, and I've had no problems using it for weddings on the above card.
Click to expand...

What would you say are the advantages running clusterv7 Apocalypse Now, over Flow motion. Ive had good success with flow, but looking to try some other hacks. When you say best images you have seen, are you refering to noise, artifacts? Just trying to get my head wrapped around the advantages of it. thanks
 
TheDingo said:
75mbps = 9.375 MB/sec

9.375 MB/sec * 60 secs * 60 minutes = 33 GB per hour

So if you were getting a whole hour of footage on an 8 GB card, you were definitely not recording at 75mbps.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of that. It's a variable rate. Average rates according to lpowell are no higher than 50mbps. When you're standing still in a church with not much going on except rings on fingers you can get the guts of an hour on an 8gig card with the patch on gh1. So it was going for an average of 18.2mbps but could go up to 75mbps if the footage demanded it meaning on low detailed scenes I was getting max efficiency while minimising crud on high detailed scenes. simples.
 
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TheDingo said:
32GB cards do not span at the higher bitrates. You have to use 64GB SDXC UHS-I cards to span.

The cheapest card that will span at higher bitrates is the Patriot EP 64GB SDXC UHS-I, which sells for about $47 at NewEgg.com
Click to expand...

I've read that gh2 can't use UHS-I and that with any of these cards the write rate is effectively halved which means that the sandisk ultra 30mbps are faster than my extreme 45mbps (22.5 effectively). Damn!
 
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