GH2 GH-2 video in high bitrate stops recording after about 6 or 7 minutes

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WhatAndGiveUpShowBusiness

Member
Recorded video today in high bitrate mode (EOSHD Vanilla hack produces 44 mbps bitrate) and the camera simply stopped recording after about 6 or 7 minutes or so of recording. It did this on several takes. I was on a shoot and had to keep the recording session going with a long take, so I bailed out of high bitrate mode and reverted to shooting a regular Cinema 24p bitrate, which (as in the past) allowed me to record for 30 minutes (that's how long I needed to record) with no forced stoppages.

Has anyone experienced this? Possible to get more extended takes (30 minutes or longer?) at HBR mode?

FWIW, SD card I used is 32GB, 44 mbps (Sandisk). The actual files produced both by the HBR recordings and the 24p recording came out fine, no problem with conversion and transfer to my Mac and they look fine on viewing.
 
What was the file size reached when the recording stopped?

Did you hit the FAT32 4GB file size limit at the higher bitrate?
 
WhatAndGiveUpShowBusiness said:
Recorded video today in high bitrate mode (EOSHD Vanilla hack produces 44 mbps bitrate) and the camera simply stopped recording after about 6 or 7 minutes or so of recording. It did this on several takes. I was on a shoot and had to keep the recording session going with a long take, so I bailed out of high bitrate mode and reverted to shooting a regular Cinema 24p bitrate, which (as in the past) allowed me to record for 30 minutes (that's how long I needed to record) with no forced stoppages.

Has anyone experienced this? Possible to get more extended takes (30 minutes or longer?) at HBR mode?

FWIW, SD card I used is 32GB, 44 mbps (Sandisk). The actual files produced both by the HBR recordings and the 24p recording came out fine, no problem with conversion and transfer to my Mac and they look fine on viewing.
Click to expand...

It's the 4gb file limit. You need a patch that spans
 
FWIW, I never had good luck with any of the EOSHD patches (granted, I only tried them long enough to observe that they didn't work...)

FlowMotion has been flawless with Transcend Class 10 cards, or stock firmware still works dandy.
 
The key to spanning with the higher bit-rate patches is to use 64GB SDXC cards, which have a better memory controller than the SDHC cards do.

On the low cost end of things, I would recommend the Patriot EP SDXC UHS-I 64GB card which costs less than $50 from NewEgg.com. I own a few of these, and they have worked flawlessly with the 100 Mbits Flow Motion ver 2.02 patch.

If you can afford it, the SanDisk 95MB/sec SDXC UHS-I 64GB cards are probably the best card you can buy right now, but they cost about $130 each. ( I also own a pair of these cards )
 
mcbob said:
FWIW, I never had good luck with any of the EOSHD patches (granted, I only tried them long enough to observe that they didn't work...)

FlowMotion has been flawless with Transcend Class 10 cards, or stock firmware still works dandy.
Click to expand...

The general consensus is that you'd be better off using a patch from one of the recognised patchers - like Driftwood etc.
I think they look down on the EOSHD patches as quite inferior.
 
Dingo, Fresno Bob and mcbob, when you talking about spanning, what do you mean? I'm not sure I know how you're using the term. So far, my understanding of the word is that lengthy HD video recording on SD cards tends to produce file fragments of roughly 4 GB each, and those fragments can later be joined up in conversion from the raw .mts format in which they were recorded to editable formats such as .mov. On tips from these forums (perhaps even from Dingo?), I've been able to get that rejoining of fragments to happen nicely, using conversion software (ClipWrap), which sometimes automatically recognizes that the fragments are related for the joining-up, and sometimes needs to be gently reminded which fragments need joining-up. I had thought that was what was meant by spanning. But your posts make me wonder if that's what you mean.

The problem in my initial post, which I think you have actually been addressing (though I'm not sure because I'm not positive what you mean by "spanning") is that HBR recording resulted in a full stoppage of recording, not merely fragmenting during recording. (Bruce, to answer your question, file size on those aborted recordings, as well as on the multiple fragments I got when the camera successfully recorded a nice long 30+ minute take in lower bitrate mode without stopping recording, was 4.29 GB. But, since at the lower bit rate of standard 24p video recording, the recording simply resulted in fragments without aborting the recording, I don't see what that file size has to do with it. That may be important; if so, I just don't understand how.)

If it turns out that the cure for this problem is getting a 64 gig SD card, so be it. Seems a (relatively) small price to pay for getting access to lengthy HBR recording, and would merely continue the "in for a penny, in for pound" tendency I'm noticing on putting together a nice rig. (Typical thoughts over the past few weeks: gee, $X (anywhere from $12 to $145.00) hardly seems like that much, considering what I spent for the used but good-as-new GH-2 and lens...")
 
I use class 10 Transcend cards with Flowmotion and it spans and never stops recording until there is no space left.
 
"Spanning" means that the camera will keep recording once the 4GB FAT32 file size limit has been reached, so your long recording is stored as multiple 4GB segments and meta-data that describes how these 4GB segments can be stitched together to create one large video file on your hard drive.

With the high bit-rate patches the camera needs high performance memory cards in order to keep up with the video being recorded. If the card can't keep up the camera won't "span", so all you can record is one 4GB segment of video and then the camera stops.
 
Thanks very much for that clarification. That's what I suspected you meant. I'm glad to hear it, as it means there's a pretty easy solution. Sounds like I'm headed for a new, higher memory card purchase.
 
You could also change the recording quality to "24L" (24P Cinema) and see if it spans with your present Sandisk cards.
 
I am already able to get spanning with 32GB Sandisk cards (both 30mbps and 45 mbps cards) with 24p Cinema set at 24H. That's not the problem. Problem is, how to get spanning for long recordings where I record video at high bitrate. But that's been answered by TheDingo: need to get cards with more memory. Unless you're saying I don't have to sacrifice quality by setting quality at 24L -- another thing I'm obviously ignorant about is the relationship between high and low quality and bitrate. But my initial post reflects my goal of keep all recording quality specs as high as possible and still be able to do long takes.
 
WhatAndGiveUpShowBusiness said:
I am already able to get spanning with 32GB Sandisk cards (both 30mbps and 45 mbps cards) with 24p Cinema set at 24H. That's not the problem. Problem is, how to get spanning for long recordings where I record video at high bitrate. But that's been answered by TheDingo: need to get cards with more memory. Unless you're saying I don't have to sacrifice quality by setting quality at 24L -- another thing I'm obviously ignorant about is the relationship between high and low quality and bitrate. But my initial post reflects my goal of keep all recording quality specs as high as possible and still be able to do long takes.
Click to expand...

If you can already span in 24H, consider if there's any significant benefit in spanning at HBR other than 24H is 24p/24 frames-per-second and HBR 30p/30 fps.

Here are bitrates from two different clips with same subject, lighting... (Flow Motion hack):

24H (24p):

2093xxv.jpg



HBR (30p):

zbo90.jpg



Results may vary.
To the eye, that difference in bit rate is not going to matter. Yet the look of 30p vs. 24p may be a personal preference. 24p has more motion blur, for a traditional filmic look. 30p has a lightly more live look, but the average viewer will not know either way.

Your patch may be different and you can run tests to see the bitrates for yourself or just get the better cards which will work with any of the hacks.

MediaInfo:
http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

Stream Parser (used in test above):
StreamParser Install.zip
 
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cut2052 said:
If you can already span in 24H, consider if there's any significant benefit in spanning at HBR other than 24H is 24p/24 frames-per-second and HBR 30 fps.
Click to expand...

...To clarify things: When I mentioned high bit-rate recording I was not talking about Panasonic HBR mode.

I was referring to GH2 patches that require memory cards with a high bit-rate WRITE speed in order to span beyond one 4GB file segment.

The higher performance SDHC Class 10 cards can span at bit-rates up to 50 - 60 Mbps, but will stop spanning at bit-rates higher than this.

To span at these higher bit-rates ( beyond 50 Mbps ) you have to switch to SDXC 64GB UHS-I memory cards that utilize a better memory controller in the card and have sustained WRITE speeds of 30MB/sec or faster.

It's easy to test the WRITE speed of a SD card by using the free ATTO Drive benchmark and using a good SD card reader.

This will tell you how fast your SD card can record data. Good SDHC cards will have a WRITE speed of 16MB/sec or better.
( I recommend using USB 3.0 card-readers even with USB 2.0 computer connections, as most USB 2.0 card readers have an artificial 20MB/sec ceiling that limits READ and WRITE speed )

Performing the same test with SDXC cards, good cards will show a WRITE speed of 30MB/sec or better.
( i.e. My SanDisk 95MB/sec cards showed a WRITE speed of 72MB/sec when tested with a USB 3.0 computer connection )
 
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TheDingo said:
...To clarify things: When I mentioned high bit-rate recording I was not talking about Panasonic HBR mode.

I was referring to GH2 patches that require memory cards with a high bit-rate WRITE speed in order to span beyond one 4GB file segment.

The higher performance SDHC Class 10 cards can span at bit-rates up to 50 - 60 Mbps, but will stop spanning at bit-rates higher than this...
Click to expand...
I understand. The OP stated he wanted to span in HBR. I was just pointing out that if he ran some tests and checked the bitrate, HBR may not be that different from 24H (which he can already do) besides the frame rate.

I really don't know the Vanilla hack, but FWIU it's not anywhere near what you're recommending. OP might just want to get the better cards anyway and do a better hack for a more significant bitrate increase.
 
Thedingo, it's not a spanning problem it's a patch problem. I have exactly the same patch and a 64gb SDXC 95mb/s card and it still shuts down. But....only on complex scenes such as running water and night movement - the rest of the time it's fine.
The solution is to go to another hack like flowmotion. I think driftwood is too high a bitrate to work stabally all the time and has problems in the edit workflow in PPro.
I still use Vanilla and the pics are amazing, but I know what scenes will not record and shut the camera down.
 
malibudutchie said:
I have exactly the same patch and a 64gb SDXC 95mb/s card and it still shuts down. But....only on complex scenes such as running water and night movement - the rest of the time it's fine.
Click to expand...

To ensure that a patch/memory-card combo works all the time, you can perform a "stress" test using a computer display and any 3D benchmarking app that can be set to loop.

When I bought my first Patriot EP SDXC UHS-I card, I wanted to be sure that it would span with Flow Motion ver 2.02 in the 24H 100 Mbps mode. So I grabbed a copy of the very old FutureMark 2001SE 3D benchmarking app ( FutureMark Legacy Benchmarks ) and set it to loop the Nature test continuously, and then filmed this using the FlowMotion patch for an hour. Afterwards I checked the video file to see how high the data-rate was, which was averaging 90+ Mbps. I later repeated the test using a SanDisk 95MB/sec SDXC card and got the same results.
 
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