GH4 GH4 SD Cards

I was trying to do some testing with some different cards. I have the Kingston card mentioned above- Works fine. I tried the 95mb extreme Pro cards- That works fine too. I have a bunch of 45mb sandisk and those work also. With all three cards I shot in 4k 100mb, 96fps and 1080p at 200mb. I was shaking the camera around like crazy to make the camera work and it never had any issues. I did format each card in camera before testing. I'm currently testing all my sdcards to make sure they genuine cards and knock offs. I order alot of cards from Amazon and have read phony cards being shipped which could/can cause these errors. Currently i haven't found any frauds.
 
Had my first 'camera lock up-pull the battery' moment today shooting 96fps. It started recording 4s into it and just froze up. Using Transcend 128GB UHS3 SD card. Tried again and succeeded.
 
SuperSet said:
Had my first 'camera lock up-pull the battery' moment today shooting 96fps. It started recording 4s into it and just froze up. Using Transcend 128GB UHS3 SD card. Tried again and succeeded.
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Which implies that either (1) the card could not sustain the needed write speed (regardless of its UHS3 rating), or (2) there is a GH4 firmware bug that is causing this. Hopefully it is the latter so that Panasonic will release a firmware update, and by so doing open the door to firmware hacks, such as a language hack similar to what I have on my Japan-bought GF-1 (which allows me to choose English as the UI language).
 
SuperSet said:
Had my first 'camera lock up-pull the battery' moment today shooting 96fps. It started recording 4s into it and just froze up. Using Transcend 128GB UHS3 SD card. Tried again and succeeded.
Click to expand...
This happened to me also in the same mode. I was using Kingston 64gb UHS3
 
JDW said:
Which implies that either (1) the card could not sustain the needed write speed (regardless of its UHS3 rating), or (2) there is a GH4 firmware bug that is causing this. Hopefully it is the latter so that Panasonic will release a firmware update, and by so doing open the door to firmware hacks, such as a language hack similar to what I have on my Japan-bought GF-1 (which allows me to choose English as the UI language).
Click to expand...

If it was a card problem, shouldn't it lock up everytime? And what about that Kingston having issues?
 
SuperSet said:
If it was a card problem, shouldn't it lock up everytime? And what about that Kingston having issues?
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Define "everytime." :-)
No, if the card wasn't fast enough, for example, it would only lockup at those times when the datarate was too fast. And that could be very rare.

I would assume that if the card itself (bad blocks) was defective, and not a speed issue, then perhaps it should lockup in the same place everytime. But I am not sure how cameras write files to SD cards.
 
SuperSet said:
If it was a card problem, shouldn't it lock up everytime? And what about that Kingston having issues?
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The bitrate is variable so most of the time it could be much lower than the maximum. It is only during complex scenes where the bitrate may have to increase to the point that will be too much for certain cards. IPB encoding formats predict how many bits to use based on the complexity of the motion. If there is more random motion in the frame like dozens of trees blowing in random directions in the wind then the encoder has to work harder to use more bits to keep the quality high enough.

This is why some older class 10 cards will work fine in the GH4 for some of the locked down tests people have been doing. The encoder doesn't have to work that hard and may not be doing more than the 50mbps mode on the GH3. The reason why Panasonic suggests a certain level of cards is for those moments when the encoder has to pump up the bitrate to the max level. They want to play it safe and suggest cards that will work 100% of the time and not crash. Some may finally be hitting that max level and seeing slower cards crash.
 
I ordered one of these cards to tide me over until my back-ordered UHS-3 card arrived. I have filled it up 3 times now at 3840 x 2160 29.97, without a single glitch. On my PC with a very good USB3.0 reader I get sustained 60 megabyte/second writes, and 85 megabyte/second reads. Have not tested 1080p 200mbs, but I suspect that would work OK too. For $33, it's a steal.

http://amzn.com/B00HIKBW1G
 
I'm using slower cards than Panasonic recommends—so far, without issues. The SanDisk Extreme 64GB 80MB/s. Even though it's only UHS-1, in theory, it should work fine. My tests show a sustained 40MB/s write speed (320mbps).

My even slower card, the Transcend Class 10 16GB, also works just fine, even in 200mbps recording. That card gets 15MB/s write speed (120mbps).

In practice, the 200mbps ALL-I recording on the GH4 results in even smaller files than the 100mbps. Most of my files are around 30–50mbps—one of my files averages 113mbps. Is that simply the nature of the ALL-I codec? By compressing each frame independently, you can end up with a wide variety of bitrates? I've shot some tests with wild movement, but so far, that hasn't resulted in higher bitrates. Perhaps I need to film something very detailed to tax the codec more.
 
I watch your your youtube channel at times :)


Griffinity said:
I'm using slower cards than Panasonic recommends—so far, without issues. The SanDisk Extreme 64GB 80MB/s. Even though it's only UHS-1, in theory, it should work fine. My tests show a sustained 40MB/s write speed (320mbps).

My even slower card, the Transcend Class 10 16GB, also works just fine, even in 200mbps recording. That card gets 15MB/s write speed (120mbps).

In practice, the 200mbps ALL-I recording on the GH4 results in even smaller files than the 100mbps. Most of my files are around 30–50mbps—one of my files averages 113mbps. Is that simply the nature of the ALL-I codec? By compressing each frame independently, you can end up with a wide variety of bitrates? I've shot some tests with wild movement, but so far, that hasn't resulted in higher bitrates. Perhaps I need to film something very detailed to tax the codec more.
Click to expand...
 
I wonder what the reliability of these are?
Bill T. said:
I ordered one of these cards to tide me over until my back-ordered UHS-3 card arrived. I have filled it up 3 times now at 3840 x 2160 29.97, without a single glitch. On my PC with a very good USB3.0 reader I get sustained 60 megabyte/second writes, and 85 megabyte/second reads. Have not tested 1080p 200mbs, but I suspect that would work OK too. For $33, it's a steal.

http://amzn.com/B00HIKBW1G
Click to expand...
 
In some quick tests, I used a SanDisk Extreme 32GB 45MB/s and was able to record 4K as well as 200 mbps 1080p. These were short clips only 1-2 mins each so would def wanna try with longer clips, but promising. I feel like a faster card would give me more piece of mind. Can't risk it on a paid job...

Any other thoughts/experiences from others?
 
I recorded over 2hrs 30min in C4K 24p on the Transcend 128GB U3 card continuously until the battery died. So far, so good. Glad I bought it because I need to be able to shoot entire concerts without swapping cards. Good to know I can do that at full 4K resolution on one battery. And if I had been using the battery grip, I could have taped almost 3 hours in a row.
 
I have a Komputerbay 128GB card in my GH4 which I just picked up on Tuesday. I have tried all of the most demanding record rates without issue so far including 4K, 1080 @ 200Mbps...etc...

All good so far
 
Recording a Bar Mitzvah ceremony this weekend using my GH4 in UHD as a second cam getting a master shot, hoping to crop in on it in a HD sequence. I'm also using a Transcend 128GB SD card, my testing so far has been successful, now it's time for a real world test.
 
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