GH2 Hacked GH2 Longest Record Time?

B

Benjobe

Well-known member
I'm interested to know how long a hacked GH2 can record. 1 hour? As long as the battery & media last?

I know that some DSLRs cannot record longer than 30 minutes. I also know that some DSLRs' sensor overheats and shuts down during long record times. A hacked GH2 doesn't have a recording limit because it can span files. But will its sensor overheat after too long?

I have a GH2 with the Flow Motion 2.02 hack and the longest I've ever recorded anything was 33 minutes. I'm interested in using it to record long-form events like concerts. Can someone share the longest record time they've accomplished on their hacked GH2?

Thanks.

ps: I searched the forum for this topic but I couldn't find any relevant threads.
 
A NTSC or Hacked PAL GH2 can record as long as media and power permits. AVCHD is designed to bypass the 4GB file limit by spanning multiple files. PAL GH2's have a 30 minute limit because of some tax law or something. The hack will bypass that.

However, some hacks will not span, or are dependent on a certain type of SDHC card to span correctly. I use FlowMotion with Class 10 cards. If I need something to span, I shoot in 24L rather than 24H. I might not be required to do so, but I prefer to play it safe if I need something to span.
 
I will recheck today, but I think with Flowmotion,HBR,64gig SD10 card..the time read, 1hr, 40mins...if the readout is accurate. I dont trust the time-left readouts with hacks. Best thing to do is point your cam at a clock and fill up your card, using your cam setting of choice.
 
I did a test and got 2 hours 14 minutes of continuous shooting before the battery failed. This was with a 64GB Class 10 SanDisk Extreme card and the Flowmotion 2.02 hack set to 24L. At the beginning of the shoot the camera estimated that there was 4 hours available on the card. At the end it was estimating that I had 26 minutes available footage remaining. So the high bitrate must have eaten into that earlier estimate a bit. Also I had the LCD screen flipped open the whole time, so I may have been able to fill up the whole card if I'd used only the EVF.

I pointed the camera out the window at a breezy tree with the leaves filling the frame through the Olympus 45mm set to F2.0. So it was a high detail and moderate movement shot. The average bitrate for the shot ended up being 52Mbps.

I tried copying the PRIVATE folder onto my Mac but it failed for some reason. I tried using Adobe Encode to transcode the files directly from the card but it failed for some reason too. So I used FCP 7 Log & Transfer window to access the card and transcode the AVCHD spanned files into a ProRes422 file. The AVCHD files were 52GB total. The ProRes422 file ended up being 112GB.

FYI, in the past when using the Flowmotion hack I've had to use Adobe Encode to transcode the AVCHD into ProRes422 if the camera battery dies during the shoot. If the camera battery dies during a shoot I cannot use FCP 7 Log & Transfer to access the footage on the card. I don't know why this is. I've learned to be very conscious of the battery life during a shoot. If I can stop shooting and shut down the camera before a battery dies, put in a new battery, and continue shooting then FCP 7 has no trouble transcoding the files. But in cases where the battery fails it's nice to know that I can still transcode the files using Adobe Encode.

So after all that it seems like I can use the GH2 for 2 hour length events. Not bad for a tiny DSLR.
 
The longest I've shot was a symphonic concert, Flow Motion ver 2.02 24H using a SanDisk Extreme 64GB SDXC UHS-I 95MB/sec card : one 90 minute take, with room for another 30 minutes of footage.
 
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