Thanks for the testing and feedback, everyone.

arvidtp, I think 2.3b1 should be stable. I set it the same way I did in all of the other modes, putting the max sustained bit rate low enough to never go into fallback mode. But the bit rate in 24P is too variable, making the typical bit rate much lower than I wanted or expected. I'm guessing the variability is because of the short GOP length, which is shorter than I set in all of the other modes. (The GOP length in HBR is actually 6, not 3, because the GH2's interlaced coding uses field pictures) Instead of using 2.3b1, I'd suggest using 2.3b3 in 24L mode. If that bit rate is still too high for you, you can try lowering the 24L bit rate 10 Mbps or so. But if you change anything, you're on your own. Be sure to test your changes.

Short GOPs are less efficient than long GOPs, so they're not suited to low bit rates. The only reason to use short GOPs in the GH2 is to support spanning at higher bit rates. But since short GOPs are less efficient, if you use a short GOP with a low bit rate, the quality is lower. If you really need lower bit rates, I'd suggest using other settings like Cbrandin 44M or Sanity.

@balazer thanks for the cake! great taste ;) i used cake 2.2 and was quite happy to see the great results with modest file sizes, thank you for your hard work on it! will load and go test 2.3b3 now.

So are we all meant to use beta3 now and report our findings? Is beta3 now the "best" cake to use?

@balazer don't worry! if that is expected behavior, its fine - just thought it might have been out of the ordinary to have a lower bitrate :) I actually like having a little lower bitrate myself, since i often shoot performances - gives more time on the card. And as i said - was very hard to pick out any real quality difference. Thank you once again for an awesome hack setting.

i shot some interior shots today with cake 2.3b1 and they averaged only 38 to 41 Mbps on 24H. So i re-flashed with cake 2.2 and sure enough i was getting 61 Mbps again with the same scene. I feel like the quality was a little better on the cake 2.2 shots than the 2.3 shots (makes sense because 1.5x the bitrate) but it was pretty subjective and had trouble picking out any one thing that i thought was worse on those shots that i could screen capture and show here, especially since they were hand held.

@Bueller Yes, it took a hell of a long time, but Youtube accepted it. According to what I've read, Youtube suggests 8 Mbps for 1080p (http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=1728588&guide=1728585&page=guide.cs) but also will accept higher.

I checked the average download speed for Youtube for my area: http://www.youtube.com/my_speed shows an average download speed of 8 Mbps.

Just for fun, I used the Firefox download helper to download the HBR version of my video, and checked the speed of the resulting MP4 file. The result was 257 MB in size, with a total bit rate of 6.1 Mbps.

Bottom line: it's probably a waste of your time to upload any 1080p video to Youtube with more than 8 Mbps stream, and likely we're fooling ourselves that high bit rate makes a difference for Youtube playback -- but I could be wrong.

I'll be trying cake 2.3. Just loaded it, did a few clips so far and averaged 44mbps. Still seems sharp and of quality to me. I had been using mysteron but I feel like the 100mbps is wasteful for card space.

@duartix I have 16GB cards ~ about 6 hour max with 7Mbps. I still have to study timelapses and nature to figure out what I really need. What I do know is that I like long smooth timelapses of sunsets, wandering shadows and that kind of stuff - 1-3 hours shrinked to 15-30 secs. As I have said before I'm going to take about 5 month trip and because I want to travel light I'm not going to take a computer with me, but only one 1TB external hard drive. There ain't going to be fast internet access to where I'm going and that's why I want to keep the file sizes small. I'll get back to you if I have need for more tailored settings. Thanks though.

@vstardust : I'm still struggling to figure out if you need some tailored settings. How big is your bigger card and how long do you need to record? How much x do you want to speed up the video?

The quality difference between 24p and HBR depends on what you are shooting. Usually the difference in quality is not large. (i.e., they both have good quality)

@vstardust

Your opinion, as well as other's willing to drop in, is highly appreciated.

Personally, I also believe that HBR30 is the best option for timelapsing not only because it's more independent from 24p (HBR25 shares the same GOP) but mainly because it gives access to a great range of 360º shutter angles: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2396/gh2-motion-fluidity-360%C2%BA-shutter-test-on-slow-shutter-speeds That is the reason why I endorse 2.5fps instead of 2fps.

Plain vanilla Cake is already excellent at this and if you don't need the extra recording length, I recommend on using it as it is, because it's pretty well suited for 2.5fps, 5fps and 10fps. It just needs a few extra GOP tweaks to achieve longer Recording Length. Tweaking for 2.5fps would give ~30% of the current bitrate (~3.3x the recording length) and for 5fps it would give ~53% of the current bitrate (~1,9x the recording length). For vanilla Cake right now I'm predicting ~18m = 4GB @2.5fps.

Now, addressing some of your questions:

• Spanning problems and timelapsing don't make any sense when used in the same sentence.

• Timelapsing @ 2.5fps uses 4x-8x less bitrate than normal footage with the same IQ. What do you call massive?

@balazer and @duartix thank you very much for your great work with Cake and Timelapser.

Sorry for my non-scientific approach to this, but since it's not an option for me to develope Cake+timelapser further, I'd like to give my opinion on how I think it should work. HBR30p is the best option for timelapse-mode, because 24p is way too valuable to waste. 2fps would be better in a long run instead of 2,5fps if it saves space, but quality is more important. If 2,5fps works better I can deal with it. 60min to 90min / 4GB would be enough for file-size efficiency. Spanning with standard Sandisk Extreme Class 10 30MB/s is also vital for extreme timelapses.

I'm not sure if it is possible to develope HBR30p-timelapse completely separated from 24p, but the quality of 24p shouldn't be not compromised. However the frame quality of timelapser should be as close to the quality of 24p as possible. Combining clips shot using both modes shouldn't cause too much variation in quality for the best viewing experience. Is it even possible to achieve timelapse-mode that is as good quality as 24p without massive file-sizes?

There is no HBR 24p. HBR is 25p or 30p. 24P Cinema is 24p. http://www.personal-view.com/faqs/gh2-usage/gh2-usage