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GH2 Cake v2.3: reliability and spanning in 720p, HBR, 24p, and VMM at 2-2.5x stock bit rates
  • 609 Replies sorted by
  • @balazer
    This v2.3 is indeed very sweet piece of cake.... yes, it does what it should: in 24p spans always with Sandisk SDXC 64GB 95MB/s and has wonderful IQ up to ISO 4000, that is enough for nearly fully dark night, I never needed more than that. Thank you so much!

  • Yep I have been using this hack for GH2 and GF2 for long time. No single crash. The only problem is that with GH2 I have to power off camera sometimes to get in-camera playback working.

    @balazer Suggestion: Could you migrate "Pasadena_Pulse_Audio_V2_Beta2" audio hack to cake by default?

  • Thanks for the kind words.

    The stock audio settings have always worked for me, and I'm not familiar with the audio hacks.

  • so if I have GF2 would I be able to install the GH2 cake.zip from page one? I hear people using cake on there GF2.

  • Yes you can

  • great thanks

  • What data rate does the latest Cake give you in HBR 25p 1080? Thanks

  • Hi, This is the first time I've applied any hack to my newly bought GH2 and I've just been doing a few shots but when I view the videos on my PC it says that they have a bitrate of between 25 and 40 Mbps. Is this what should be happening, or could there be a problem as I was under the impression that Cake 2.3 in 24H was 66Mbps.

    I'm using a Transcend class 10 card.

    Thanks for any help, I'm really looking forward to using the camera when the weather improves, It was a Christmas present :)

    Max.

  • In 24H mode, Cake yields around 60 Mbps typically. You'll get a lower bit rate if significant portions of the image are all black or white or with very low detail. I don't know how you measured the bit rate, but I suggest using VLC. If you're not getting what you expect, redo your patching with PTool to make sure it is correct. Make sure you don't load any other saved settings or check any boxes before you load the Cake .ini settings. Also, reset the camera in Menu, Settings, Reset.

  • Thanks for the quick response, I think there might have been quite a lot of white as the image was slightly over exposed, the scenes were also fairly simple but were movement heavy that is what it said in explorer and I did a calculation to confirm (filesize/length*8).

    I tried installing the patch twice, but I've constantly had bitrates far from 66Mbps. Although I am happy with the quality I was wondering if it was still below what is possible, as I said it's new so I don't have much knowledge of what improvement I should be seeing.

    I've included a link to one of the videos I shot today.

    http://www.gridlockmedia.co.uk/00002.MTS (00:20/71.8MB)

    Thanks again, Max.

  • The file looks as expected. The quality is high. (QPs all around 18) The bit rate is low because there is very low detail. It's mostly out of focus.

  • Thank you, I just wasn't sure whether I'd done sonething wrong but that's great.

    Thanks for your help, Max.

  • @FilmCat
    The bitrate is variable in this patch and that is good. Mount some sharp lens and shoot well-lit scene with many details in focus and you'll see how the bitrate is boosting. This patch is really excellent, balazer did great work here using the best of GH2's potential while keeping it stable and just always spanning on the 64GB Sandisk Extreme card.

  • i've been using the cake v2.3 and it's really good, just one thing to make sure, when using the 720/60p mode in manual mode, changing the shutter speed while recording takes about a second for the info on the screen to update, also when using the manual focus while recording the focus bar updates slowly then the focus itself... as if the system is heavy loaded, is this normal with the hack?

  • Yes, it is normal. Screen updates in 720/60p are slow, but the camera itself responds normally to your button presses and rotation of the thumb wheel and focus ring.

  • ok, thanks, and it's safe to use this mode right? it's not overloading the camera or something like this ( i don't now much about how it works... maybe it's a silly question but i just want to be sure)...

  • It is safe.

  • Thank you Balazer. I have to say you have done an amazing job with this hack.

  • @balazer, these belong here.

    using Cake v2.3 GH2 and Voightlander 17.5mm lens.

    Thanks to driftwood for helping me figure out which patch I had used.

  • Hi, what is the matrix being used in cake 2.3? is this the stock matrix?

  • @emynach The I/B frames scaling matrices have stock values but B frames aren't used in Cake IIRC. The P frames have non-stock matrices and there is scaling fallback defined for all modes. This is what I could gather looking at the settings definition, but @balazer can tell you more.

  • I-frames and P-frames use the stock I-frame scaling values. Fallback mode uses the B-frame scaling values.

  • @emynach : Sorry for leading you off on P-Frames, but since the scaling values for P-Frames was defined in the settings, I assumed it was different from stock.

    @balazer: Thanks for clearing that up.