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SANITY 4 and 5.1
  • 1139 Replies sorted by
  • @Ralph_B I've been testing the PNY 90mb cards lately with no problems. For those that want to save a few dollars it might be worth trying.

  • @peternap

    Spanning has been working OK with the PNY cards?

  • Yep....so far, Sunday will stress it to the limit so I'll know for certain then.

  • I got curious tonight and decided to do a quick test to compare sanity and the stock firmware of the gh2. I used the same settings (shutter speed, lens, iris, iso), shot 1080i 60fps in fsh (i believe). Used the same lighting setup without moving anything.

    I found a very similar image in my test results. I don't think i would have been able to pick one or the other from memory. Just wondering what others thought!

    YouTube -

    Vimeo -

  • @nosignal

    First of all, it must be said that the GH2's stock compression for 24P is pretty good. Less so for 720p and 1080i. The weakness of the stock 24P is in the deep shadows. This is where codecs traditionally throw away information because the human eye is not sensitive to this region. For the most part, it works well and fools you. But if you have to lift the shadows in grading, you will see a definite improvement by using a good hack. Another area where the hacks help is in the rendering of the noise at higher ISO's. It's cleaner and finer - less blotchy. Lastly, a good hack will render the finest detail with a bit more definition.

    Admittedly, all this is in pixel peeper country. But at the end of the day, I think it's safe to say, that all of us invovled in this are simply interested in getting the most out of our equipment.

  • I figured it was a case where my test didn't quite put the hack's power to use. I'm just now trying to understand and get my head wrapped around what all the different hacks do. hahah

  • well, I first time hacked my gh2 yesterday..and i didn't test it to this moment. i decided to Sanity because of 720p/60fps (I'm shooting skateboard and I'm looking for nice smooth slow motion) but when i started to shoot in SH mode ( 720p60fps i believe) with shutter sped set to 120 (twice to frames) my shoot was stopped because of "too slow card......." i have Sandisk ultra, SDHC class 10, 30mbs 8gb - is that card really to slow? or i used some wrong settings? thanks, Lukasz Bajon EDIT: i just bought sandisk extreme 30mb/s class 10 16gb...and the same situation..trying to shoot SH mode (shutter speed 125) and after 2sec it's stopped

  • @bajonlukasz

    It's impossible for me to test every card out there. So, if the message says your card is too slow, then it's too slow. You can try shooting in H mode and see if that works. The difference in picture quality is almost imperceptible. And of course, you can try a different card :)

  • thanks for your answer..of course i know that u can't test every card; ) its weird for me that i can record 24H/L (low light, good light no metter) but when I'm switching to FSH/FH/SH/H i get Write Error... EDIT: now I'm confused...trying again all modes and its working very well ; )

  • FSH/FH/SH/H has always been touchier. When the hack first came out I tried to make my own settings (before I decided to give up and defer to the masters like Ralph) and i would get write or spanning errors much more often with FSH/FH/SH/H modes.

    Also I've got a feeling that more complex scenes that cause the codec to work harder for whatever reason will sometimes take too much time away from the card writing process and just tip the balance so you'll get a card write error with a card that normally is barely fast enough. I speculate that the buffering code in the GH2 firmware is just not written optimally. I've run into stuff at work developing audio gear where we need to both write to an EEPROM (which is flash so it takes time) and do digital audio streaming at the same time, and some clever coding is often required to do both those things at once in a cheap little microcontroller without interrupting the audio and causing an audible glitch.

  • where is the patch located on this site?

  • @howardst

    The patch is in the first post of this thread.

    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2642/sanity-4-and-5.1/p1

    You'll see 6 files. Sanity 5.1 is the file at the far right.

  • Was Documenting some theater last night for a client. Have always used sanity 5.1 and never had any problems with it. Last night in the last 10 mins of the performance the recording stopped and there was a write error which froze my camera. Could not turn off the camera had to get the battery out to restart.
    Was shooting 1/40th sec iso: 1600 Nikon AIS lens 50mm (So no electrical contact. Sandisk extreme 95mbps card.

    It was a scene which was quite busy with lots of detail. Fine see thru screen in front of actors, detailed puppets and children with glitter clothing and bubbles. Could the detail have pushed things over the edge? See image. Any ideas. Thanks

    00011-1.png
    1280 x 720 - 1M
  • Hey, I had the same problem last week. I shot a theater and each about 20 min my GH2 stopped filming. I had the Sanity 3 hack, at 3200 iso, in HBR, and in P for the shooting mode (it was in second camera) and with a Sandisk 64GB 95 MB/s SD card. I have another theater to shoot. What do you advise to me : charging the original GH2 firmware again or try another hack which is more stable ? In the second case which hack? according that the show I have to shot is 1h30 long ? Thank you

  • @mjonas67

    Try Sanity 5.1. It's way better and more stable than Sanity 3, which is ancient. A lot of work and testing has gone into Sanity over the years. Do try it. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

  • I had Sanity X stop recordering on me last week. I was filming a doc interview at ISO 800 with the Panny 20mm lens. I had it on 24L so I figured it would span on my Sandisk extreme 30mbps card but alas, it did not.

  • @dbp

    You must remember, 24L in Sanity X is actually the 24H setting from Sanity 5.1. And 24H in Sanity 5.1 will not span on a class 10 card. If you want spanning in Sanity X (both 24H and 24L), you must use a faster card. Users have reported successful spanning with Sandisk 95M, 80M and 45M cards.

  • there is no stable hbr30 patch with panny lens yet

  • @Ralph_B Ahh, my bad. I thought original Sanity would span on the old 30M cards.

    It's funny cause I actually have an 80M card but I was running it in my other camera. Doh! I'll use that one from now on.

  • Hi ralph. I love your sanity 4 hack. I can see clearly the improvement of my videos. I just got burned with it though. I didnt know that when spanning and it does span on my 30 cards that if you shut the camera off you can no longer film on that card. As anyone who uses a gh2 knows battery life is not good lol. Is there any other workaround for this other than having to film a smaller file before shutting off camera?

  • @howardst

    You say you can no longer film on the card - what does that mean? Do you get a message of some sort? Are you sure the card isn't simply filled?

  • Its an error type message. No the card is not full. This is a common issue with alot of people. They use the workaround of filming a short clip before shutting cam down then when the power back up they can resume filming on same card. Im surprised you havent heard of this. Superb patch but i need to fix this issue. I tested it on, 4 different type cards all 35mg or better speed and it happens

  • Try Sanity 5.1 or Sanity X. They're both better than Sanity 4, anyway. I've never had an issue like this with either of them.

  • GH2 (most shot) & GF3 (motorizer slider and mini mode behind the sea), all camera with Sanity 5 and my personal vision of Pasadina Pulse. Audio Rode wmp on Juicedlink cx231 on zoom h1.

  • GH2 + Sanity 5.1 / fsh 50i / 13-31 mbps / nostalgic mode. no color correction. Edit in Premiere h264 25p 12mbps