Apologies if this is a foolish question, but the only version of PTools available is v3.62, correct? The web link on the 3.61 page ( http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/414/ptool-3.61d-topic/p1 ) is directed to the same page where version 3.62 is hosted ( https://www.personal-view.com/faqs/gh2-hack/ptool-software).

Do the video buffer and audio buffer get set automatically with 3.62 when you change the bitrate? Might increasing these help with spanning?

@arvidtp

Yes, those are the ones. They are all stable except for 1080i 50 mode which is buggy because the low gop is locked to 1080p and 24L won't work. Remember to reformat your card when you start using them and if a clip won't play in cam, just turn the cam on and off and it usually will. The 10 frame glitch in 1080p will be in the front of each clip. But, so far at least, these 1080p 24h settings still look better to me for motion than anything I've seen posted from 3.62.

@kae thanks for the tip about 65mbit extreme settings spanning. would that be this post? http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/10555#Comment_10555

And Big Thanks for all great work by Vitaly and testing and settings done in forum!

(ps Im a hack newbee!)
Ive just hacked and tried out "a new Setting @cbrandin 1080p/ @Butt 720p B-Frames
GOP12" against normal camera settings, for a spesific dark picture and shooting situation. 24p 1080 H.

Used Scandisk 16gb gr10.
Stability, for me no problem. Thou it stops at 4gb file(tried 3 times). Camera will playback files that was stopped by me(not those stopped by 4gbsize). FCP log transfere will convert all files except 4gb files. VoltaicHD converts the 4gb files.

Picture:
Same light, position,nostalgic(-1,0,-1,-1), iso 640, voiglander, f2, generally underexposed, out of focus darker area, resolution chart in focus.

Result: less banding/areas with one single color, more detail,
and much more noice all over, thou noise is small grained, its very prominent.. This acounts also for test in 160iso, white surface, (smooth setting -2-2-2-2) which makes for a lt of green red noise. Too much for my liking.

Any oppinions experience on this noise?

Ill try standard 3.62 settings and AQ: 2.

@arvidtp

If you have to revert back to 3.61, the 65mb extreme settings will span. They look as good as the new 44 (better to my eye) but at least they'll span until the new 3.62 settings are sorted.

Unfortunately, @larsolite, a "really long recording" can be a simple interview. It's difficult to consider a hack that limits a take to 10 minutes as "stable". It would appear that the current hack is giving the GH2 a similar take limit as the 5D. Let's hope the next PTool version overcomes this limit.

So far today I can't get any 24H setting to span across files. Have tried 44, 36 and 32 mbit/sec with and without frame buffer/frame limit doubling and with and without AQ.
I can get 720p60 (SH) to span across files fine at 32mbit/sec with only the bitrate patches checked - have not tried in other modes.

I've also been having problems with spanning 24H when hacked with ptool 3.62. I had a shot that failed to span (camera just stopped recording) at 44mbit, so i went down to 36 mbit, which apparently was on the edge and spanned across two files, but when it went to create the third (during which time there was more motion in the shot) if failed and stopped recording. I then tried shooting for a long time at 28mbit (my 24L setting) and it spanned fine until the rest of my 32GB card was filled up. So it seems that maybe high bitrates don't span well with ptool 3.62.

My settings had 720p and 1080p24 Frame Buffers (FB) doubled, all 3 Frame Limits doubled and AQ to 3 - Most to details for both 1080 and 720.

I'm using a patriot LX series class 10 SDHC card, which is not the fastest in the business. When i benchmark it, write hovers around 19MB/sec, but drops down to 13 for a small bit of time regularly a couple times a second - meaning probably there is a stoppage of writing every once in a while on the card and maybe this is causing the spanning and/or 720p randomly dying on complex scenes issues I'm having at anything over 32mbits/sec for 720p60.

I have not tried importing anything into FCP (i only have FCE actually) but ffmpeg has never had a problem with re-wrapping any of these spanned clips into .mov files (using Media Converter - a free ffmpeg GUI).

I plan on testing spanning more today, esp. if i can get my DC coupler working with a power supply i have here. Spanning properly is really important to me.

Has anyone a stable setting for longtime recordings over 10-15 minutes? I did a test with several hack settings around 42Mbps-44Mbps with my new Card "SanDisk Extreme Pro SD 16GB (45MB/s)". It's always the same. When the recorded file reaches 4.29GB, the cam normally would save a new file that would again record up to 4.29 GB ... and so on until the card is full. BUT the record stops! The cam can't play back the corrupted file and Final Cut doesn't recognize the SD-Card as a camera any more to import the file. The conversion-programm VoltaicHD is able to open the "damaged" file to convert it into a MOV. With Ptools v3.61d it was working quite well but the "blip" at the beginning of each file was there. Now the blip is gone but I can't record longer films. Thank you very much for any suggestions!!! I have a PAL-Version and different highspeed-cards.

Had a social tonight and shot with Butts 2nd version settings on 20 1.7 + generic anamorphic + Tokina 72 0.4 - never had so much fun - surrounded by editors directors, facility owners of the highest lvl, all having used Af101 extensively as the lowest cam theyd accpept of course! , and all to a point interested in what you lovely guys are doing to the GH2 - as it was I was there with Butts lovely stable No2 setting loaded, had 12 hours of chat, expectation and plain pointing the bare cam (no extra EVF, LCDVF etc) at em and the late London sun, most of them own a 5D+7D and as my runt circulated and the questions were asked - people who actually make shit (as in as we ramble on in forums these guys actually make shit ) loved it, funny night ! Hey I know nowt, just point shootand chop, Im a sound engineer by day - that end I DO know but I receive edits daily with footage that I think .... really! For broadcast with no ADR budget or conception - last year had to deploy CEDAR as a plugin, and most dials I receive these days are terminal, sadly never in my youth would that be as we rotated from Boom swinging to FIsher Boom to recording to Track-laying to mixing - never let your fellow down. Saddest (eternal) problem is be it TV or film or project - no-one leaves the theatre whistling a two shot - record sound well on location - the turd can be fixed (ish) but boy it's far more expensive than actually having a real crew!

The GOP 12 for the 720p might work OK. Big problems only seem to come up with very short GOP's (6, or less). I'm not sure about how it will work with B frames. I can think of reasons it might fail, and also reasons it might work perfectly. I look forward to hearing about your test results.

Chris