Hello

@Drifwood please where is the link for donload a PTool 3.62D?

Thanks

This is a good test. I'm shooting for a few days but if someone hasn't jumped on it by then I'll give it a go.

In comparing two patches, rather than looking at the numbers, devise a test that will crash one but not the other, and then you will have a real world answer. Take a typical scene that you shoot and use as sharp a lens as possible--with edge sharpness--then bump up the F stop beyond what you normally use and see which one works better. Just as important, see which one looks better, or grades better.

There is spanning, then there is always spanning. I spent several weeks developing a 24p patch for my GH1 (the "event" patch) and I found that even when I thought I had "the one", every now and then the spanning would fail. I haven't had the current patch fail (indoors) but the bitrate comes in around 23. Absent some magic setting, I agree the bitrate is the key.
However, I didn't see a big IQ difference indoors, and, as others have noted, at a certain point you may get more noise for whatever reason. The way I tested the patch, and I'm sure someone can some up with a better one, was to shoot a highly detailed scene using high CRI lights and an F Stop of 5.6 on the 20mm lens (the 20mm has very good edge detail). The scene had multiple shadows so I could monitor the noise. The patch was said to "span" if it passed this test 20 times. However, who knows? If recording a wedding, perhaps the stock firmware on the GH2 is the way to go. Sorry, newly wed ones, my card failed. Could you get married again? Sometimes reliability trumps quality. I have a very expensive preamp, and I don't use it for live recording. Why? Once in a blue moon it will pick up RF or other electronic junk. Maybe for one minute, maybe once a year. But I'd rather not worry about it.

There is another settings with no spanning problem for me at 66 mbits: Driftwood's beautiful buffers in L Mode. You only have to change the original Video Bitrate 24L=110000000 to 66000000. I shot a 42 minutes with no interruptions. No static recordings, but an outside recording in my garden on a windy day.

@jdn
alright thanks.

@bartolomeo Spanning simply means that when you reach approx 4 gigabytes in one clip and new clip (.mts file) is created which seamlessly continues where the last clip left off (i.e. you could run the camera for an hour and get a bunch of 4 gig .mts files that are continuous). With ptools 3.62 high bit rate settings, when you reach 4 gigs the camera does not span anymore, it just stops recording.

@sohus Spanning is reliant on how much bitrate is being used - if there's more detail = more bitrate/bandwidth in use, therefore over a certain amount of bitrate (we think 32M at the time of spanning) the encoder no longer spans. If its low detail then not much bitrate is being used and it should span! Remember the codec is VBR (variable bitrate)

We're still learning about Encoder settings - it may but possibly not have someething to do with spanning or controlling the bitrate... However, we do know that Encoder setting 1080p/i 1 =2 gets rid of the P frame in GOP1.

@sohus Its either keeping the data below a certain overall bitrate threshold (like you talk about i frames) or possibly a combination of Encoder settings 2, 3 & 4 per resolution (1080/1080i/720)