@cbrandin - "All this patch is doing is to force the codec into fall-back mode."

Thanks for coining a descriptive term for this AVCHD encoder syndrome - Fall-Back Mode. With GH2 patch tweaking, I've seen these dysfunctional patterns occur far more often than outright recording failures. I saw Fall-Back Mode happen less often on the GH1 - it would simply break under stress. The drawback, however, is that Fall-Back Mode is usually difficult to spot in test footage without the use of tools such as Stream Parser. Reliability testing on the GH2 has required far more time than it did on the GH1.

@Sharpixels

All this patch is doing is to force the codec into fall-back mode. The Panasonic codec has a mode it goes into when it fails. Resolution is cut back to SD equivalent. All this patch is doing is failing after 20, or so, frames. You can see it where the frame size drops to 300K - which is much lower quality that the factory (un-hacked) settings. Also, the P frames aren't helping because they are the same size as the I frames - you might as well stick to GOP1.

Perhaps some people will like the "look" provided by the camera when it fails (soft, low resolution). But don't kid yourself - this patch forces the camera to do what it does to avoid locking up, which is to force it into low-resolution mode. If the GH2 didn't have this safety-valve mode of operation, this patch would lock-up the camera almost instantly.

There is a lot of good information in various threads here about how to build good patches. Please do a little more reading before posting patches, lest people become discouraged because of the low quality of these patches.

I wonder whether for the 40-80Mb range if it's better to use a long or short GOP for low light shooting. Long GOP should make better use of the available bit rate, but a short GOP should give a cleaner rendition of the noise which will be easier to clean up. And perhaps the compression advantages of a long GOP deminish with noise in the image. I need to find the time to test this!

Sharpixels patch has not been widely tested by p-v community, and some of the more experienced/knowlegable testers here have pointed out serious flaws with some of the other stuff he has posted here recently. Probably better to stick to more reliable, well-known and extensively tested patches like Cbrandin's or Driftwood's. As Athiril pointed out, Cbrandin's 44mbps patch can also do ISO 12800; just load the patch in PTools 3.63 and then tick the high ISO unlock box before you write the new firmware.

Flacnvinyl.. just tick the check box for ISO limit removal after loading the settings.....

Driftwood's patch is absolutely killer, BUT, I need to shoot an event in low light (tonight) and can't afford to kill a card in 7 minutes! Love your work brother. I would like to use a 40-80M patch, but will likely go with smackmy patch since it has the iso limit removed. Would love to use Cbrandin's 44M patch, but it wont let me use high ISOs.,

Use Cbrandin's 44mbps, 12 gop, AQ 4 patch. I shoot in lowlight all the time and it never goes below 39mbps.