I modded Cake 1.2 to use a standard 12-frame GOP (with B-frames) & Q16 with higher frame limit. I investigated the Qs on my recent tests, and found my goto Chris66(AQ2) is typically a pretty solid Q15-16, so it's a reasonable value for long-GOP.

I ran the same tests with my mod (I call it 'Sweet16' : ), and it produces very similar quality to Chris', except the motion quality is more consistent - I guess partly because of the constant-quality factor, and also due to the higher frame limit which is useful during motion. It has a look that I like. File sizes are very slightly smaller on a wide shot, and a bit higher on a Tele (as the frame limit is higher). I'm about to do a major shoot with it, including some lowlight, so we'll see how that pans out reliability-wise.

I've now compared Cake 1.2, Flow 1.11, Chris66 and my Sweet16. They look very similar (if not identical) for still shots with minor motion - but there are differences in larger motion quality and style. But honestly they're not that big anymore. If you're a perfectionist like me you'll find a favourite, but if you just want really good quality at reasonably file sizes and care more about shooting exciting stuff than obsessing, any of them are a massive step up from stock. And it's great that so much effort is now also going into stability by the patch authors.

Set the QP to 18 works on SanDisk HD Video (HBR 25p). Moved the camera very fast around, but the bitrate is only 22800 Kbt/s.

Have you guys ever got a QP lower than 20 to work? Try as I might, I can't go below 20 no matter what... :(

@balazer is absolutely right. For the majority of shooting scenarios you can get much lower overall Q (and constant across the whole picture). Set it to over 20?... you've just fucked the majority of recording scenarios.

@Mozes : Can't download 00014.mts but 00011.mts has a lot of problems, here's a tip (From StreamParser itself):

Frame--Type QP---Min---Max--Range---DC Skipped QST-High

00000 (IDR) 20 20 20 1 6 0

00001 ( P ) 22 22 28 7 7 1

00002 ( P ) 22 22 32 11 7 1

00003 ( I ) 22 20 35 16 6 0

00004 ( P ) 22 22 32 11 7 2

00005 ( P ) 22 22 32 11 7 2

00006 ( I ) 22 20 35 16 6 0

00007 ( P ) 22 22 28 7 7 0

00008 ( P ) 22 22 28 7 7 0

00009 ( I ) 22 20 35 16 6 0

00010 ( P ) 22 22 28 7 7 1

00011 ( P ) 22 22 28 7 7 0

00012 ( I ) 22 20 35 16 6 0

00013 ( P ) 22 22 28 7 7 1

00014 ( P ) 22 22 28 7 7 0

00015 ( I ) 22 20 34 15 6 0

As usual, experience counts and @Lpowell was right on the money. There is too much QP fluctuation. Here's how it looks visually on StreamEye. On I-Frames the QP is all over the place but it's in the P-Frames that you can see clearly what's happening: the encoder is resorting in and out of heavier QPs as it runs out of bitrate and then recovers. Light ones are Q=22, darker is Q=32!!!

A good picture with even IQ should look close to a flat light grey screen.

Anyway, those trees are a real torture test.

(edit) Just saw @balazer's reply. The irony of all this is he looked at them and though they were fine. And why is it ironic? Because I'm starting to believe that we are all splitting hairs. I also looked at the file and I couldn't spot any IQ issues between QP=22 and QP=32. We are moving so many bits (over stock) that most of the times, a visual inspection results in nothing. But the file has real issues.

@duartix Shutter was never lower then 1/50.
In some parts even iso 1600 is used with a shutter 1/1300
mts 011 Download at SpeedyShare
mts 014 Download at SpeedyShare

Perhaps the reason is because some part are out of focus ?

i still have the original files, and can upload them if needed.

i have added the stream parser shots from the files before and after, the other shots.

ps i did use in some shots i-dynamic HIGH!!!!!

Mozes and Mark, thanks for testing.

Duartix, yes, all modes work. 1080i and 720p received only minimal testing, but I left them in because they seemed to be working fine.

Mmm, the file did get smaller then i wanted.
Buts its oké, except the original files looks much better
Still uploading....

Cheers @balazer !

I've just noticed you updated Cake. You managed to have all modes working?

I still like the old cake and have gone back to using it after testing some of the Driftwood settings Will try new cake once I pony up the money for a fast card

The Panasonic default quantizer setting is 20, which results in I-frames having a quantization parameter near 20, most often. But the stock settings have a low bit rate limit, which means the B-frames are often much lower quality than the I-frames. The high quality I-frames aren't high quality for the sake of looking good. It's pointless to have really good looking I-frames when it's only 1/12 or 1/15 of the frames. They are high quality because they are used as references for inter-predicted frames. Using low quality reference frames would mean that even more bits would need to be spent in the inter-predicted frames to achieve the same quality.

I use a quantizer setting of 22, which results in a QP of around 22 in every frame, at least until you get up to the bit rate limit and/or frame limit using high ISOs or exceptionally detailed scenes. A QP of 22 gave me satisfying quality and frame-to-frame consistency, without the bit rate being unnecessarily high. If you want higher quality, you can try changing the quantizer setting to 20.

VMM is Variable Movie Mode. It's described in the manual and the FAQs.

New: Cake 95, optimized for HBR mode and the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s 32-GB and 64-GB cards

• Up to 80 Mbps in all modes

• Spanning tested in 24p, Variable Movie Mode, and HBR (NTSC and PAL)

• GOP3 QP22 for quality and efficiency. Bit rates average under 50 Mbps.

• For higher quality, try a quantizer setting of 20 or 18.

The settings are attached to the second post of this topic. Please test.

HBR mode is now looking very good, with quality nearly the same as 24p and VMM for everything except some scenes above ISO 6400.

What's that smell? It's your camera's insides burning as the encoder is pushed to the limit. HBR mode is quite demanding at high bit rates.

I developed these settings using the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s 32-GB card. This card really is faster than the SanDisk Extreme HD Video cards, and gave me stability and spanning in HBR mode that I could not achieve with the old cards. If you want quality and efficiency in HBR mode, you really need a faster card. HBR mode in Cake 95 will not be stable with the other cards. 24p and VMM in Cake 95 will work fine with most Class 10 cards.

The SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s 64-GB SDXC card is supposed to be even faster than the 32-GB SDHC card, but I opted not to use the 64-GB card due to occasional "file limit exceeded" errors that some users have reported with SDXC cards.

Stability in HBR mode comes from the combination of a frame limit and a bit rate limit. The bit rate limit I set for HBR mode allows spanning in fallback mode, but spanning is not guaranteed due to the fact that there can be bit rate peaks above the fallback level. Spanning in HBR will depend on your luck: most of the time it will span, but a peak at the moment of spanning could cause a spanning failure. Setting a lower frame limit was not a desirable solution, because then I-frame quality would be limited. The frame limit is fairly high, and will not often limit the frame quality.

24p and VMM are now using a frame limit and no bit rate limit, the same as in Cake 1.0. I did this because frame limits behave very predictably and allow for reliable spanning at the limit. As before, this will limit the I-frame quality in some cases, but for me, the increased reliability of spanning is worth it. Users desiring the Cake 1.1/1.2-style rate limiting may copy the the bit rate and frame limits for 24p from Cake 1.2 to Cake 95. (they are independent of the HBR settings)

I do the bulk of my testing at ISO 12800 with exposure set to maximize the bit rate, and a Lumix lens. I focus on the most demanding conditions, to maximize the reliability.

HBR mode is very demanding, and though I did not experience any write failures or lock-ups during testing of these settings, I can tell you that HBR mode will not be as reliable as 24p and VMM. HBR mode is suitable for casual recording when the convenience of in-camera audio recording is desired. For higher reliability and almost guaranteed spanning, you need to shoot in 24p or VMM. 24p and VMM will also offer better quality than HBR mode for ISOs of 6400 and up. VMM-80% 30p in Cake 95 has a max sustained bit rate of 95 Mbps, compared to 60 Mbps for HBR mode.