sam, check the original file. It looks just fine to me. Cake v2 in HBR mode has a max average bit rate of 45-48 Mbps.

adventsam >Interlace artifacts, You mean on the red flowers? I don't think that's interlace artifacts. Using Vibrant profile probably accentuates the red channel, looks more like compression artifacts. You really have to be careful with the red, i find smooth profile dials it right down.

I see loads of interlace artifacts, anyone else?

@frerichs Nice! Like the black bg. Nothing to do with the pictures, but it was a bit wierd to watch because the audio is swapped L-R. Of course I realise this is just becase it's not yet mixed. Got me thinking, though, that because I come from an audio background, I should really say that the pictures are the wrong way round!

Cake v2.0 1080 24p using Nostalgic -2 X 4.

AF100 was main camera (working on a complimentary profile for the GH2) using an Olympus 14-35mm f/2.0.

GH2 lenses were 25mm Voigtlander f/.095 (filming from the left) and LOMO OKC1-50-1 f/2.0 (filming from the right.)

3200K white balance, 200 ISO.

Slight color adjustment, Spanned fine using SanDisk 95mbps 64Gb cards.

Other Class 10 cards should work, but I only guarantee spanning with SanDisk Extreme cards.

rsquires, 720p H mode probably will span, and SH mode probably won't.

sir_danish, to reset settings in PTool you uncheck all of the boxes. It's easier to just reload PTool.

i have trasender class 10 and dont have a problem with this

@jam: "Be careful that you reload the original firmware or reset all options before you run PTools"

How can options be reset before running PTool? I have to reset options >within< PTool and therefor it has to run already. Or do I get something wrong here?

@pvdog Amazing, i must get an GF2 as B camera, great video, high quality ...

pvdog, it wasn't a mistake. My settings are GOP6 for 720p/60, which makes the ratio of I-frames to P-frames is 1:5. It's GOP5 for 720p/50, so the ratio of I-frames to P-frames is 1:4. I'm not certain if the ratio really matters, or just the totals or just the P-frame values. I just like to keep the ratios correct, and it did what I wanted. I believe the Opt2 GOP tables are for 720p using P-frames, and the Opt1 tables are for 720p using B-frames.

@balazer : Thanks for the explanation. Very clear and useful in wiki challenged times.

Mark, yes, Cake v2 really is better for 24p than previous versions are. I've lowered the quantizer setting from 22 to 18, which improves image quality when the video can be encoded at the lower quantization level within the bit rate limit. When the encoder operates at the bit rate limit, adaptive quantization looks much better than fallback mode. I-frames and P-frames will still be encoded with equal quality and maintain the ratio of frame sizes (I-frames larger than P-frames by some factor). Fallback mode doesn't do that. Using fallback mode for rate control was a nice trick, but only since I didn't know how to make the rate control work properly at the time. Even with v2 operating at slightly lower max bit rates, the picture looks better with the different rate control scheme. The difference is not huge in 24p, but it is huge in HBR. All of this work was motivated by HBR, because it simply did not look good before, and now it looks very good. I know people have settings fatigue, with so many different choices and frequent changes. I went out of my way to make sure that v2 would be rock solid, and so far at least, I can say I have not had a single write error, lockup, or spanning failure, and no one has reported any. I hadn't with v1.2 in 24p either, but I think spanning failures were a possibility with the way I had set the bit rate limits. Fallback mode is slow to kick in. Several GOPs will pass before it starts to limit the bit rate, and before that happens, with the GOP length and quantizer setting I'd used the bit rate could go as high as 100 or 110 Mbps, which would be enough to cause a spanning failure at GOP3 using an Extreme card if that were to happen at the moment of spanning. I did experience spanning failures in HBR mode in Cake 95. Adaptive quantization reacts very quickly to bit rate changes, setting the quantization level for the next frame after a change in the bit rate of the last few frames. So I can get closer to the spanning limit using adaptive quantization than with fallback mode. But even with adaptive quantization's fast response, the camera can't predict how large the next frame will be when coded with a certain quantization level, so you can still encounter bit rate peaks above the max average bit rate. But those peaks will be very short - generally limited to one GOP, and I've set the bit rate such that the highest peak I'd ever seen in all of my testing is still low enough to span.

I don't anticipate making any more changes to 24p, VMM, 1080i, and HBR. I do plan to go back and make 720p span.

PVdog, I don't have a GF2, so I can't say exactly what is happening there. Increasing the GOP length will decrease the maximum average bit rate. Increasing the values in the GOP table will decrease the maximum average bit rate. The values in the GOP table are counts per half second of the following:

1. I-frame (progressive) or I-frame first field (slice 1, intra coded)
2. P-frame (progressive) or P-frame first field
3. P-frame second field
4. I-frame second field (slice 2, p-coded)
5. B-frame (progressive) or B-frame first field (slice 1)
6. B-frame second field (slice 2)

If you use a GOP length different from stock or a mix of P- and B-frames that is different from stock, the encoder will not use the stock bit rate. Changing the values in the GOP tables is a way to compensate for that and get whatever max average bit rate you want at any particular GOP length. I try to keep the GOP table values in the ratio of actual frame/field counts per second of video. The Top bit rate setting should then be set to the max average bit rate you've achieved, or slightly below it, and the bit rate setting and Bottom bit rate should be set relatively.