I tried to get stable 30p on long shots and no luck yet.

DREWnet T9 variable speed 80% - camera hangs after 1 hour of recording (56 GB). Tripod, iA and iDynamic off, continuous focus off, Shutter speed priority, auto ISO, Panny lens

Spizz5 HBR30 Random recording stops. 10-40 min

@thepalalias Hey Per, I think I remember you posting a link to that before. Can you repost the link if I remember correctly?

@Manu4Vendetta The difference between 8-bit compressed and RAW really depends on what you are shooting. :)

Last year I did a shoot - all outdoors, 100% natural light, no reflectors, etc. - for a music video. It was mostly shot with a RED Scarlet and a GH2 using an older @Driftwood hack. Now that was REDRAW wavelet, and of course higher resolution and a different camera but here is what I can tell you without equivocation.

The GH2 looked great when (and only when) I played to the camera's strengths. I mean, I really loved the way it looked.

But there were several shots that I could ONLY shoot on a camera with a wide dynamic range and a higher bit-depth. Maybe there were intermediate solutions that would have done a good job and it didn't have to go all the way RAW... but there are things you can do with more advanced codec solutions that are VERY difficult to do shooting with any form of 8-bit AVCHD or H.264, because they essentially require controlling the environmental lighting (or carefully planning or limiting your movement to account for it).

On the shoot I was on, that was not practical. The only cameras I can think of that could have pulled it off all are capable of shooting some version of RAW (even if only "pseudo-RAW" with baked in aspects). So we used one that did and filled in the shots that the GH2 could not do.

EDIT: Just to clarify, there were several shots that included lots of detail in both the shadows and bright sky, especially the colors in both - and later the other colors of the sunset and the sun itself. That was part of what made it so tricky.

Please Mr. Driftwood, what is the best patch to make my GH2 works like a a cine câmera? (película 35mm: Aaton, Panavision, Arri, etc) You have a lot of great patches but which you recomender for my purposes? Thank you so much! Paulo.

@driftwood Good heavens Nick!

Moon T5 has been my stock patch since its creation. But with all the hubbub about T7 I had to give it a spin. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Feels and looks like Moon T5 but with a cinema lens subtle softness. Really nice.

So far with Moon T7 • 24p High Spans • SH 720 60p Spans

Don't forget also chaps, a lot of the research from the last 2 years done on the GH2 in the encoder will mean a speedy transition to the GH3's AVCHD modes in the future hack. Which means a lot of the Cluster stuff should work on the GH3 - imagine that with the improved sensor.

UPDATE NEWS: Spizz T6 is still being fine tuned for HBR/FSH and 720p modes by myself, @towi and @bkmcwd - apologies for the delay

@dado023

On my very first test of Moon Trial 7, I had about 42 GB of various clips on the card when I tested spanning. It did glitch once with a write error, but then spanned 10 times without a hitch, ending up with over 80GB on the card.

@Butt Totally right the DREWnet T9 is pretty gorgeous.

@Brant-moore they do not make it too hard - if they want to shoot 720/60p, then DREWnet T9 - the best 720P worldwide. . . if they want to shoot 24p, then Moon T7. . . and all is well. DREWnet T9 720/60p is better than anything offered by other manufacturers staffers, even better than 1080p from Sony, Canon, etc.

I'm filming at the moment with everything DREWnet T9 720/60p

As well as the first few frames being muddy, there is also for about half a second no audio. This is a limitation I found on both the GH1 and GH2. It's incredibly annoying if you just throw everything onto a timeline to output because you get a 1/2sec of silence between each clip. When I queried Panasonic about this they said it was to not record any on camera noise but that's just stupid. Audio should start when pic starts

@smsjr @x_worpig_x I haven't counted on the first frames of a recording for a long time. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and that's true of a lot of settings.

@brant_moore The differences are often subtle and stability is one of the biggest concerns.

But in regards to the differences, here are things you can use to differentiate. Remember, the only way to reliably test is to do one setting right after the other - pay attention to changing lighting conditions (sunsets, sunrises and moving clouds are not your friends) or scene content.

Test 1: Static Detail Stress Test

• Shoot an indoor deep DOF fine-pattern on a tripod (the canvas pattern in a colorful painting sharply focused is a good example) at an ISO setting that approximates what a real-world "high ISO" would be for you. Make sure to get a proper exposure.
• Then examine it zoomed in to get a sense for it. I suggest comparing the top left and bottom right corners.
• As @Driftwood has mentioned before, if a setting is aggressive in using bitrate quickly (like IntraVenus 1) then the bottom right corner will be less detailed than the top left.
• You want to keep an eye out for macro-blocking and the "smooth vs preserve detail" slant of the setting in the noise pattern to pick what suits your taste.

Test 2: Handheld Detail Test

• Shoot a deep DOF handheld shot with a narrow angle shutter (as narrow as you can get away with while maintaining exposure). Subject is your choice but things with fine detail tend to be more demanding.
• Try exaggerating camera motion (both slow and quick pans and shakes) and shooting subjects in motion. Higher GOP settings may sometimes suffer during scenes that combine high-detail with high-motion by running out of bitrate between I-frames at the end of a GOP sequence.
• You are looking for detail, sharpness and macro-blocking in this test - zoom in again.

Test 3 : Personal Taste Test

• Shoot using settings similar to what you would use on-site. Normally this means wider open and wider angle shutter than Test 2 and a more interesting subject than Test 1.
• Analyze the footage using the same techniques used above, in brief.
• Pay closer attention to any stylistic concerns you might have (like motion rendering, edge emphasis, etc.) first zoomed in and then at normal magnification.

When testing SH mode, keep in mind that no popular setting uses GOP1. So if you are looking at stills, don't just look at one frame - go through the whole length of the GOP sequence to look for variation between I, P and B frames.

@smsjr @driftwood I'm also getting the first frame garbled with Moon T7c setting. Sandisk Extreme 30MB/s 16gig.