Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

Okay, so for months now I've been dealing with random freezing and random times when recording stops itself on one of my GH2's. I thought it was maybe lens specific, but that isnt the case. The problem is I cannot reliably reproduce the freezing. I'll set the camera to record for an hour at my house, it records fine. But then at a wedding it'll freeze after 30 minutes! Why does it freeze there and not at home?? I've tried:

Changing SD cards
Lenses
Firmware
Batteries

I'm completely befuddled. Has anyone has this issue before? The worst part is sometimes when it freezes the footage is then bugged and unusable! I have to pull the battery to shut the camera off.
Could *what* im shooting have something to do with it? Like when its sitting in my house recording obviously there is little to no movement compared to a live ceremony.

** I'm considering sending it in for repair to panasonic, but if they cannot reproduce the freezing then how will they repair it? This is very troublesome.

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

i was having similiar issues, recording stopping randomly and footage not able to be read after recorded, i installed the vanilla hack and now i cant make the camera fail. Ive tried

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

A wedding has movement while I am rashly assuming that your test recording at home doesn't. A video with movement is larger and has more calculations going on within the camera. I hacked my GH2 and would experience freezes and broken files when I filmed a field of yellow flowers blowing in the wind. A shot of a lake didn't cause a problem. Other times shooting a stage show wouldn't cause a freeze but the files comprising a continuous one hour take would not link together and a second of video would be missing at the file breaks.

It turned out the culprit was the brand and style of SD cards I was using. Using much more expensive San Disk Extreme Pro cards solved the problem. The problem cards work fine in my JVC proHD camera that records at the same data rate so something is up with the GH2's way of communicating with the cards.

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

can u tell me the exact hack? plus what kind of card u are using?

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

Hm, which card do you use now? It froze with a sandisk 32 g/b class 10 extreme 45mB/s card.

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

Installed it tonight, I'll give it a shot in maybe a more active area soon to see if it stopped the freezing. Need to find something with a lot of movement.

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

That is the problem card! I was on the road yesterday and couldn't remember. That card is a problem with the GH2. Works great in my JVC HM600, strange.

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

Is It a problem for just the GH2 or the GH3 as well? I have one sitting in an online cart (along with a GH3)

What about the 64gb version?

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

I was doing some driving pov shots with a fisheye and a 45mbs sandisk pro card and it worked 50/50 same with a 95mbs extreme pro card after the hack it works 100% with either card and i tried many cards of each type i have 6 of each.

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

I wouldn't use the 45mb/s card in the GH3 unless you plan on only using the standard AVCHD settings. The new high quality codecs Panasonic provided (50 and 72 mb/s) are beyond the rating of the 45 mb/s cards. I have a GH3 also and have only used the Extreme Pro cards in it which have recorded flawlessly.

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

William

Isn't the card rated at 45 MB, not 45 Mb in which case It would be fast enough for either 50 or 72 mb/s. My understanding is that any class 10 card is fast enough even if not necessarily a reliable performer.

I got the impression from your and the op's posts that perhaps the card in question had some issues even if it was theoretically up to standard.

Or am I missing something here?

Re: Crazy GH2 Bug I cannot track down!
 

There is something up with that particular card series as I have seen other people complain on the GH2 hack boards about it. Some people have posted that the 64gb card works fine. You certainly can try the higher bandwidth settings with that card on the GH3, who knows it might work. On my camera the card (I have more then one of the SanDisk 45 Extreme) didn't act up until I experimented with the Vanilla hack or the hack I have now, Sanity 5 which records at 35Mb/s. I do a bit of hand-held work which stresses the codecs during recording but the Extreme cards would sometimes not span files properly when shooting locked down on a tripod. There is possibly something about the GH2 that doesn't interface with these particular cards. As I said earlier the same cards that give me a problem in the GH2 work fine in a JVC HM600 that is recording 35Mb/s MPEG2 HD so that's where they live now. Class 10 cards have a sustained data transfer of 10MB/s but maybe the 32gB cards have a problem sustaining this rate for video or the GH2 will occasionally send bursts of data that go beyond the card's capabilities..