GH4 records for 90 minutes with Delkin 32GB 400X card

[Phil Goetz]

Just took a Delkin 32GB card and formatted it. I set the GH4 to 1080 59.94p 200 Mbps ALL-INTRA. It said 20 minutes 56 seconds remain on the card. The camera rolled for just over 90 minutes. I put the footage in premiere and it is all there. 90 minutes.

Delkin Devices DDSD400-32GB: SD400 UHS-I Secure Digital Memory Cards, Rated 400X - 65MB/s Read, 41MB/s Write, Class 10

Completely confused about what a U3 card is? Well. Scott Clark at Delkin Devices sent me this:

https://www.sdcard.org/consumers/speed/

U3 is just UHS-1 30mb/sec minimum.

Any questions?

GH4 is in stock now and ready to ship!

Panasonic DMC-GH4

[Evan Donn]

What was it you were recording for 90 minutes? Was there any motion or detail? 200mbps is 1.5Gb/minute, which should require over 130Gb to do 90 minutes. I'm assuming the camera is using VBR with 200mbs as an upper limit, in which case recording time is going to be affected by the level of detail and motion in your shots, and I wouldn't expect to see 90 minutes on 32gb cards in normal use.

[Phil Goetz]

Good point. I had the 42.mm F1.2 on it with an out of focus shot of some junk on a filing cabinet next to my desk. So my test for tomorrow is to put it in our showroom with an in focus shot and people occasionally walking through. Right?

[Gary Huff]

You should handhold it and give it a lot of fine, moving detail. Long enough for the file to span on the card (about 4-5 minutes).

[Les Wilson]

Originally Posted by Phil Goetz

Just took a Delkin 32GB card and formatted it. I set the GH4 to 1080 59.94p 200 Mbps ALL-INTRA. It said 20 minutes 56 seconds remain on the card. The camera rolled for just over 90 minutes. ...

Do the display overlays stay on or do they turn off after 10 seconds like the GH3 without a way to force them to stay on?

[Craig Chartier]

thats 30MB not 30Mb minimum stable write speed for a U3 card. Get that thing out of the air conditioned office and not pointed at a wall and you might see a diff.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Les Wilson

Do the display overlays stay on or do they turn off after 10 seconds like the GH3 without a way to force them to stay on?

You cannot keep them on. It remains on for a full minute, then goes out. You can press a button to make it return, but I cannot remember what it is off the top of my head (I think it's any button or half depress the shutter or something like that).

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Phil Goetz

Good point. I had the 42.mm F1.2 on it with an out of focus shot of some junk on a filing cabinet next to my desk. So my test for tomorrow is to put it in our showroom with an in focus shot and people occasionally walking through. Right?

Yes - your original test shot just didn't have enough detail or motion to require much data. I'm guessing even just having it in focus would have cut the recording time significantly. The showroom will be better, assuming people are walking through on a regular basis.

[Phil Goetz]

If only I could figure out how to make the Kessler Cineslider go back and forth all day...

Ok. In focus shot with people walking through. Got it. It will be on a tripod.

I could see the time adding up / counting down in the EVF the entire time.

[Phil Goetz]

Ok. So this time I had a scene in focus with lots of contrast and detail and people walking through occasionally. Unfortunately when I hit RESET on the camera and built up the settings I had it on 1080 29.97 not 1080 59.94 as I had before. Sorry. It was set to ALL-INTRA 200 mbps again though. It recorded for 47 minutes 39 seconds. The lengths of the 8 clips recorded were 2:41, 6:24, 6:27, 6:24, 6:20, 6:26, 6:26 and 6:26. Enough on this one... time to hand it to someone with a helicopter to shoot some footage...

[Les Wilson]

I moved the question to a better thread

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Phil Goetz

It recorded for 47 minutes 39 seconds.

Thanks for doing the tests - regardless of the actual numbers, it shows that the estimated time is a worst-case scenario, and that in everyday use you're likely to get longer run times assuming your footage isn't 100% handheld.

[Gary Huff]

You don't have to have it record for nearly that long. A couple of spanned clips is more than enough, because spanning is where the real bandwidth is needed.