Ok here's some more experimentation,
Sandisk Extreme 16GB Class 10 45 MB/s writes at 20.1/20.9 MB/s
New Test
1280x720 - 23.976 - 340 Frames approximately 14.1 seconds @ 20.1 MB/s - Ratio 16:9
1280x544 - 23.976 - 710 Frames approximately 29.6 seconds @ 20.1 MB/s - Ratio 2.35:1
Last Test
1280x720 - 23.976 FPS - 227 Frames proximately 9.4 seconds @ 20.7 MB/s - Ratio 16:9
1280x544 - 23.976 FPS - 525 Frames proximately 21.8 seconds @ 20.1 MB/s - Ratio 2.35:1
To get these increases, I went into M mode>First Tab>Quality>Placed RAW marker on the - and then JPEG marker on S2.
I chose S2 first because it's save resolution was 1920x1280 but I'm not sure if that mattered at all since its saving the data from the camera before it hits the encoder (if I'm understanding it correctly).
I also gave S3 a shot but I got pretty much the same results.
Now I did the same process of raw2dng into ae interpreted the footage from 30fps to 23.976 added a simple curves adjustment and 25 points of sharpening and rendered out to H.264 then to youtube and these are the results. (Starring Kangaroo Plants again)
1280x720 -
1280x544 -
I also up scaled them to 1080 just to see what it looked like, I know its only Youtube but for the sake of time.
1280x720 at 1080 -
1280x544 at 1080 -
Pretty cool stuff that you can squeeze those extra frames out by increasing the buffer size, not sure if changing from RAW to JPEG actually produces a difference in image quality. I didn't notice a difference personally.
A record time of almost 30 seconds at 1280x544 is pretty awesome, I mean not many shots go over 30 seconds and you have plenty of edit room, unless you are doing interviews on long events ;P.
Great work guys keep it up