Database Users

Is it just me or is real VGA more trouble than it's worth?

Like a lot of people here I had been waiting rather impatiently for the real VGA hack for my Jasjar. Now that it's here and I've been using it for a week or so, I'm definitely beginning to see why MS didn't make this an option from the beginning, and I'm also beginning to wonder how much it's really worth.
Real VGA has two big benefits for me... it allows me to shrink the size of the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so I get more usable screen space, and it allows Pocket IE to run without it's stupid pixel doubling 'feature'... that's a big one for me.
Unfortunately it's got a lot of disadvangages too... it makes the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so small that they're difficult to use normally, and all but impossible to use while driving. Like I said above, making them smaller would be an advantage, but it's simply way too small. A lot of applications don't work well in real VGA mode... including the phone dialer, the calculator and others. The font size can't be changed for a lot of things... the start bar, the caller ID info screen, and others. This makes a lot of the information displayed quite difficult to read... again, especially while in a car.
As I've been thinking about it more and more, I realized that the only thing that I really need is for PocketIE to work without pixel doubling... then I'd be quite happy in non-VGA mode. While I doubt that will ever happen hopefully we'll get some third party browsers that will work nicely in non-VGA mode. Until then I think I'm going to be using non-vga most of the time and I'll just switch to VGA mode when I need to do a lot of browsing.
Anyone have any other thoughts on this?
Brett

I think that makes sense. We need dynamically switching VGA really. For day to day use, the thumb is just too fat for VGA. It's barely ok to use for QVGA driving/walking etc.
But for browsing, VGA is great. But it's too much and too tiring all the time I think.
V

yea...we need a button like the screen rotate button that lets us change the res whenever we want

I think I would also agree. There are only two advantages to using the o2vga fix. 1) The only app that it improves is the browser, But as Brett stated, in the car it is too small. It works well for some sites very well and others it is too small. 2) the best advantage is that after I applied o2vga, ms voice command now shows the contact info when i say show "contact".
I also am beta testing the wm5 thunderhawk browser. It allows 640 x 480 and 800 x 600, and 640 x 320(?). The font that is used in thunderhawk is hard to read and the app is very slow. Due to the slow speed and font, I'm not sure the thunderhawk browser on wm5 universal is worth it. ALL in all, the original IE browser with zoom to small or medium seem to look the best.

Brett: Couldn't agree more. It was great to see what the device can do, and how the screen really is, tiny! But in truth, the eyestrain was no joke, and finger operation became impossible. I did a lot of toggling between the two, and ultimately decided that what I was is the standard resolution, but with some hacks for:
- Smaller scroll bars (VJ mentions this somewhere)
- Shrunk edge bits in XL
- Smaller edges for Terminal Services (altho central area surprisingly gives same res)
- and of course a hack for PIE.
Now, surely the latter is manageable? It's simply how IE is rendering. Perhaps MS will fix this soon, or maybe someone can intercept the rendering engine. I even don't care if my images lose every second pixel in order to come to the right size at half the res.

Real time Resolution Switching
See the attached link to a bit of software, which once released for WM5 may solve the VGA issue. It allows switching between resolutions on the fly.
I tried it on my Blue Angel, and it worked great, albeit a little unstable.
Note the site says they've been working on WM5 compatibility since Feb, so this may be wishful thinking.
http://www.nyditot.com/Products.asp

It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.

It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.

I agree it is to much hassle to work smoothly in everyday conditions, personally I think its down to programmers to make font options more accessable, take the new version of pocket breeze, in qvga or vga it stays the same size on screen, and gives the user total control over all font sizes.
This is the sort of programming we need to utilise such a great display!!!

lol
kinda bull---- lol
i remember when whe had 640 resolution on the pc.. everyone hated it when we started to use 800 res.. and lets not speak about 1024 haha..
i see loads of people using 1600 res nowedays.. higher res means better image quality!!
It also means better games better everything. So 640 res on the exec is SUPER, we only need adjust (like the pc) font size and get larger better resolution icons for those people who like to nagg (just like on real pc's)
VGA resolution is the future, and i am sure we get 800 res soon also and maybe even higher.. better looking programs etc etc..
and if your fingers are to thick for dialpad then you must have problems with any normal gsm LMAO
Just get a skin where the ok button close button are larger and nicer..
but that is just my penny worth :twisted:

Looking for simple image cropping & scaling utility

I'm looking for a simple to use Windows utility which I can use to crop pictures with a 4:3 frame and will automatically scale to 320x240 in landscape or portrait. Picasa comes close to what I'm looking for but it doesn't have 4:3 as one of the default cropping ratios.
If you know of something that can do this let me know. I have hundreds of pictures I'd like to crop and scale for display on my HTC Touch.
Thanks.
Leon.

for this i use "irfanview" . it's a freeware.
it can respects the original ratios, and even can handle batch processing/resize ..... on big groups of pictures.

I gave irfanview a whirl, it's quite a powerful program but still a little more than I'm looking for. The interface is not what I'm used to.
Any other suggestions?

DirectShow Camera focus

I've recently been working in DirectShow trying to create a simple program that uses the camera to read barcodes.
The problem I'm running into is that the video feed I'm getting from the camera is very blurry at barcode reading distances (five to six inches from object). The included camera software can take good pictures at this distance, but it auto-focuses first.
I've tried to use the IAMCameraControl interface to adjust the focus, but it doesn't support that property (and even the properties it does support can't be set to manual mode)
Does anyone know how to adjust the focus on the HTC Touch Pro's camera using DirectShow?

Hello,
Did you manage to fix your problem? Thx

Increase zoom in album viewer

Is there any registry tweak that will allow you to zoom in closer with the album viewer software. It works great for the files I view but I need to be able to zoom in much more than it allows
Thanks
Mike

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can zoom in as far as the resolution of each image allows. I have some pretty high-res photo's (taken on a digital SLR) and I can zoom in on them until I start to see pixels. If you have low-res pics, you'll start seeing pixels much sooner.
Zooming in any further would be useless since it can't add any detail, you'll just see pixels the size of Lego blocks.
Edit: I realize you may want to examine an image pixel-per-pixel for some reason. In that case, sorry, I can't help.

Thanks for your response, If I could zoom in that close it would be great. I have some hi resolution files anywhere from 6-10 MB which open fine but I can only zoom in about 3 levels. If I could go to the level you describe, it would more than meet my needs.

Hm... Maybe there is a limit after all. I must admit I haven't tried any files in the 10mb region.
I've taken a quick look in the registry but I haven't come across anything that looks like it might solve this. Sorry.

I looked in the registry too but couldn't find any reference to HTCalbum at all. Guess I'll just have to start trying all the demos of the photo apps again...

There's a bunch of stuff under 'HKLM/Software/HTC/HTCAlbum'. Maybe you can find something I overlooked there.

Thanks, don't know why Resco didn't find that ref, I thought it scanned all directories. I couldn't find anything there either. I did change a dword from 2 to 3 in wheelzoomin frames but that didn't do anything obvious so I changed it back. Wonder if HTC support might be able to help, I've read that they're quick to respond to customer software issues but since this is more of a preference issue vs buggy software they may not offer up much.

Yeah, today I copied a 78 mega pixel image (actually a map) to my Leo and to my surprise, I can't zoom more than a certain amount in HTC Album. Anyone know a fix for this?

use resco photo manager, that one allows you to zoom in much more than the htc album. The newest version also supports multi-touch!

thanx! Tried resco; I'm flattered how they implemented multi touch this soon! only a month and a half after Leo's release.
It's really nice and fast (even faster refresh time than htc album) but I wish u could disable multi touch rotation. It's constantly confusing pinch with rotation.

[REF] *Leo camera Hints & Tips*. Updated 19th December.

I started this hints and tips thread for the HD2 (LEO) as i like most others wasn't to happy with the default camera app that the HD2(LEO) had to offer, to be honest the camera quality was lacking in most areas. The purpose of this thread is to collate all tips and have them available within the first few posts as opposed to having to search for tips among the many pages and threads. Please submit additional tips and hints you have and I will update the first few posts.
you will need a registry editor to do most of these tweaks and their may also be .cabs attached to the bottom of the corresponding post to save the effort need when editing the registry. u can use apps like resco, memmaid, sktool to edit the registry or an app of ur liking
for best possible picture from the HD2(LEO) - you may want to use these setting, use with all mods i post here and you will be very happy with the outcome and possibly feel overwhelmed by the quality of your HD2(LEO) cameras like most ive share these with
WB - either auto or indoor light dependent on ambient light
iso auto - if in a very bright sunny outdoor type weather set this to 100 for best result
5M resolution
wide-screen OFF
touch focus OFF
super fine quality
contrast +4
saturation +3
sharpness +4
metering mode average
1). extrasuperfine quality
Go to HKLM\software\htc\camera\image\jpegquaity\superfine and replace the 5Msize value with 746028 (default value = 643628)
or install the extrasuperfine.cab or install BsB Tweaks 1.5
before and after photos
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5157324&postcount=107
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5135805&postcount=55
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5135911&postcount=56
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5130666&postcount=3
2). unlock additional video modes
Go to [HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\P2 and replace the EncodeFormat value with 2147483647
or install the additionalvideomodes.cab
this will unlock all modes/resolutions listed below
H263(3gp)
CIF 352x288 \ M 176x144
mpeg4
L 320x240 \ CIF 352x288 \ VGA 640x480
3gpp2
S 128x96 \ M 176x144 \ L 320x240 \ CIF 352x288 \ VGA 640x480
motion jpeg
S 128x96 \ M 176x144 \ L 320x240 \ CIF 352x288 \ VGA 640x480
H264
L 320x240 \ CIF 352x288
3). enable .BMP mode in camera
Go to [HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\P1 and replace the EncodeFormat value with 3
(not quiet working cant get it to stick auto goes back to jpeg in camera app, im hoping people can help me out alittle with this one)
4). improve camera recording quality of mpeg4-vga (boost bit-rate = less fussiness and pixels)
Go to [HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\recparam\MP4VGA and replace the BitRate value with 4194304 (default value = 2097152)
this will increase your video quality from 2100avg bit-rate to 4500avg bit-rate, leave fps set to 30 as when detail is high in video it causes major fps loss, so with this ur camera will run better than ever and also have improved image quality while recording in MPEG4 vga mode, going any higher in bit-rate will cause slower fps and offer no additional improvement over my posted tweak
please keep in mind that video size increases approx 2times of the default settings, so a 10sec vid normally cost 2700kb while the tweak costs 5500kb
im working on 720p, micro-modes, bmp files and also increased video quality so keep looking for updates daily
ADDED:
19/12/09 = new cab for improve camera recording quality of mpeg4-vga

DAMIEN123_666 said:
2). unlock additional video modes
Go to [HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\P2 and replave the EncodeFormat value with 2147483647
this will unlock all modes/resolutions listed below
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks Damien, but I'm not able to enter a 10 Digit Number in EncodeFormat. Only 8 digits are possible. Did you change the key type?

cyclingfan74 said:
Thanks Damien, but I'm not able to enter a 10 Digit Number in EncodeFormat. Only 8 digits are possible. Did you change the key type?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi no its the same, should be a value : double word (decimal). u can use both sktools and memmaid to edit the value, what app are u using ?

I'm using Taskmanager v3.1 by FdcSoft

cyclingfan74 said:
I'm using Taskmanager v3.1 by FdcSoft
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi ive made a cab please use it for ease

Thanks, but I installed SKTools now. It worked. I mean, I could enter a 10-digit number at least. Let's see, if the tweak is working, too.
Yes it did!

I have tried all the new video modes but mpeg4 still gives best results?, does for me.

Wow, thanks for this great thread and useful hints! I'm really looking forward to 720p video recording! This would be awesome!!
jrvenge said:
I have tried all the new video modes but mpeg4 still gives best results?, does for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Normally mp4 will always give the best results.

menus are active, still don't understand the quality ... good for me anyway ;-)

Hey, great work. This thread is something I would like to see sticky or linked in the wiki.

I am unable to select anything other than JPEG and BMP format. It then greys out. The registry entry mentioned above was changed with the cab. Anyone tell me the default value for this so I can change it back? I cannot uninstall the cab as it is not listed in programs.

DAMIEN123_666 said:
hi ive made a cab please use it for ease
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Could you please detail what this cab changes? I installed it and now cannot select anything other than JPEG and BMP. It allows one change then greys out.
Thanks.

derta said:
Hey, great work. This thread is something I would like to see sticky or linked in the wiki.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i hope to so, i assume i have to earn this though

why
why will disabling touch focus improve quality?

why will disabling touch focus improve quality?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the focus on this camera for light is controlled by this option basically
touch focus = spot = the overall light of the picture is dictated by the spot u select to focus on
center focus = center picture = the overall light of the picture is dictated by the center light in the picture
average focus = the picture takes all light form around the image and averages it out for one even picture,
so basically if u take a picture of a object that gives off light like a tv or light or sumat like this the touch focus, focuses on that object and the rest of the picture will be over dark and maybe even black, when average focus is selected it evens it out so u get to see all the objects in the light and dark evenly

DAMIEN123_666 said:
the focus on this camera for light is controlled by this option basically
touch focus = spot = the overall light of the picture is dictated by the spot u select to focus on
center focus = center picture = the overall light of the picture is dictated by the center light in the picture
average focus = the picture takes all light form around the image and averages it out for one even picture,
so basically if u take a picture of a object that gives off light like a tv or light or sumat like this the touch focus, focuses on that object and the rest of the picture will be over dark and maybe even black, when average focus is selected it evens it out so u get to see all the objects in the light and dark evenly
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 3 modes all have their uses though, you need to work out when to use them. For example when taking a picture of a large plasma or LCD TV in the dark the touch focus is excellent. You end up with a very clear screen image and nothing else. If you try bto do the same with a 'better' camera phone, like a symbian you just cant get the same effect.

rovex said:
The 3 modes all have their uses though, you need to work out when to use them. For example when taking a picture of a large plasma or LCD TV in the dark the touch focus is excellent. You end up with a very clear screen image and nothing else. If you try bto do the same with a 'better' camera phone, like a symbian you just cant get the same effect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
very true matey, for general images of say out doors or portraits the setup on post one i made is by far the best option but if you do intend to take images of brighter objects touch focus will give better results if you only wanna focus on that object
play with the settings is all i can recommend

thx for the video cab, awesome!

SD Card Storage Capacity official update
@ DAMIEN : Hey mate, I better ask first than ask too late... Do you think these (Yours, also future) tweaks won't have problem with the official ones? I ask because there's another one out - SD Card Storage Capacity - from HTC. I guess it has nothing to do with the tweaks, but you know... Thx devilman

4). improve camera recording quality of mpeg4-vga (boost bit-rate = less fussiness and pixels)
Go to [HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\recparam\MP4VGA and replace the BitRate value with 4194304
Go to [HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\recparam\MP4VGA and replace the FrameRate value with 60
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I accidentally set VSbitrate value to 4194304. could someone please provide me the original setting?...