VGA recording just a fake??? - XPERIA X1 General

Hi guys
I think Xperia doesnt really capture videos in VGA @30fps
I had a nokia n95 8gb and the videos were waaaay better.
but not only that
i recorded in vga mode a 40s video and that was 2.4MB that means around 60KB/s and that means 2KB per every frame.?????!!!!! if there are 30 frames per second.(and not forget that there is also the audio so the frame size is lower than 2KB)
The funny thing is that the video size IS 640x480. so in my opinion
the videos are caught in a low resolution for example 320x240 every frame gets interpolated to 640x480 and then saved as video.... could this be true ??? what do u think.

I don't know the details but most mpeg encoders deal with I and P frames. Something to do with they take a full frame picture, and then for the next x amount of frames encode only the delta between succesive images, then another full frame I.e. if the image does not change much, then not much data will be used as there has been not much change... etc

even if the X1 takes video at 640x480 and 30fps that doesnt say anything about the quality of the chipset, which quite crappy if you ask me. Video recording quality is horrible for such an expensive device.

man, it's seem you know nothing about video encoding and you complaint x1's capacity is fake. the msg above is correct and that's why action movie normally bigger in size due to massive different between frames. there are other tricks (color pattern), algorithm and compression to reduce the size even futher

The problem is the cmos camera - not the pixels at which it is stored.
Like most mobile phones, the cmos for capturing the image is too small and not sensitive enough, therefore the quality is usually crap! and it doesn't matter what resolution you store the image/video as, cause the source was crap to start off with.

informatico said:
Hi guys
The funny thing is that the video size IS 640x480. so in my opinion
the videos are caught in a low resolution for example 320x240 every frame gets interpolated to 640x480 and then saved as video.... could this be true ??? what do u think.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought so at first too, since the quality was so bad in VGA-mode. But if you record a video of a motionless view and hold the camera very still you will see there is a difference between QVGA and VGA. So I think the bad quality in VGA-mode is the result of very hard compression.
I really hope they fix that.

yeah ... you're right

I just noticed something that i find a bit weird, even though it supports my previous statement.
I recorded two videos with the X1. They are almost exactly the same length (it differs less than a second), and the scenes are also identical. One is VGA and the other is QVGA.
Since the size of VGA is four times bigger than QVGA I would expect the VGA recording to have a bigger file size. Maybe not four times bigger, but at least clearly larger.
But actually the QVA recording was slightly bigger. Only 40 kB though, so they are basically the same size.
No wonder we experience the VGA recording to be of low quality.

Related

REAL 320x240 on Universal?.

I have been doing a loong research on the web without luck about this. This device has a good processor for gaming,
but the god damned screen resolution screws everything up having to scale the 320x240 graphics to 640x480.
It's not only the work of having to double every pixel on screen, but also to redraw 4 times the ammount of pixels that it was meant to.
The pixel rendering rate of this graphics chip can't handle 640x480 since it has no hardware acceleration for such a task.
​ I keep finding that Real VGA, 96DPI, 128DPI crap arround wich doesnt actually do anything but change the sizes of the fonts/enviroment
while rettaining the same 640x480 resolution.
I'm no developer, so im sending an s.o.s. call to any dev, technician or whoever with the knowlegde to tell me if there is a possible way
to switch the video resolution to REAL 320x240 or if its possible to hack this device video driver to use 320x240 instead of 640x480.
Thanks in advance for reading.​
I just realiced that maybe there is no need to modify any drivers at all, since i believe this device ati graphics chip is used on other devices running at 320x240 from htc aswell. Can someone verify this please?.
Even if it was possible, real 320x240 would physically cover 320x240 px on your device and therefore leave the better area of the screen unused. I doubt that it is possible to output QVGA and stretch it to match the screen and I dare not even think about how crappy that would look... Apart from games everything runs nice and fast and the Universal is quite responsive. Videos can be played back just fine in 320x240 and run perfectly with a decent player. Which apps are causing trouble for you?
Im having a hard time with high requirement games, like Legacy 2, Raging thunder,XIII zeal, Ancient evil, *.swf flash files... not to mention demoscene intros for ppc.
About the 320x240 output, probably the lcd panel can scale it to 640x480 with its hardware just like a regular tft monitor. It wouldnt look bad at all, remember how games look. Yeah you can actually see the the pixels with pixel doubling, but even with pixel doubling it still looks good enough since the screen size isn't that big to have such a huge impact.
I still believe that if this is possible it's worth a try, atleast for users that use this device for entertainment and gaming.

Video Quality AMAZINGLY good

Not used to making video's as all my previous phones
Universal,Hermes,TytnII,Raphael,Touch HD didn't make them too well.
So just tried out making video's while driving (as a passenger) and
they look stunningly good. There's lot's of sun/cloud changes
and it picks up beautifully.
Frame rate is above 20FPS average in MPEG 640x480. Nice.
EDIT : from comments below I see most people expect more. For once I'm on the satisfied side
What .. it too can't play 640x480 flawlessly ? I saw some benchmarks which played such videos at 200%.
Dr.Sid said:
What .. it too can't play 640x480 flawlessly ? I saw some benchmarks which played such videos at 200%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you read his comment???? where does it say it cant play 640x480
A sample recording would be nice
Smooth playback is 24 fps and beyond. if it's between 20-24, it sucks.
It's the recording rate in 640x480 not the playback speed.
It will almost always keep the 23.99 frames per second while recording
So I meant to say, it's a great video recorder.
I think the title of this thread is a little bit naive!
C'mon 640 x 480 has been on most high end phones now since 2006!
We now have alot of phones with 640 x 480, a fair few with 720 x 480 (D1?) and one or two with 720p recording.
The hardware in this phone is capable of 720p as is that of the Palm Pre, Iphone 3GS and probably others too.
So, in summary - I dont see 640 x 480 as amazingly good at all!
On the topic, do any devs think it would be possible to up the recording to it's 720p capabilities?
See above. I accidently posted twice.
jamuk2004 said:
The hardware in this phone is capable of 720p
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Qualcomm advertises Snapdragon (rather over-optimistically in my opinion) as being capable of 720p video playback - where do they say it's capable of 720p capture?
My bad !
I did not notice he talks about RECORDING, I thought he talks about playback.
lucid said:
Frame rate is above 20FPS average in MPEG 640x480. Nice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So video quality is "surprisingly mediocre", then. Is there any non-HTC smartphone in the world that can't manage at least 30fps at VGA resolution? The Samsung i8910HD can almost manage 24fps at a resolution of 1280x720. If the HD2 could better that, then maybe you could describe it as "amazingly good".
The Snapdragon probably should be able to record in 720P from a hardware point of view. My currrent phone, the i8910, records in 720P at around 22-24fps, and its only packing a 600mhz Cortex 8 CPU.
So i went to the registry and messed with some values a bit. I set the bitrate much higher than the default. It would still capture video @ about 25 fps. Can't really tell the difference in quality, but the filesize has increased by a 100%. I'll try to see if there are more reg settings to mess around.
NZtechfreak said:
The Snapdragon probably should be able to record in 720P from a hardware point of view. My currrent phone, the i8910, records in 720P at around 22-24fps, and its only packing a 600mhz Cortex 8 CPU.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's a lot more to it than CPU power, I think - it's a bandwidth issue rather than MIPS. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows Mobile imposes some limitations too.

720p vs 1080p video recording

Do you typically record 720p or 1080p video? I use 720p because the files are smaller and I own a 720p tv. I wondered if 720p might offer better quality in low light conditions because it can average over more pixels in the sensor?
Also if the phone cpu is working too hard at 1080p does it reduce quality by upping compression and increasing lossyness?
Or is 1080p substantially better choice with the only downside being bigger files?
Generally I've found video IQ to be some what independent of resolution (on other devices) because compression generally goes up with resolution negating a lot of the benefits.
Thoughts?
Im using 720p cos it seems to me more clear and more smooth playing...plus less zoom.....
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
So 720p plays back smoother? Just on the phone screen or over hdmi?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
jdurston said:
Do you typically record 720p or 1080p video? I use 720p because the files are smaller and I own a 720p tv. I wondered if 720p might offer better quality in low light conditions because it can average over more pixels in the sensor?
Also if the phone cpu is working too hard at 1080p does it reduce quality by upping compression and increasing lossyness?
Or is 1080p substantially better choice with the only downside being bigger files?
Generally I've found video IQ to be some what independent of resolution (on other devices) because compression generally goes up with resolution negating a lot of the benefits.
Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are right, due to the binning would select the less noisier pixels and thus, the 720p video quality [except for resolution ofc ] would be much better.
I prefer 720p mode, only because of the field of view, it's just too narrow angle in 1080 mode.
Suppose it could come in handy if wanting to shoot something more distant but for indoor work it's not wide enough.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
For me only 720p, because in 1080p I get a thin, purple line over the image that's also recorded into the vid, making my 1080 mode effectively broken.
I always thought 1080 as higher quality than 720p. Maybe for mobile this is different? Any source or test for this?
I'll try and shoot some comparison footage tomorrow.
Not sure if YouTube's compression will make the difference impossible to tell though.
Si14 said:
I always thought 1080 as higher quality than 720p. Maybe for mobile this is different? Any source or test for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a totally different matter. Yes, 1080 pixels are "higher" than 720, obviously . But there are other factors also on our device.
I just record in 720p. Never really compared the two, but I don't need 1080p usually, so I' don't need those huge files either.
Good discussion on here, guess I'll have to switch to 720p now on.
I tried recording an apple in the 2 modes and to my surprise the 720p mode is indeed much clearer and wider then 1080p.
Go for 720p
I prefer 720 p... for my the quality is enought and the size of the videos is so better.
Regards

H.265 video codec

Hi.iwanna ask about h.265 codec setting in our axon 7. Im using a2017g on b08 firmware. Is it normal when i set video to h.265 codec and 60fps the video become slightly zoomed compared to h.264 codec? Thanks
You mean the 1080p at 60fps mode using h.265? I have noticed that also.
That's probably a sensor crop. Sometimes you see that on devices when developers want to include a format that pushes the limits of what the hardware can handle. The device will sample less than the full dimensions of what the sensor can capture so that it is processing a more manageable amount of data. It then upscales each frame to the target resolution.
Personally, I think the 1080p 60fps mode on the Axon 7 looks like garbage. It's not just cropping the sensor, it's sporadically blurry because I think it's also interpolating a certain number of frames to reach 60fps. The bitrate looks inadequate and the colors are washed out. Most SD 820 phones don't even attempt a 1080p 60fps mode. While it's a type of real time hardware encoding that the chipset technically supports, I believe the results are not desirable. It probably drops a lot of frames unless developers implement tricks to improve the raw performance as Axon has attempted.
The 4K video mode at 30fps that uses h.265 looks pretty good to me though as long as there is an adequate amount of light. There's no sensor crop, the colors look better, there's substantially less blurring, and the level of compression artifacting visible is much lower.
argblah said:
You mean the 1080p at 60fps mode using h.265? I have noticed that also.
That's probably a sensor crop. Sometimes you see that on devices when developers want to include a format that pushes the limits of what the hardware can handle. The device will sample less than the full dimensions of what the sensor can capture so that it is processing a more manageable amount of data. It then upscales each frame to the target resolution.
Personally, I think the 1080p 60fps mode on the Axon 7 looks like garbage. It's not just cropping the sensor, it's sporadically blurry because I think it's also interpolating a certain number of frames to reach 60fps. The bitrate looks inadequate and the colors are washed out. Most SD 820 phones don't even attempt a 1080p 60fps mode. While it's a type of real time hardware encoding that the chipset technically supports, I believe the results are not desirable. It probably drops a lot of frames unless developers implement tricks to improve the raw performance as Axon has attempted.
The 4K video mode at 30fps that uses h.265 looks pretty good to me though as long as there is an adequate amount of light. There's no sensor crop, the colors look better, there's substantially less blurring, and the level of compression artifacting visible is much lower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes.thats answer my question.thank you:laugh:
argblah said:
You mean the 1080p at 60fps mode using h.265? I have noticed that also.
That's probably a sensor crop. Sometimes you see that on devices when developers want to include a format that pushes the limits of what the hardware can handle. The device will sample less than the full dimensions of what the sensor can capture so that it is processing a more manageable amount of data. It then upscales each frame to the target resolution.
Personally, I think the 1080p 60fps mode on the Axon 7 looks like garbage. It's not just cropping the sensor, it's sporadically blurry because I think it's also interpolating a certain number of frames to reach 60fps. The bitrate looks inadequate and the colors are washed out. Most SD 820 phones don't even attempt a 1080p 60fps mode. While it's a type of real time hardware encoding that the chipset technically supports, I believe the results are not desirable. It probably drops a lot of frames unless developers implement tricks to improve the raw performance as Axon has attempted.
The 4K video mode at 30fps that uses h.265 looks pretty good to me though as long as there is an adequate amount of light. There's no sensor crop, the colors look better, there's substantially less blurring, and the level of compression artifacting visible is much lower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
naset said:
Yes.thats answer my question.thank you:laugh:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What about 1080p60 on the Lineage camera? I believe it looks much better than stock 1080p60.
Maybe snap is even better (caf sources?)
Also, I have no idea about this sorta stuff, but what would the bottleneck be? There's a dedicated image processing thingy on-die, right?
Choose an username... said:
What about 1080p60 on the Lineage camera? I believe it looks much better than stock 1080p60.
Maybe snap is even better (caf sources?)
Also, I have no idea about this sorta stuff, but what would the bottleneck be? There's a dedicated image processing thingy on-die, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never try los yet so i dont know the quality
@argblah,
Hi, have you tried this issue on other phone? Have you fixed your phone's problem?

Anyone know a way to stop the camera from upscaling the video recording resolution?

This has been bugging the hell out of me since I got this phone. All the reviews made such a huge deal out of the phones camera quality and capabilities. But upon using it myself.. I am not all that impressed. When I record a video in say 1280x720, the resulting video always looks like it was recorded in say 800x450 or something along those lines. No matter what bitrate I choose, it looks like a lower resolution. You can't zoom the video hardly without it degrading. Go ahead, try zooming on some text in 720P. Now compare it to 720P on some other phone. Now, when I record in say 1920x1080, the resulting video looks like it was recorded in 720p, not 1080.
I have 720p videos I recorded from my Galaxy S4 that look FAR FAR better than so called 720p on the V20. It seems like the camera on the V20 is UPSCALING the video recording output to the next highest resolution than what is ACTUALLY being recorded. 720p appears as 480p, 1080p appears as 720p etc. As someone who is picky about quality, this has been a major blow since I got this phone. I am surprised no one has ever posted about this.
THE-COPS said:
This has been bugging the hell out of me since I got this phone. All the reviews made such a huge deal out of the phones camera quality and capabilities. But upon using it myself.. I am not all that impressed. When I record a video in say 1280x720, the resulting video always looks like it was recorded in say 800x450 or something along those lines. No matter what bitrate I choose, it looks like a lower resolution. You can't zoom the video hardly without it degrading. Go ahead, try zooming on some text in 720P. Now compare it to 720P on some other phone. Now, when I record in say 1920x1080, the resulting video looks like it was recorded in 720p, not 1080.
I have 720p videos I recorded from my Galaxy S4 that look FAR FAR better than so called 720p on the V20. It seems like the camera on the V20 is UPSCALING the video recording output to the next highest resolution than what is ACTUALLY being recorded. 720p appears as 480p, 1080p appears as 720p etc. As someone who is picky about quality, this has been a major blow since I got this phone. I am surprised no one has ever posted about this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Iv noticed it, but I brushed it off as I felt nothing could be done to fix by me or other devs that I am/was aware of. Now that I think if it more from your words, maybe could be fixed by overclocking the 4k to 6k, or 8k, to get a 4k resolution. Need root to try this though.
Well, at least I'm not the only one who noticed. Is it the same way on Oreo? I mean, did the update "fix" anything related to video recording resolution or is it still upscaled? (I'm still on 7.0 Nougat for battery reasons, but if 8.0 has a video improvement.. well, game changer). This seems like false advertising meant to try and push 4k capability when it really couldn't. If the camera really isn't capturing 4K, then does that mean it would be too much a burden on the hardware to actually be pulling 30 4k FPS ...VS 30 1080P FPS upscaled to 4K?
Are you talking about the quality on Google photos, or the out of camera quality?
have you tried exporting it to your computer via USB? Cos, for some reason the quality and resolution are lower on G Photos.
THE-COPS said:
Well, at least I'm not the only one who noticed. Is it the same way on Oreo? I mean, did the update "fix" anything related to video recording resolution or is it still upscaled? (I'm still on 7.0 Nougat for battery reasons, but if 8.0 has a video improvement.. well, game changer). This seems like false advertising meant to try and push 4k capability when it really couldn't. If the camera really isn't capturing 4K, then does that mean it would be too much a burden on the hardware to actually be pulling 30 4k FPS ...VS 30 1080P FPS upscaled to 4K?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think a burden but more of how's it's coded. 4K on tripod is hard to tell vs 1080p. Note 3 was same way. Oreo cam may be better but I can't really tell. Idk why 16mp is not fully utilized for 4K 16:9 either. Coding that I personally don't know how to do. Slow mo don't even have sound via stock cam.
Lebatman said:
Are you talking about the quality on Google photos, or the out of camera quality?
have you tried exporting it to your computer via USB? Cos, for some reason the quality and resolution are lower on G Photos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Camera output. That is, the resulting video file from the camera after pressing record button.
I know there is a loss of quality from compression. But it's not compression artifacts causing this. Bitrate doesn't make any difference. You can clearly see the video detail is not even close to what it says it is. I especially noticed this with text. I was recording a video while in a car. There was a car maybe 1-2 car lengths ahead. One can easily read the license plate. In the recorded 1280x720 video, I could NOT make out the plate at all. You'd thought I recorded in 960x540 or close. It's rather blurry. I think that's why LG added all that oversharpening.
I even set it to take photos at 1280x720. And even with high jpg compression zoomed/cropped, it doesn't look like the 1280x720 zoomed/cropped video of the same exact item being photo'd.
Been using Mark Harmons OpenCamera and trying all sorts of video bitrates. Then changing photo save resolution. I found that a photo resolution of between 960x540 and 800x480 (cropped) looks very similar to what a cropped 720P video appears. It seems as if there is some kind of preprocessing going on with the image that makes it appear extremely muddy (smudged blurry detail cropped). Nothing at all changed with the quality whether the bitrate was set at 5Mbps or 50Mbps. Quality remained unchanged.
Mysticblaze347. I don't think a burden but more of how's it's coded. 4K on tripod is hard to tell vs 1080p. Note 3 was same way. Oreo cam may be better but I can't really tell. Idk why 16mp is not fully utilized for 4K 16:9 either. Coding that I personally don't know how to do. Slow mo don't even have sound via stock cam.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like Oreo update isn't worth the trouble. As far as how it's coded... I think it's the awful preprocessing muddying up the image detail as I mentioned above. Using massively high bitrates does no good at all.
4K on tripod VS 1080 on tripod is quite noticeable on the V20 due to the appearance of upscaling (or horrible preprocessing.. whichever it is).
I didn't know Slo-Mo was supposed to have sound. I mean, the option to enable sound would be interesting (say a time-stretched audio instead of slowed down pitch).
THE-COPS said:
Camera output. That is, the resulting video file from the camera after pressing record button.
I know there is a loss of quality from compression. But it's not compression artifacts causing this. Bitrate doesn't make any difference. You can clearly see the video detail is not even close to what it says it is. I especially noticed this with text. I was recording a video while in a car. There was a car maybe 1-2 car lengths ahead. One can easily read the license plate. In the recorded 1280x720 video, I could NOT make out the plate at all. You'd thought I recorded in 960x540 or close. It's rather blurry. I think that's why LG added all that oversharpening.
I even set it to take photos at 1280x720. And even with high jpg compression zoomed/cropped, it doesn't look like the 1280x720 zoomed/cropped video of the same exact item being photo'd.
Been using Mark Harmons OpenCamera and trying all sorts of video bitrates. Then changing photo save resolution. I found that a photo resolution of between 960x540 and 800x480 (cropped) looks very similar to what a cropped 720P video appears. It seems as if there is some kind of preprocessing going on with the image that makes it appear extremely muddy (smudged blurry detail cropped). Nothing at all changed with the quality whether the bitrate was set at 5Mbps or 50Mbps. Quality remained unchanged.
Sounds like Oreo update isn't worth the trouble. As far as how it's coded... I think it's the awful preprocessing muddying up the image detail as I mentioned above. Using massively high bitrates does no good at all.
4K on tripod VS 1080 on tripod is quite noticeable on the V20 due to the appearance of upscaling (or horrible preprocessing.. whichever it is).
I didn't know Slo-Mo was supposed to have sound. I mean, the option to enable sound would be interesting (say a time-stretched audio instead of slowed down pitch).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Who wouldn't want sound with slow mo? That's like no sound with regular video lol.
LG also made it to where 4k can barely be done via third party. Gcam can't...Open Cam can. Nothing can be done without root tho. Even then... limitations upon availability and know how. Manual setting is your best bet. Auto is well...auto, so definitely postprocessing will be involved and yes it's not the best, unless fixed with some mod, even if that works. LG hardcoded lockdowns. Camera firmware can be possible tweaked...but I do not know how.

Categories

Resources