Database Users

[LINK] Let's get Google to fix the video recorder issues

I posted part of this in charnsingh_online's 780p thread, but I feel it's more appropriate to post here instead so that everyone sees it, so here goes -
The biggest problems with the Nexus One's video recorder are the mediocre audio recording format (AMR 8kHz) and the low frame rates in decent lighting conditions. This is not acceptable, because the Nexus One is Google's so-called "superphone" and we have seen the iPhone and Droid produce good quality video recordings (ie. constant frame rates, good audio) on arguably lower hardware specs.
Here's a link to a Google feature request that a Nexus One owner posted way back in January:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6156
"Issue 6156: Adding support for more audio and video encoders in Android."
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Please visit the page I have linked, and if you have a Google account (I am sure you all do!), click on the star at the top left (and leave comments too!) so that it increases the number of stars and thus brings it to the attention of the Google team.
It may be a longshot that they do something about it, but it doesn't hurt to at least let them know about it!
EDIT: The issue above is actually a general Android feature request, but for the Nexus One you could also visit a similar thread in the Nexus One help forum:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?fid=5f7b0b7d99eff9310004892474249fa2&hl=en

I do have to say, though, that the framerate reduction is a very positive thing for low-light videos compared to the Milestone/Droid. My N1 can take beautiful videos of performances in nightclubs and on outdoor nighttime stages by slowing down the framerate to capture enough light. Under the same conditions, my Milestone produces a high-framerate video of... total darkness punctuated by a few bright lights.
But it would be nice to have some more fine-grained controls over this.

cmstlist said:
I do have to say, though, that the framerate reduction is a very positive thing for low-light videos compared to the Milestone/Droid. My N1 can take beautiful videos of performances in nightclubs and on outdoor nighttime stages by slowing down the framerate to capture enough light. Under the same conditions, my Milestone produces a high-framerate video of... total darkness punctuated by a few bright lights.
But it would be nice to have some more fine-grained controls over this.
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Image quality is all fine and dandy, but when you are only getting 9fps in a lit room then the video is garbage anyway. In the same conditions with the Milestone the frame rate is at a constant 24 fps and the picture is a bit grainy due to the increased ISO(?), which is still acceptable still (plus you can use the LED light to add some more brightness).

dsixda said:
Image quality is all fine and dandy, but when you are only getting 9fps in a lit room then the video is garbage anyway. In the same conditions with the Milestone the frame rate is at a constant 24 fps and the picture is a bit grainy due to the increased ISO(?), which is still acceptable still (plus you can use the LED light to add some more brightness).
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Sure, but under the conditions I described (dark room with stage lighting, basically), Milestone fails completely and N1 succeeds. The LED light will not help under these circumstances - the stage lighting is plenty bright, but the Milestone simply fails to capture anything at all.
Here's an example N1 video in a nightclub - one of my favourite Vancouver drag queens in fact
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc4Kk0h4cL0
Yes, the frame rate isn't great and the audio sucks... but the colours are absolutely brilliant. I didn't have my Milestone yet at the time I filmed this but I've tried using it in similar conditions. All the Milestone produces is complete darkness with a few tiny flashes of light. Not even grainy... absolute darkness.

Thanks for this. Im so sick of hearing about the cruddy things about the nexus that arent hardware related. If it doesnt have the hardware i understand the limitations, but it seems like google just didnt really try with this damn phone. I mean fps sucks and we couldve had 720p recording? What the **** is going on over there at android headquarters? Whos in charge of quality control? And they didnt even think 720 was POSSIBLE? Talk about bush league.

Good idea...have visit the link and left my comments

Star added!

Thanks for doing this.
IMO, 720p is over-rated. 480 @ 16:9 (or 16:8 or w/e) is more file-size effiecient anyway. I think the biggest issue is audio. 8k?! That's insanely low. Un-necessarily low. We need a fix to this seriously badly.

yes 720p is over-rated. id rather have a high quality (high bitrate/high framerate) 480p... its like an upscaled DVD vs a low bitrate 720p movie rip from piratebay

Agreed with both of you. Personally, I don't think it's such a big deal to have 720p when the frame rate and audio is so mediocre in the first place. Takes up too much storage too. We need to fix the bigger issues first.

BTW the link to the entire Issues list is found on the "Issues" tab in that URL I showed in the first post. Or you can access it through here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list
When I first posted this thread, the video encoder issue was only at 29 stars and it was on page 3 of the Issues list... now it has 74 stars and we are at page 2! Thanks everyone.. we need more people though!

You're going to have more luck posting this in the nexus forums than the android forums.
You will not be seeing support for propietary codecs on the Android base OS.
The only way you will see it is at the device level. Licensing issues prevent it from being incorporated into Android, but not into specific devices.

how to lock the framerate at 30 in dark situations when shooting video

Topic says it all, when shooting video in dark situations framerate drops to 10 - 12 -17 so it's frustrating! Since the specification of the video says that the variable frame rate if there is a chance to somehow locked at 30fps!
Great magicians of hacking help please!!!

Nope, wait for a update from HTC and hope for the best... (for now anyway)

Even if we set Exposure to -2 and ISO to 800 we can't achive 30 fps, so, if we lock frame rate to 30, in low light, it is possible that the video is to dark for us to do anything with it.
IMHO DHD have a poor camera sensor for low light.

mdalacu said:
Even if we set Exposure to -2 and ISO to 800 we can't achive 30 fps, so, if we lock frame rate to 30, in low light, it is possible that the video is to dark for us to do anything with it.
IMHO DHD have a poor camera sensor for low light.
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Yes or not enough processing power to handle the low light data in real time, or enough power but the processor is busy getting US stocks data for people who never trade in US stocks and running Facebook for people who dont have a facebook account and.....(long list of featutes that burn my cpu and battery but never use or want)
Sent from my HTC HD so may contain typos, bugs and, if the battery lasts, pearls of....(battery 0%)

l0w said:
Yes or not enough processing power to handle the low light data in real time, or enough power but the processor is busy getting US stocks data for people who never trade in US stocks and running Facebook for people who dont have a facebook account and.....(long list of featutes that burn my cpu and battery but never use or want)
Sent from my HTC HD so may contain typos, bugs and, if the battery lasts, pearls of....(battery 0%)
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Haha, love the sarcasm
You do know you can remove all the crap you don't want like Stocks etc? One of the many joys of rooting your phone

I really wish there was a way to get the camera to shoot 30 fps in low light too
I really dont care how much noise will be introduced. 30 fps is most important. Is this even possible for a developer here to work on since this is HTC's own app and i think HTC dont release their source?

Have you tried shooting with flashlight on? Or setting the white balance manually, I'm sure I read somewhere that helps, turning off automatic white balance removes the annoying changes in brightness and helps improve framers alongside setting exposure to manual.
Be nice if it just shot un 30fps all the time like iPhone, I'm sure it will be sorted.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

gamesmachine said:
Have you tried shooting with flashlight on? Or setting the white balance manually, I'm sure I read somewhere that helps, turning off automatic white balance removes the annoying changes in brightness and helps improve framers alongside setting exposure to manual.
Be nice if it just shot un 30fps all the time like iPhone, I'm sure it will be sorted.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
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I have a gut feeling it wont be sorted. Take a look at the old Desire. It's camcorder is still shooting at 22 fps in optimal light! Probably less than 10 in low light. HTC just doesnt seem to care

SupremeBeaver said:
I have a gut feeling it wont be sorted. Take a look at the old Desire. It's camcorder is still shooting at 22 fps in optimal light! Probably less than 10 in low light. HTC just doesnt seem to care
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Do you own a Desire(old one)?From what you say I guess you don't.With the Desire,if you set the ISO to 800 you can record anything between 25 and 30 fps,even in low light.It introduces some more noise,but not that much more that what the iPhone does in low light.Dunno why the DHD doesn't change much with the iso...

So, is there a way to record at 30fps at night?I searched all over the forum and didn't find a way.(besides reducing the exposure which makes videos very dark)
I noticed a thing that when I focus the objects aren't so shadowy because of low fps but only just for a moment like half of second and then it returnes to the normal 10-15 fps.

sergiu_07_07 said:
So, is there a way to record at 30fps at night?I searched all over the forum and didn't find a way.(besides reducing the exposure which makes videos very dark)
I noticed a thing that when I focus the objects aren't so shadowy because of low fps but only just for a moment like half of second and then it returnes to the normal 10-15 fps.
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Nah dude there probably is no way. It's the hardware here that's the problem here.

The problem is that the sensors in your camera need a certain minimum amount of time to get the picture to look correct.
I could tell you how to get it locked at 30, but then you would hate me because your video would turn out extremely blurry, and to that extent, so dark that you might as well have just recorded a black sheet of paper.
(This would of course come with rooting your phone, which I wouldn't think is a problem)
The thing is, its been coded into your device to reduce the frame-rate, so that you at least get a scene in a video at a bad frame rate, instead of black in a video with good frame rate

Yeah, but as I said before, there is a thing that when I focus the video there is a small interval of time(about 1/2 sec) when the frames seem to be normal(25-30).I don't know if this happens only on my device but before the gingerbread update I didn't notice this.You could try it or I can even send you a recording.And why does the camera sensor state that it can record @60 fps in light and 30 fps in dark?(according to this thread p=13510330)
I don't know very much about its camera and I don't say that I am right about this, but I want to improve the recording as much as possible.Even my friends MOTO Defy is better in low light.
Also will a custom rom improve the performance of recording?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

sergiu_07_07 said:
Yeah, but as I said before, there is a thing that when I focus the video there is a small interval of time(about 1/2 sec) when the frames seem to be normal(25-30).I don't know if this happens only on my device but before the gingerbread update I didn't notice this.You could try it or I can even send you a recording.And why does the camera sensor state that it can record @60 fps in light and 30 fps in dark?(according to this thread p=13510330)
I don't know very much about its camera and I don't say that I am right about this, but I want to improve the recording as much as possible.Even my friends MOTO Defy is better in low light.
Also will a custom rom improve the performance of recording?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Custom roms dont improve the low light recording unfortunately.

sergiu_07_07 said:
Yeah, but as I said before, there is a thing that when I focus the video there is a small interval of time(about 1/2 sec) when the frames seem to be normal(25-30).I don't know if this happens only on my device but before the gingerbread update I didn't notice this.You could try it or I can even send you a recording.And why does the camera sensor state that it can record @60 fps in light and 30 fps in dark?(according to this thread p=13510330)
I don't know very much about its camera and I don't say that I am right about this, but I want to improve the recording as much as possible.Even my friends MOTO Defy is better in low light.
Also will a custom rom improve the performance of recording?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think any sensor manufacturer can specify framerate in "dark" because how do you define "dark"? What your eyes percieve as "dark" is more like "pitch black" for a camera sensor. Especially a small crappy one that sits behind a small crappy lens. Remember that to have 30 fps, you should be able to "gather" enough light to make a properly exposed image for a 1/30 of a second. Take your point-and-shoot camera, or even a DSLR, set it to manual mode, set the ISO to 800, set the shutter speed to 1/30, set the aperture to f/8 for a 28mm equvalent focal length (if you are using DSLR, for a point-and-shoot with a smaller than DX sensor, you have to dial it even higher) and see what picture you can get with those settings. This is how much light hits the sensor for 1/30 of a second. This is how your videos will look like.
EDIT: You should not compare video recording framerate on phones that record in different resolution. DEFY can record up to 640x480 (if I'm not mistaken) which is 1/3 of the frame recorded with the DHD (1280x720). With a good recording algorithm this means three times more light per pixel (if the sensor is the same).

video camera blurry?

Hello , I instaled eb13 via samsungs downloadable exe and the first time it was really laggy and buggy so I thn went into basic system recovery and iped data and such and then did it again and now I have an awesome smooth runnign froyo aside from the browser checkerboard and the video camera. Tghe browser I can deal with but what gives witgh the video camera? It is horrible when your moving quick its extremely blurry. This was not the case before and there is no real logical reason for the downgrade. I don't get it since I'm on a bug free froyo now. Anyone found a fix?

I have the same issue

Same here with the camera. Dunno about the browser as I use Dolphin HD.
The camera only presents the lag in low-light conditions it seems. It did not do that with DK28 or DI18.
Some users report not having this issue but do not mention low-light vs. high-light.
Ran update through Samsung's exe.

i've noticed this as well

Damn this sucks.....I lways braged to my girl that the recording was better vs her evo shift lol. Now its eaxctly the same. What a crock. I doubt they'll reease an update to fix it with there laz asses. I'm rlly just wondering if its an issue with the method of installing or eb13 in general and or if devs can fix it.

Yup, I didn't know I had this issue until coming across this thread. The video is fine in good light conditions but recording in low light produces blurry and bad video

Basboy said:
Yup, I didn't know I had this issue until coming across this thread. The video is fine in good light conditions but recording in low light produces blurry and bad video
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YES, its all because of low lighting. I took a video today and the quality is AMAZING, I love my epic
except for the fact that now we can't saves picture messages. Once they fix that and the checker boarding on the browser--this phone is perfect.

I'm trying to remember if it was Sprint who released an update shortly after the Moment's camera fiasco (same thing..updated to 2.1 and camera went laggy) or if it was a developer who fixed it and released it on SDX.
Anyone else remember that?

Same here
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

ae69ae said:
YES, its all because of low lighting. I took a video today and the quality is AMAZING, I love my epic
except for the fact that now we can't saves picture messages. Once they fix that and the checker boarding on the browser--this phone is perfect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
to save picture messages, long press on the message and select "attached items." you can then check the item and hit save button to copy to sd

Same here in low light on highest res setting.

YES!!! I think I might have been the first to point this out yesterday...desparately need a fix
Sent from my baked and emotionless SPH-D700

squshy 7 said:
YES!!! I think I might have been the first to point this out yesterday...desparately need a fix
Sent from my baked and emotionless SPH-D700
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BUMP!
This an absolutley tragic problem ,lol. I have recorded outside and its still blury when moving so idk.

Would like to get this looked at asap....just switched from evo to epic for the camera and froyo......actually mostly for the keyboard I'm loving it..

delete ...

Yeah, video recording is totally screwed up. The framerate drops along with the lighting/increased ISO. My room is dimly lit right now, and I can point it at my monitor and it records at a nice smooth framerate, but as soon as I pan over to a dimly lit area of the room, the framerate tanks to like no higher than 5 fps. I didn't expect EB13 to be much if any better than DK28, but so far it's worse. How can Samsung drops the ball every time, and they spent how many months working on this update?

Im really having no problems after wiping data and cache and all that and then flashing besides this problem with the camera. It seems to be a problem for 95% of us. How did the other 5% not get this problem lol.

carnivalrejectq said:
Im really having no problems after wiping data and cache and all that and then flashing besides this problem with the camera. It seems to be a problem for 95% of us. How did the other 5% not get this problem lol.
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Or the other 5% haven't figure it out yet...till they need to record something like us

Here's what I think is going on with the video problems:
I've looked at videos I shot on Eclair, and in low light it just didn't have any sensitivity at all. Anything below an average room lighting was just pitch black. But, the video stayed smooth.
On Froyo the camera app appears to try to reduce the frame rate to increase the sensitivity of the camera. You can see images in VERY dark environments, but with only a few frames a second.
Neither option is very good but I think I like dark video over 4 frames a second.
I'm guessing there is a hidden parameter somewhere that controls this. Something like a mimimum ISO setting.

Yea its a pain in the ass because of what it considers low light. I live in an old house so evenwith the lights on where I can see everything with my eyes the camera decides that its low ligt. So basically to have reg freamerates I have to be in a warehouse or outside in the sun? This is not acceptable lol. I like to take videos out and about at night and at concerts wich is usually dark.....as well as at m home of my daughter and now I can't. Hopefully your right and it meanss someone can go in there and change it back.

Low light video/images annoying forced exposure?

First of all I would like to say I LOVE this phone, its the best Android phone I have used thus far and I came from the HTC one, S4, and note 2.
Now here is whats making me insane, lg imposes this extreme low light processing which causes the image to become brighter at night, now thats completely fine with images I don't mind it, but with video seeing as we can't disable it, it makes videos taken during lowlight/indoor lighting horrid, any movement introduced causes blur and ghosting (even under the 1080p 60fps mode). I also have an iphone 5s and while the video is definitely darker, there is no issue with blur or ghosting.
This is not a bug, it is not a malfunction, its a feature that LG imposes on the camera, I was just wondering if there was some way to disable it from activating. If you guys don't understand what I mean I can make videos to show you the difference.

mobiousblack said:
First of all I would like to say I LOVE this phone, its the best Android phone I have used thus far and I came from the HTC one, S4, and note 2.
Now here is whats making me insane, lg imposes this extreme low light processing which causes the image to become brighter at night, now thats completely fine with images I don't mind it, but with video seeing as we can't disable it, it makes videos taken during lowlight/indoor lighting horrid, any movement introduced causes blur and ghosting (even under the 1080p 60fps mode). I also have an iphone 5s and while the video is definitely darker, there is no issue with blur or ghosting.
This is not a bug, it is not a malfunction, its a feature that LG imposes on the camera, I was just wondering if there was some way to disable it from activating. If you guys don't understand what I mean I can make videos to show you the difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a modded camera you can use in order to fix the video low light (low frames) issues.Must have root tho and recovery in order to do so.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2471900

woof123 said:
There is a modded camera you can use in order to fix the video low light (low frames) issues.Must have root tho and recovery in order to do so.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2471900
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the response I am glad I'm not the only one annoyed by this.

mobiousblack said:
Thanks for the response I am glad I'm not the only one annoyed by this.
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Click to collapse
Your welcome,hopefully soon we will have even better mods from the guys that are trying to help us.

woof123 said:
Your welcome,hopefully soon we will have even better mods from the guys that are trying to help us.
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Click to collapse
I hope lg eventually decided to give us the option to choose, basically decrease exposure to get better fps in low light. I prefer to keep my devices unrooted so I don't loose OTA updates but I'm glad that someone actually fixed it. If it gets too annoying I might eventually root

Video quality

Your friends are never going to believe what you did. The only way to prove it to them is with that video you took. Rate this thread to express how videos shot on the come out. A higher rating indicates that videos are smooth (and not choppy) and that auto-focus works very well, and that the camera adjusts quickly to different lighting conditions while recording.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!

Good stabilisation and auto focus, not much more to say

4k video awful. Stutters and judders whenever you move. FHD+ not much better. Quality is also not sharp. A massive let down here.

Video quality not good terrible jittering ,i expecting more from this expensive phone

price asked has nothing to do with quality there are 200$ phones with crisp 4k video on the market

Nestacres said:
4k video awful. Stutters and judders whenever you move. FHD+ not much better. Quality is also not sharp. A massive let down here.
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I got exact same feelings. The video quality is a bad joke...
Keeping my fingers crossed for a software update soon!

I spend a good hour at huawei booth and just couldn't get an explanation why there were jitters and dropped frames at 60 fps especially when panning. Also, 4k had few dropped frames and jitters but there was some sort of warping/bending at the sides of the screen. Again , no explanation.
So wanted to get this phone and am hoping someone has some answers why (perhaps it's ok when exported to pc?) or maybe some setting i'm not aware of?

Same here. Video quality suck and it always want to brighten the video when shot in a sligthly dark room. Hopefully there will be a fix but meanwhile snapchat app actually records better video than the default huawei app... Thats kind of embarrassing for huawei. It seems to be a sofwareissue.
Do anyone know any good external camera app to use?

Any one have the same problem like me.
No sound when making a video. When I restart the phone than sound comes back , but after a few more videos no more. I have now library of movies with no sound.

terkje said:
Same here. Video quality suck and it always want to brighten the video when shot in a sligthly dark room. Hopefully there will be a fix but meanwhile snapchat app actually records better video than the default huawei app... Thats kind of embarrassing for huawei. It seems to be a sofwareissue.
Do anyone know any good external camera app to use?
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I'm using Cinema FV5, it's having a lot of manual settings, so I was able to shoot a video which looks quite more natural in low light.
Gesendet von meinem LYA-L29 mit Tapatalk

I am not happy with video recording, pro mode options are limited and there's no dynamic control option i.e., you can't change settings while recording video other than zoom and focus. lot of pixel dropping in 4K, stabilization is good though, 146 has tweaked it well. another thing i noticed is long exposure shots with ISO 50 are giving lots of white dots or burnt pixels which are spoiling the photo shots. this means camera photo-detectors are not well ventilated for heat dissipation. also some of the features that Huawei boasted about such as cinematic mode are useless, low light videos are horrible...
only photo quality is good.

Slow mo
Hey guys, second post around... I've been testing super slow mo (960 fps) but the quality is a bit rubbish, the lense is the same as far as i know, and at 120 fps it takes good video, despite blurring everything at 0.6x... Do you have the same problem? Is there something I'm missing about slow motion video? Thanks!

Slow Motion is far better in Note 9. Big disappoint on Video recording on M20 Pro
Photos are great, Videos recorded are worse than $200 phone

sajokj said:
Slow Motion is far better in Note 9.
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Click to collapse
I feel the same.
But both on Note 9 and Mate 20 Pro, the lack of manual focus on slow motion is sad. I lose lots and lots of opportunity for nice slowmo videos because they are out of focus (e.g., looking out the winodow of a moving train when entering the station). Simply being able to lock the focus would make it awesome.

4K video works fine for me
As long as you move smoothly the video is very nice as long as you are outside in good light. But first remember to use "performance mode". This is very important! Of corse the stabilization is not as good as in full HD;

4k30fps is not the way to go for smooth footage with any movement involved, let's hope the market still cares about Huawei in 2k20 until kirin 990 comes along

gamekill said:
I feel the same.
But both on Note 9 and Mate 20 Pro, the lack of manual focus on slow motion is sad. I lose lots and lots of opportunity for nice slowmo videos because they are out of focus (e.g., looking out the winodow of a moving train when entering the station). Simply being able to lock the focus would make it awesome.
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Click to collapse
If you shoot video a lot, download Filmic Pro. It gives you full control on the camera. You'll be able to lock the focus and the exposure. Keep in mind that shooting 960fps video requires lots of lighting otherwise blur effect. The S9 has the same "issue". It is not an issue in fact it's just how it goes even for professional. Slow motion with bad lighting is a bad idea. Hope it helps
---------- Post added at 09:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 AM ----------
vandal4e said:
4k30fps is not the way to go for smooth footage with any movement involved, let's hope the market still cares about Huawei in 2k20 until kirin 990 comes along
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It depends a lot on what you shoot. and what texture you are looking for in your final footage. For more cinematic videos many will recommend 24fps. For slow motion high framerate. Shooting in 60fps you'll get a texture close to "real life". Hope it helps

How's the effect compared with iPhone and Samsung?

kkfashion said:
How's the effect compared with iPhone and Samsung?
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Video recording in Iphone XSMax are gorgeous, better than Mate 20 Pro period. For Samsung S10 I don't know but my guess is that they are both better than Mate 20 Pro. Mate 20 Pro just do the work

the video recording quality is quite the disaster. i hope it is fixed in an update some point soon. i'm pretty sure my zte a7 has better video quality....sadly...