Everyone suggests hardware decoding (h264) for videos to avoid excessive battery use. But then again the current hardware decoder in stock has the jitter problem on pan shots. XviDs in moboplayer have no jitter whatsoever. I would be interested to hear whether other people had experienced significantly higher battery usage using software. To me the jitter is unacceptable. I hope they sort it out in 3.2
As usual, the 'final frontier' of getting the latest and greatest Android flavor fully functional on our 'old' phones is videos and video recording. That it works at all is amazing, and is thanks to the equally amazing devs who continue to support the OG Droid incredible. Now, I'm not a dev and don't pretend to be, I just like to experiment. The purpose of this thread is to document the current state of things, and to share what works and what doesn't work. I'm using Pons CM10, but Pons AOKP, Albinoman AOSP, and Evervolv should all provide a similar experience as far as video stuff is concerned.
First, the state of 'stock':
- Video recording does actually work. The camera preview is wonky, but it does record real video footage. This ain't no 720p though, frame rate is maybe 6 fps - that's pretty jerky if you ask me. Audio is steady.
- Video playback is very bad. While the stock video player seems to handle audio OK, the video stutters badly, sometimes pausing on one frame for several seconds.
- YouTube playback is smooth and seamless if the phone is in landscape mode, the video is full screen, and you don't touch it. Anything that causes the screen to display anything other than the video being played will cause it to flicker and sometimes pause.
- Netflix does not work at all.
Next, the state of 'free' apps from the market:
- Videocam Illusions can record smoother video than the stock camcorder, but only because it allows you to lower the quality and uses its own software encoding. At the resolution of the stock camcorder (640x480), the frame rate is similar. Audio quality can be increased with little or no impact on video quality.
- MX Player, by default, plays slow and stuttering video just like the stock player. With hardware decoding enabled, video files play quite nicely (provided they were recorded on something other than a dinc running JB!). Audio sometimes goes silent for a second or two.
- Camera ICS allows increasing the video bitrate (and has less problems with wonky preview) but records videos just like the stock camcorder.
- lgCamera and DoubleShot allow much more control over video recording quality. However, the only settings that work are H.264 encoding, 15fps, 640x480. Which, of course, yields similar results to the stock camcorder - about 6 fps at best. Audio quality on these apps can be tweaked nicely.
My questions for those who know about such things:
Would it be possible to get the stock video player to use hardware accelleration?
Would it be possible to enable other video encoders in the ROM, at least for experimental purposes?
Sorry to break it to you man but the dInc is a bit behind the times. From what I understand the lack of updated hardware drivers from the manufacture is what's limiting it to be further more compatible with the latest AOSP. The glory days of the dInc were CM7, past that it went down hill IMO.
m52 power! said:
Sorry to break it to you man but the dInc is a bit behind the times. From what I understand the lack of updated hardware drivers from the manufacture is what's limiting it to be further more compatible with the latest AOSP. The glory days of the dInc were CM7, past that it went down hill IMO.
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I'm fully aware that the Dinc is ancient by cell phone standards - that's why I have one. The way I see it, I could:
1. Pay $500 for the latest and greatest phone.
2. Get back on a Verizon contract and pay $1200/year for the latest and greatest phone.
3. Buy a used Dinc for $80 and deal with a few issues like this
Which choice is the right one for me is obvious, though it's definitely not the right choice for everyone.
FWIW, video recording via the stock camcorder has been broken since about 10-29 (two days after I posted the OP). There have been rumors of a possible fix in the works from Evervolv, but I think they're mostly focused on the increasingly difficult task of bringing the latest version of Android to what used to be top-of-the-line phones.
I dont know.. Although video recording doesnt work, CM10 is absolutely amazing and stable on Dinc(at least pon's roms are).
123421342 said:
I dont know.. Although video recording doesnt work, CM10 is absolutely amazing and stable on Dinc(at least pon's roms are).
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I'll second that. The camera situation is getting better slowly, as bugs are being ironed out upstream and the devs try out various fixes. For me, the benefits of jb outweigh the downsides, though I definitely did appreciate the consistency of cm7.2. Perhaps you should stick with that for now?
I've had to switch back to cm7.2 recently. Flickering YouTube really started to get to me. Really miss the UI, though. Anyone find a fix or at least a way to alleviate the flickering?
Sent from my ADR6300 using xda app-developers app
flicker isn't that bad on my phone using tiny's cm10
zenihilist said:
I've had to switch back to cm7.2 recently. Flickering YouTube really started to get to me. Really miss the UI, though. Anyone find a fix or at least a way to alleviate the flickering?
Sent from my ADR6300 using xda app-developers app
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While it doesn't have the cm customization I posted an evervolv android 4.2 build and people said it doesn't have YouTube flickering. Its a really early build so it has issues so don't flash unless you want to help report bugs.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
tiny4579 said:
While it doesn't have the cm customization I posted an evervolv android 4.2 build and people said it doesn't have YouTube flickering. Its a really early build so it has issues so don't flash unless you want to help report bugs.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
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Indeed the flickering in YouTube seems to be gone in your 4.2 build - that's a pleasant surprise! Video stuff in other places is pretty much unchanged; MX Player plays videos smoothly if hardware decoding is enabled, the stock video player stutters badly, trying to record videos FC's the camera, and VideoCam Illusions can still record medium-low quality videos.
The 4.2 ROM is awesome, Tiny. Thanks so much! I don't see the flicker anywhere anymore (currents, chrome, etc). Aside from the odd fc that I'm unable to reproduce, this may be more smooth than 4.1, cm10. Also, videos recorded in in gingerbread ROMs play fine for me on the stock player.
Sent from my Droid Incredible using xda premium
So I've noticed that Hulu lags when streaming on high quality on this phone which never happened on my previous Note 2. The audio is fine but the video is sort of choppy. When I change it to medium quality it streams just fine but the picture quality is degraded. On my other apps video and audio quality are excellent. Just curious if anyone else has noticed this and if so have you found a fix for it?
knewbee10 said:
So I've noticed that Hulu lags when streaming on high quality on this phone which never happened on my previous Note 2. The audio is fine but the video is sort of choppy. When I change it to medium quality it streams just fine but the picture quality is degraded. On my other apps video and audio quality are excellent. Just curious if anyone else has noticed this and if so have you found a fix for it?
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Just tested this and the framerate does drop on the high setting. You need to report this to Hulu. They'll need to fix this.
Netflix is streaming just fine, even using 2 devices to watch content at the same time.
asianflavor said:
Just tested this and the framerate does drop on the high setting. You need to report this to Hulu. They'll need to fix this.
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Thanks, That was the word I was looking for "framerate". I just emailed them hopefully they will be able to resolve this problem soon.
knewbee10 said:
Thanks, That was the word I was looking for "framerate". I just emailed them hopefully they will be able to resolve this problem soon.
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Thanks for the heads up... Wouldn't be surprised if this is fixed by their next update.
Im looking for an rom based on Jelly Bean 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 that will record in 720p for my Arc S, I cant both be a clean vanilla version or an Xperia-design I know that Slim Bean 4 have 720p. but I dont like the design in that one
Kitkat would be great, but so far what I have read there are no 720p support yet on that one...
So anyone here know?
There is no such ROM, as 720p recording does not work properly on Jelly Bean (low framerate + consumes way too much RAM, I think it was about 30 MB).
Someguyfromhell said:
There is no such ROM, as 720p recording does not work properly on Jelly Bean (low framerate + consumes way too much RAM, I think it was about 30 MB).
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18fps 720p on Racing Bean
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2093720
That's the issue. 18 FPS is very slow and laggy compared to normal 25-30 FPS video. And thereby it is not worth to give about 30 MB of RAM, just to have 720p feature, which you probably don't use that often (who knows, maybe you do).
720p needs kernel which supports 720p... Some of the fusion and lupus kernel versions supported that... But if you want for jb 4.2 and above you ll need to go into kernel compiling...
Sent from my Xperia Neo V using Tapatalk 2
Someguyfromhell said:
That's the issue. 18 FPS is very slow and laggy compared to normal 25-30 FPS video. And thereby it is not worth to give about 30 MB of RAM, just to have 720p feature, which you probably don't use that often (who knows, maybe you do).
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I do
Audio recording sounds much better. Has anyone seen that there is a big difference between those two?
How can I improve the video sound quality to be the same as when I record audio? I tried different apps, but so far no improvement.
I have started this thread on Q&A
Please remove this one.