QIK Video Streaming (possible to improve performance? ) - Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General

As I am sure many already know, there is a service called QIK which allows you to transmit live audio and video from your phone.
I've been trying it out on my Verizon HTC TouchPro 2, and it's a pretty fun application, but the one thing that is a bit annoying is that the frame rate is low - something like four or five frames per second and therefore very jumpy. It does not seem to matter if it is 3G or Wifi, either way it's just not very fast. Other phones, however, seem to get much better frame rates, Nokia's and the iPhone 3G look like they're doing at least 15fps or better.
As I have come to understand, the reason for this is that HTC has not published their camera system hardware API, thus forcing developers to capture the images directly and encode them in software. While the phone is able to encode pretty good mpeg-4 on the fly, they don't give any kind of SDK to actually use this capability in any third party software.
So...
This leads me to wonder if there are any ways of doing this that have been developed independently. We all know that a vendor's refusal to put out a public API does not stop others from developing one using a combination of reverse-engineering, API sniffing, backdooring etc.
I am aware that developers have managed to get 3D acceleration working on HTC models, despite the lack of openness from HTC.
Alternatively, are there any other services like QIK that might do better when it comes to streaming?

great question. I am looking for the same answer.
The quality of the video is much better if you upload a video taken directly with the HTC camera app.
This would be fine for me, but it always make the upload Private, which is the opposite of what I need.
Have you found any workarounds?

Related

Artemis VGA Video Recording (With similar Quality to Nokia N95)

hello
I was wondering whether there is an app out there that enables you to record video in 640*480 resolution, where the quality of the video is similar to the N95.
If processing power is a problem, i can overclock to 260Mhz (and higher if necessary).
All comments are welcome.
Thanks in advance, Uzzy
i'm pretty sure it's a hardware limitation and not a software one.
CoolCamera in theory is supposed to give VGA recording, but whether it's the same quality as the N95 is another question.
http://www.ateksoft.com/
I've played about with this in the past, but it always seems a little slow, but it has so many settings that it could be something that just need tinkering with.
Good luck
other programs
are there any other programs for web cam and working good?

Excited about possible video recorder cab from the Xperia X2

I know that we can get better quality video recording out of the TP2, with the first WinMo phone shooting WVGA @ 30fps with the exact same hardware (minus cam module), I'm excited to see if someone can work their magic to incorporate better recording from the TP2.
Anyone else?
Cyph
I too am curious about this. I have actually always been curious as to whether the video capabilities are more software dependent or hardware... Though if the phone is capable of displaying the video on the viewfinder at WVGA at 30fps it should theoretically be possible to record at that quality. Anyways, we'll see what crops up later
Not at all
solsearch said:
I too am curious about this. I have actually always been curious as to whether the video capabilities are more software dependent or hardware... Though if the phone is capable of displaying the video on the viewfinder at WVGA at 30fps it should theoretically be possible to record at that quality. Anyways, we'll see what crops up later
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately the above statement is not at all true. Recording depends heavily on the camera hardware in terms of possible frame rate at a given resolution. Furthermore real-time compression and encoding is a significantly different proposition to the CPU than decoding and playback. This is not to say the TP2 hardware may not be capable of doing better than it does, just that playback capabilities are no indication.
Dennis
Like I said, I don't know how much the camera module affects it. And what I meant by theoretically is that if it can display that on the viewfinder at that res then theoretically it could be recorded in raw format (as long as the transfer to the memory could handle the speed), but it would not be practical by any means. But if the x2 is capable of it and IF the ONLY difference is the camera module, and IF the camera module is just the sensor and no graphics processing then it could possibly happen. And I'd love to see it. But neither am I going to hold my breath.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OEIZvXqzxs
You see minutes 4:29 ..... But WVGA recording resolution is 720x480? or 800x480?
Thanks
The Xperia X2 has the same CPU as the Rhodium and in theory the video recording abilities can therefore be ported. The drivers for video recording must be extracted and put into the Rhodium ROM.
Even if the Rhodium camera or drivers doesn´t handle WVGA widescreen recording it´s possible with some development work to use better encoding drivers - i.e record VGA but let a good MP4 encoder with good quality do the encoding job (i.e replace the original HTC video encoder with a better one).
In this case the original HTC camera application is retained but with replaced encoders. The user only sees a quality difference - the handling of the camera app is the same otherwise.
E90 Commie said:
The Xperia X2 has the same CPU as the Rhodium and in theory the video recording abilities can therefore be ported. The drivers for video recording must be extracted and put into the Rhodium ROM.
Even if the Rhodium camera or drivers doesn´t handle WVGA widescreen recording it´s possible with some development work to use better encoding drivers - i.e record VGA but let a good MP4 encoder with good quality do the encoding job (i.e replace the original HTC video encoder with a better one).
In this case the original HTC camera application is retained but with replaced encoders. The user only sees a quality difference - the handling of the camera app is the same otherwise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's definitely be a good thing. Maybe it could even up the fps a little bit.
The Xperia X2 has the same CPU as the Rhodium and in theory the video recording abilities can therefore be ported. The drivers for video recording must be extracted and put into the Rhodium ROM.
Even if the Rhodium camera or drivers doesn´t handle WVGA widescreen recording it´s possible with some development work to use better encoding drivers - i.e record VGA but let a good MP4 encoder with good quality do the encoding job (i.e replace the original HTC video encoder with a better one).
In this case the original HTC camera application is retained but with replaced encoders. The user only sees a quality difference - the handling of the camera app is the same otherwise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well if we can get someone on that I'd be willing to pay (big - ROM COOKERS LISTENING?? :-D ) for the capability to enhance the video recording capabilities. I just need an additional 10 fps and maybe another 200 kb/s bit rate for excellent video. That would make the video recorder to 30 fps @ ~ 1Mb/s..niiice.
If they can accomplish WVGA or even D1 (720x480) that would be cool too (or better).
I wish I had the skills/tools to do that, I'd be all over it like white on rice! LOL
Cyph
Personally I don't need 30fps (though it'd be nice). I'd be happy with a video standard such as 23.976fps or whatnot. 20 does look stuttery. Just a few more would fix that. Well. Let's hope someone looks into it. Though it might be necessary that we wait until the x2 is actually released

[Q] Video playback on GN (compared to the Note)

There's a thread over in the Note section about poor black rendering in some videos. Could someone try out the sample on the Nexus and see if that too shows the same artifacts? The clip is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?53da859r2gu8b8q,p4zi4js5g42uxu4
Trying to determine if this is specific to the Note, the screen, or possibly poor software/codec rendering...
* Bump *
I havent seen any other discussion about this based on the search terms I've used and some people said that the Nexus also suffers from the same issue.
Can anyone perform some testing ?
http://www.mediafire.com/?qd2a1d8jm18vvbs
Use the stock player (HW acceleration mode)
Set the screen brightness on the player to lowest
View in a dark room to avoid any distraction from reflections, viewing this with ambient light actually makes it less problematic.
Post results.
I've downloaded video from first post but video player refuses to play it, sorry. But i was able to play above posted .mkv file and yes, picture looks pretty bad in very dark areas. I don't think we can change anything, that's how our SAMOLED works.
Sent from my SuperGalaxy SuperNexus!
MS. said:
I've downloaded video from first post but video player refuses to play it, sorry. But i was able to play above posted .mkv file and yes, picture looks pretty bad in very dark areas. I don't think we can change anything, that's how our SAMOLED works.
Sent from my SuperGalaxy SuperNexus!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for trying the video above, other SAMOLED devices display it video w/o any issues.. Like the Samsung Wave , Galaxay S1 and Galaxy S2.
What bothers me though is that on some Galaxy Note's with the very same settings and scenario above it has far lesser issues.
Im actually surprised this is not covered on the Galaxy Nexus sub forums, maybe no one watches HD movies on a 4.65" screen ?
More feedback from users would be nice so samsung can take a look at this issue.
I have seen this on several videos. I thought it was because of codec but realized did not happen on any other device i had.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Android 4.0 does not have native .mkv support like TW devices. It has the ability to hardware decode because the OMAP4460 chipset can decode it but after the update to 4.0.2 divx support was removed for some reason.
4.0.2 changelog:
Device features
Optimized Mobile Hotspot when used with VPN.
Optimized 3G/4G data sessions for faster response times.
Fixed an incorrect notification that “data was disconnected due to roaming”.
Wi-Fi now automatically reconnects when returning to a known Access Point.
Improvements to special visual effects feature when using front-facing camcorder.
Visual improvements to the lock screen.
Email & messaging
Fixed an issue where some email attachments would not open correctly.
Apps & Widgets
DivX support has been removed, and will be supported in a future upgrade.
Improved audio volume in Google navigation turn-by-turn directions.
Try it with mVideo or Dice player, it should work.
Any of the many good video players should work.
MX Video Player even has dual-core support...
I've definitely noticed this about the Nexus screen. I don't know if it's as bad as the Note or not, but I started a couple of huge threads on android forums (some reference the Note thread, so there may be a circular reference thing going on ):
http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...ing-effect-nexus-other-hd-amoled-screens.html
http://androidforums.com/verizon-ga...ifacts-black-areas-during-video-playback.html
I would love to know if there are any workarounds or if supercurio will be able to help the Nexus owners similar to what he's doing for the Note.

Dashcam -- Joying Intel

Ok, so people have found that standard USB cameras don't work on these units. The only known working camera is actually a fully self-contained recording device, that really only uses the USB wire for power and a few pointless controls.
https://www.carjoying.com/car-acces...-for-joying-new-android-system-head-unit.html
Really, if you're going to make the camera self contained, then what the heck is the point of bothering with the hookup with the head unit to begin with? Makes no sense.
Now the reason they did this is quite obvious... in their OLDER head units, they used the complete piece of trash ROCKCHIP 3188 SoC. I'm referring, of course, to MTC units. Those units would be *completely crippled* if you tried to record video on them, since they had neither video encoder nor even video decoder hardware blocks, which means that the video processing would be done entirely on the CPU! So they sold a camera that would mask this problem by recording the video itself!
The Intel SoC's have a video CODEC, so obviously the right way to do this now is to actually record the video on the head unit, using standard file formats.
I initially theorized that they had crippled either the kernel or the camera HAL.
So last night I watched the kernel log while plugging a PROPER USB camera in, and found something very interesting;
1) The kernel detected the camera, and properly associated it with the UVC video driver!
2) It was assigned a devfs entry of /dev/video5 --- 5? FIVE?
That's interesting. Why 5? Because there are already entries of /dev/video0 through /dev/video4.
Wonder what those extra inputs correspond to? Typically, when you plug in a device like a camera, the devfs entry is created dynamically. Yes, in this case, it was! But it was created at 5 (the 6th video device). Very likely, the HAL is hardcoded to use specific inputs from 0-4. I'm not aware of any Android mechanism for manually selecting the device. So blank screen on "DVR"? Because its trying to pull video from a video device that has no video INPUT.
It is certainly worth some investigation. I wonder what those inputs correspond to. Don't suppose that they could actually have video feeds from things like BACKUP camera and VIDEO IN, that feed Android, could they? Note that some video devices can create multiple devfs entries that correspond to different modes of operation, which could explain why there are so many.
It is also possible that the FYT5009 SoM has video input option that may not even be hooked up. Depends on how the MCU board is wired up.
I also note that in the configuration options for backup camera, there is an option for it to use a USB camera.
EDIT:
Checked into the camera HAL, it has hardcoded values for /dev/video0 through /dev/video3. What this means, is that there is currently no way in hell that Android can access /dev/video5, which is where an external USB camera is attached.
THIS IS SOMETHING WE CAN WORK WITH!!!!
AOSP USB Camera HAL:
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/hardware/libhardware/+/master/modules/usbcamera
Found something more...
There is an executable at /sbin/camcap
What it is, is a butchered build of ffmpeg
Which, of course, is licensed as GPL/LGPL.
So... intentionally and knowingly violating GPL, else why would they be hiding the identity of the program!
Great findings!
I have a USB camera I'd like to use as a DVR on one of the intel headunits. I really hope this can be done/
Good news, everyone!
I have successfully captured a video from a generic uvcvideo USB camera! And even better, over a test with a duration of about 2 minutes of HD MJPEG at whatever maximum frame rate it was able to deliver, the CPU utilization never exceeded 2% of *one* core.
Now truth is that I completely bypassed Android for this test, and ran ffmpeg directly with /dev/video5. Now this actually is a great option for running dashcam, since it is low overhead, greater running stability (no worry about Android coming around and killing the process!), and very effective.
I will begin working on a utility for managing it.
I would like to be able to capture the camera's audio stream as well, mux multiple cameras into a single video file, time based auto splitting, and a subtitle track containing a coordinate / speed readout from GPS. Ffmpeg should be able to handle all of it, except interfacing with the GPS, I will need something else to come up with the data stream for that.
doitright said:
Good news, everyone!
I have successfully captured a video from a generic uvcvideo USB camera! And even better, over a test with a duration of about 2 minutes of HD MJPEG at whatever maximum frame rate it was able to deliver, the CPU utilization never exceeded 2% of *one* core.
Now truth is that I completely bypassed Android for this test, and ran ffmpeg directly with /dev/video5. Now this actually is a great option for running dashcam, since it is low overhead, greater running stability (no worry about Android coming around and killing the process!), and very effective.
I will begin working on a utility for managing it.
I would like to be able to capture the camera's audio stream as well, mux multiple cameras into a single video file, time based auto splitting, and a subtitle track containing a coordinate / speed readout from GPS. Ffmpeg should be able to handle all of it, except interfacing with the GPS, I will need something else to come up with the data stream for that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that's worth being an app on Play store. Keep up the gr8 work!
KamaL said:
Well, that's worth being an app on Play store. Keep up the gr8 work!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no interest or intention of touching play store.
doitright said:
I have no interest or intention of touching play store.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that was a sort of a compliment, but I'm not surprised of your reply...
KamaL said:
Well, that was a sort of a compliment, but I'm not surprised of your reply...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One of the great strengths of Android is that you don't need to mess around with the "manufacturer's only authorized software source" -- as in apple. Reality is that play store is only there for people who don't have the faintest idea about how powerful their devices actually are. Apple's store is there to restrict their users' freedom.
So I've been playing with ffmpeg, and have figured out how to use it to capture any number of v4l2 video streams into a single mkv file, with unequal video configurations, and automatic time-based file splitting.
Its pretty cool what you can do.
For instance, BETTER camera does mjpeg at high resolution (say 800x600, or even higher), 30 fps. Crappy camera only does raw 320x240 at 5 fps. I can simultaneously shove BOTH of their streams into a single mkv file **WITHOUT TRANSCODING THE STREAMS***.
This makes sense because (1) you might have a bunch of leftover cameras that you want to use, (2) you probably want to go with a higher quality on the front than the back -- backwards cameras are a lot less interesting (though still useful enough to make sense to record).
In any case, this is going to be pretty nice.
I wonder if our head units have one USB port with a hub chip? Or if they have two genuine USB ports? Easy enough to find out, I just haven't bothered to look yet.
One "issue" I'm having with the CHEAP USB cameras I'm playing around with, is that I can't select framerate or quality. It would be nice to be able to tell the camera to increase the compression ratio and drop the framerate down to, say 5 fps.... since it would make the storage requirements significantly lower. Of course, I could turn on transcoding, but couldn't use the hardware codec with ffmpeg, which means it would be on the CPU. I wonder if the cameras support it? Or if its a limitation of uvcvideo (the driver)?
Great job!
What USB camera are you currently using?
This is the one I bought, thinking it was a rear view camera! Oh well....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/351843416292?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
Claims resolution to be 728 * 582 , not sure if it's true. It would be great if I could use it for basic DVR functionality on the Intel 2GB units.
Now that @doitright is banned, is there anyone capable of continuing his work with this issue?
I'd love to use my USB camera for DVR.
I contacted Joying with this regard, and they weren't helpful at all. They keep claiming on their USB camera is supported. True nonsense.
why was he banned????
gtxaspec said:
why was he banned????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Read some of his posts on the forum and you'll understand.
Is anyone here capable of doing the same changes for adding support to USB DVR ??
KamaL said:
Read some of his posts on the forum and you'll understand.
Is anyone here capable of doing the same changes for adding support to USB DVR ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I ve read his last 25 posts and I cant see anything that would get his account temporally disabled (XDA doesnt ban people).
typos1 said:
I ve read his last 25 posts and I cant see anything that would get him banned.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AFAIK Some were deleted , but it doesn't matter. Let's get back to topic
Weird, he was a helpful user, giving us full bluetooth and all. Seems counterproductive to ban a good resource, oh well....
Hilari0 said:
Weird, he was a helpful user, giving us full bluetooth and all. Seems counterproductive to ban a good resource, oh well....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, I know. I'm trying to contact him through the official Joying forums, he was active there too, but no traces of him yet. I'm sure he could have found a solution for this issue.
I have my USB dvr cam installed in the car, waiting for a fix.
Hilari0 said:
Weird, he was a helpful user, giving us full bluetooth and all. Seems counterproductive to ban a good resource, oh well....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
KamaL said:
Yep, I know. I'm trying to contact him through the official Joying forums, he was active there too, but no traces of him yet. I'm sure he could have found a solution for this issue.
I have my USB dvr cam installed in the car, waiting for a fix.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not weird at all if he broke forum rules (which he must have to be suspended).
Unless you think that if someone is helpful then theyre allowed to break the rules ?
Great news everyone, we have a working solution for running any USB cam on the joying intel units!
I'll let you guess who is working on it. check the progress on github:
https://github.com/lbdroid/FFMpeg-DashCam
It's working pretty well for me!!
KamaL said:
I'll let you guess who is working on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks to the wonderful worker(@doitright), everyone can talk, only some can and will work!!Kudos
KamaL said:
Great news everyone, we have a working solution for running any USB cam on the joying intel units!
I'll let you guess who is working on it. check the progress on github:
https://github.com/lbdroid/FFMpeg-DashCam
It's working pretty well for me!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kudo's to him! Hopefully he still read this forum.

How to extract audio track from G7 High quality recording video -Roger Waters concert

Hi guys
I don't know if already exists some specific thread to talk about this.
Last week I recorded some live songs in Italy, in the concert Roger Waters kept inside Lucca wall.
I recorded in VIDEO MANUAL MODE, so I flag HDR10 video and 24bit HIFI audio mode.
Really good live recording, considering we are speaking about a mobile phone.
How to extract the audio track, beeing sure to extract the "raw" audio track and put it in some container that I can reproduce on my high quality player?
Thank you!
Ciao!
While I'm not sure if the artist would appreciate this, I suppose if you don't reproduce it / distribute it it'd be fine.
In either case, try using a program like Goldwave. It's a great, lightweight yet powerful, free audio editing software. You should be able to import the video file and it'll isolate the audio track from it in it's original form. From there you can save it using any codec you like including FLAC.
While I'm not sure if the artist would appreciate this, I suppose if you don't reproduce it / distribute it it'd be fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure I've understood the purpose of your words....no reflex camera for photo purpose or any other object, nothing of nothing were allowed and in fact nobody had any professional camera....but the phone were allowed and THOUSANDS of mobile phones (like mine) were raised above our heads to capture the event.......
gannjunior said:
I'm not sure I've understood the purpose of your words....no reflex camera for photo purpose or any other object, nothing of nothing were allowed and in fact nobody had any professional camera....but the phone were allowed and THOUSANDS of mobile phones (like mine) were raised above our heads to capture the event.......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I meant was, sometimes artists don't appreciate when you record their live performances and host it online or share it or sell it, etc. I suppose if you are only creating an audio track for your personal enjoyment, then it shouldn't be an issue. People are allowed in concert venues and whatnot with phones because you can't take them away. What if there's an emergency? How would you enforce removing phones from the entire audience? Just not plausible.
Anyways, it doesn't matter. Did you try Goldwave?

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