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Hi everyone.
HTC Desire is being found in my country better than other android phones, but I have a serious problem with its bad video recording framerate (15). I tried to download a video sample, and it was really bad as I thought (no offense to the fans ).
My phone's video recording ability is important for me, so please don't give answers like: this is a phone, go get a camcorder, ...
Some people say that it will have HD 720P support in future firmware updates, but I wanna know is there a plan to improve the framerate as well?
Thanks.
As the phone records direct to the SD card I would suggest trying a faster class of card and see if that affects things at all.
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
mahi58 said:
Hi everyone.
HTC Desire is being found in my country better than other android phones, but I have a serious problem with its bad video recording framerate (15). I tried to download a video sample, and it was really bad as I thought (no offense to the fans ).
My phone's video recording ability is important for me, so please don't give answers like: this is a phone, go get a camcorder, ...
Some people say that it will have HD 720P support in future firmware updates, but I wanna know is there a plan to improve the framerate as well?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the desire already has 720p recording, but keep in mind its limited by its hardware, 1 ghz isnt alot to encode HD and i know the iphone has better HD recording but i think that has somthing to do with its improved gpu, recording at lower resolution is flawless so why not do that?
Galaxy S and iPhone 4 are the first phones that are likely to have the processing power to record 720p with decent framerates. Desire just isn't as powerful, no matter how it's optimized it won't be perfect, ever.
However, even those two phones (probably) don't benefit much in terms of real video quality by just upping the recorded resolution. Trying to fit even a BAD 720p-capable sensor in a phone form factor isn't going to be a reality for a couple years or so, I'd estimate. Right now you get lots of extra pixels but the picture doesn't actually look any better since the sensor is too small to properly capture such high resolution.
It's something like the "megapixel war" that went on (and continues to some extent) between the major camera vendors. There's not more space to use a better sensor, they just make the sensor try to interpret the light better. Now it's phone vendors claiming they can do 720p when in reality the sensors they're using are probably capable of "real" 480i resolution at best.
But you can see the result... take two shots on the phone of your choice, one at 3mp or so and one at the maximum, then try blowing up the 3mp one to the 10mp one's dimensions and compare them side by side. The resized one looks a bit blurry? Now apply a good professional sharpening filter such as Neat Image. Voila, they're all but identical, just one has lots more garbage data in the form of grain where there was none in real life. The sensor is so tiny there's literally just not enough photons hitting it to do anything but interpolate most of the data, even in daytime outdoors.
I know you said you don't want me to say "just buy a camcorder", but honestly that's the only solution if you want an actual image quality difference. An honest camcorder can give you a million times the feature set and record decent audio too.
Maybe check out the Canon HF100... I think that's what it's called. I have the previous year's model and it's outstanding value. Record true 1080p @ 30fps, and it's so clear you can capture individual frames from it and it looks better than any cameraphone. Takes competent stills too, and I think the most recent model has 20x optical zoom. It's like... 25% larger than an empty toilet paper roll and a little more squarish.
So do you recommend setting to 480?
Thank you guys.
I bought a Google-HTC nexus one today D). I had to buy a used cell phone because of the android phone shortage in my country, and I had to buy it today, so I wasn't able to read any of your posts; but some interesting comments have been posted:
AndroHero
You mean there is a video recording mode for desire, which records in lower resolution, but gives better framerates?
If so, desire would have been a flawless choice for me! Why isn't this mentioned anywhere?
nawoa
Very interesting ideas, thank you.
I have noticed the difference between true 720P videos and the "claimed" ones which are being recorded by cell phones, and, frankly, the difference is obvious.
But still, if you watch the video samples from desire and some competitors (from GSMArena or somewhere), you will confirm that there's a huge difference, which is not being caused by the low resolution, but by the poor framerate in desire.
Desire's video sample is disappointing...
But if it's possible to record in lower resolution and better framerate, then desire would have been a better choice than a second hand nexus one.
Hardware not capable? 1Ghz not fast enough?
Nexus one 720p @27fps!!!
Edit:Video
nawoa said:
Galaxy S and iPhone 4 are the first phones that are likely to have the processing power to record 720p with decent framerates.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IPhone uses its GPU, that's why it performs so well. Guess it's a driver issue. If the desire were to utilize the GPU, the results would be far better.
iPhone and Galaxy S share the same CPU/GPU chip, and as you say, yes it probably leverages the GPU to help encode the data more efficiently. Even if not, it's a more efficient chip which doesn't just mean it's smaller and uses less battery, but it's actually more powerful despite running at the same clock speed.
For example, I had an experience when I was upgrading my computer last year, going from a 65nm CPU to a 45nm CPU with identical architecture, cache, etc. Running at the same clock speed I get ~20% or more of a performance boost just due to the better efficiency.
I can't say how well that carries over to this situation since I'm sure there are more improvements in the transition from "snapdragon" to "hummingbird" than just the newer manufacturing process and more powerful GPU, but you can be sure the CPU gains a significant speed advantage from the lower node even before whatever other enhancements have been made.
"Hardware not capable? 1Ghz not fast enough?
Nexus one 720p @27fps!!!"
I'm not even going to look. 27 FPS isn't any kind of standard and if indeed that framerate is being achieved it's because there is extremely good lighting. Please introduce me to the world you live in where everyone and everything is always in ideal studio lighting... Aside from that I know without clicking the link that it will be terrible-looking.
"But if it's possible to record in lower resolution and better framerate, then desire would have been a better choice than a second hand nexus one."
I don't mean to belittle you but doesn't it go without saying that there is a lower-resolution video mode available when 720p is only just being unlocked in the most recent firmware? Whatever the case, N1 and Desire have identical hardware, if anything you might have a screen you like better than if you bought a Desire today.
Anyway, yes in my opinion you'd normally want to record at a lower resolution. I haven't done a thorough quality comparison but I'd guess you're not going to get much benefit from going above 320x240 for video. The truth is harsh, isn't it? Probably no harm in using the highest image size but it's not going to deliver miracles, especially considering the shutter lag and lack of any kind of image stabilization system.
But on the upside, your videos will have a smaller filesize, the framerate will stay consistent (at least if there is adequate lighting), and as I said earlier there is absolutely no real-world quality difference except that you'll get less battery usage and video noise when recording and playing back lower-resolution video.
Keep in mind, I bought a Desire and I love it. I even think the camera and video is fine. Just keep your expectations reasonable and realize that you need an actual camera to take good pictures/video. It's for Youtube, Facebook, and that kind of thing, not wedding photos.
Canon HF100 (IIRC) is a solid prosumer choice, or if you want something more compact but still versatile you might look at the Sony DSC-TX5, which is very durable and even waterproof to boot. It was just replaced with a newer (but not significantly different) version, so you can get it pretty cheap too. It offers quite good still and video quality (REAL 720p) considering it's like 15mm thick and even has some voodoo real 5x optical zoom system despite not having a moving lens on the front.
This thread's piqued my curiosity a bit, I'm going to try to do a semi-scientific study to determine what the best settings are for the camera.
I can't say exactly how you'll have to configure your new N1 since I'm using the Sense camera app, but you can probably still have an improvement by trying to modify settings in a similar way.
This is very preliminary and I don't have daylight to work with, I'll get into it more tomorrow, but so far:
Contrast is best at its default setting, 0. I'd prefer a -0.5 but no such option exists.
Saturation should be reduced to -1, this will help lessen the strength of noise and also gives somewhat more realistic color.
Sharpness should be reduced to -1, this again will help reduce noise and eliminates the majority of the sharpening artifacts. Going down to -2 helps a bit more but the loss of detail probably isn't worth it.
Brightness should be left at 0, it operates in mysterious ways and doesn't seem to be very helpful regardless of how it's set.
The ideal video capture resolution is 640x480. 320x240 doesn't appear to bring a framerate improvement so there's not really much sense unless you're limited by storage. All capture sizes besides 320x240 and 640x480 operate by simply cropping the image and offer no positive effects that I can see. 720p may add a superficial amount of detail but at the cost of an unsteady framerate and much greater encoding/decoding load (1280x720 vs 640x480, or 921,600 pixels per frame vs 307,200).
Similarly, taking widescreen stills simply crops the top and bottom and results in no quality difference to the part of the full frame that's actually recorded. You're probably best off recording in the sensor's native 4:3 aspect ratio and then cropping them to your taste on your home computer.
The ideal video capture codec is MPEG4 - H.264 offers a nice reduction in filesize but uses too low of a bitrate, resulting in worse quality during fast movement. It is also more work to encode and decode, hurting your battery life.
Obviously don't use zoom for any reason since it's just cropping and resizing with speed as the only consideration. You'll get much better results doing the same thing on your home computer.
Due to the low sensor quality, there's not a whole lot of difference between 5 and 3 megapixel shots, but there's no harm in going with 5mp. The biggest difference is the filesize. Taking a picture of the same subject, my 5mp shots ranged from 2.96mb to 2.38mb, while the 3mp ones were 1.22mb to 0.76mb.
I'd like to revise my earlier statement that the processor isn't capable of encoding 720p30 in realtime. It's now my opinion that the problem is just the camera firmware trying to make sense of the idea that you're asking it to pull usable pixel data for a 1280x720 frame, 30 times a second, from such a tiny sensor. To compensate for the lack of light information, it's forced to reduce the framerate or else the image will turn into a mess of noise. It's probably being a bit too conservative, but not by a lot. The fault lies with the sensor, not the CPU... I think.
Finally, *something* I did seemed to significantly reduce the framerate, or rather, the quality of recording high-motion video. This might be something peculiar to the rom I'm running, or it could be completely in my head, but I think I changed something when I was messing with the various settings and it had a noticeable negative effect.
It's late here now so I'll pick up in the morning but my current wild guesses are:
-Capturing full-frame is more difficult than capturing cropped widescreen, or vice-versa?
-Face detection processing adds too much latency to the recording?
-Flicker reduction should be taken off auto for best performance?
-Custom filtering settings (brightness/sharpness, etc) slow recording down?
-How the camera was focused reduced/increased the encoding difficulty?
-Sharpness settings increased/decreased the amount of frame data needing to be encoded?
-...Or I screwed something up in SetCPU? No... I don't... think so... but it's pretty late. Hmm...
I'll pick up tomorrow. Someone's probably already figured out the perfect settings but I'm pro at being redundant.
The 480p is flawless?
Come on ... It is OK-ish, but not flawless. Especially indoor, even with good lighting still mediocre.
Multimedia is one of the weakest in Android, hopefully Gingerbread will correct this.
AndroHero said:
the desire already has 720p recording, but keep in mind its limited by its hardware, 1 ghz isnt alot to encode HD and i know the iphone has better HD recording but i think that has somthing to do with its improved gpu, recording at lower resolution is flawless so why not do that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could try switching to 800 ISO in settings camera mode, then switch back to camcorder mode. I noticed a considerable fps boost even in low light conditions.
I don't mean to belittle you but doesn't it go without saying that there is a lower-resolution video mode available when 720p is only just being unlocked in the most recent firmware? Whatever the case, N1 and Desire have identical hardware, if anything you might have a screen you like better than if you bought a Desire today.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Before buying nexus one, I checked out desire's specifications in its GSMArena's page, and it said:
Video: Yes, WVGA (800x480 pixels) @ 15fps
So I thought its the only video recording mode that the phone has (I'm not experienced with modern phones). I wasn't expecting a cell phone to have different video capture modes like a digicam/camcorder.
Then, I downloaded a video sample that was being recorded in daylight, but was really disappointing, and the framerate was exactly 15.
And, in my experince, if you buy products, specially high tech products like modern phones relying on the informations that (you think) "go without saying" you're going to be serioulsly punished by your mistakes.
You can only rely on facts...
By the way, thanks for the experiments.
There is some work done in the developement section to optimize HTC camera 720p framerate. A guy obtained 29fps in good lighting (not perfect) but he's still working on it. Funny part is that he blew his desire while testing it.
Check this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynB0M9NeVCE
Regarding the current state, a good sd card can help with the occasional stuttering, or if you can live with AOSP roms, you probably will get a couple fps more. Otherwise you are confined to good lighting to have something on the good side of 20fps.
some examples from my phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6KuPCn6_2M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugjI5ygsXzQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssFnQsdz0DE
That change the ISO on the still camera seems a good tip
Marcus2388 said:
You could try switching to 800 ISO in settings camera mode, then switch back to camcorder mode. I noticed a considerable fps boost even in low light conditions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, that's really good tip!
when you increase your ISO your picture quality gets poor.
it helps to make videos faster and smooth but with no quality.
Ive just ordered my new Micro Sd card class 10 card... let it come and i'll let you know if something good happens...
malikahsan said:
when you increase your ISO your picture quality gets poor.
it helps to make videos faster and smooth but with no quality.
Ive just ordered my new Micro Sd card class 10 card... let it come and i'll let you know if something good happens...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll disagree about poor quality - it just gets a little worse, even in indoor lightning, but you get an acceptable video, compared to the "very creepy slide show" in auto-ISO mode.
Besides the average framerate, which is probably more due to the lens and partially to the software, isn't the stuttering problem caused by an aggressive datarate when writing to the sd ? If you compare cyanogen 720p recording to HTC, quality isn't really different, but the data-rate codec probably is, and that's why even with a class 2 you avoid stuttering in cyanogen (OD and Defrost too).
Sorry if I up this thread, I found a micro sd card A-Data class 6 with good price, this micro SD can fix the problem recording video a 720p?
Thanks to all
Im planning on getting the desire, and im REALLY interested in the 720p recording, but from the videos ive seen in youtube they look like like upscaled videos whats the bitrate ? 19-20 fps? also the audio sounds awful, kinda like the omnia hd back in the day
What about the pictures? i HATE the pics taken by my milestone, are the desire pics any better?
For video, the new radio has improved it. Its still not a strong point though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0NlnGUQah4&hd=1
The guy taking this one was trying to put it in some bad shooting situations (direct light, fast movement etc), so you can see what its like when not in ideal conditions.
For pictures, check out the awesome pics thread, it has some really nice ones.
720p video capture is unimpressive on the Desire. You need to be in a very well lit area for the videos to be barely passable. With inadequate light, frame rates plummet. This is a glaring weakness of the device. But fortunately, it isn't a primary concern for me and most other users.
Still captures are average at best. HTC was never known for superb cameras...
The camera itself in the phone is not too bad, its the android camera software that drags it down.
ohyeahar said:
720p video capture is unimpressive on the Desire. You need to be in a very well lit area for the videos to be barely passable. With inadequate light, frame rates plummet. This is a glaring weakness of the device. But fortunately, it isn't a primary concern for me and most other users.
Still captures are average at best. HTC was never known for superb cameras...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
they better step it up, i find it funny that we used to mock the iphone's camera , and now its probablyh the best cameraphone available out there aside from the n8
What happens if you turn on the LED in dark settings and try 720p ??? does that work ?
this is my test 720p
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1moRohDoEg&hd=1
good enough for mobile imo
Yep, in good lighting 720p recording isn't bad at all, as you rightly say, for mobile.
My only complain is that they could have optimized a bit the codec datarate, especially since they provide you the phone with a class 2 sd card. However I must admit that I've tried to remove A2SD+ and my class 6 transcend turned out to be enough for avoiding stuttering, which occasionally happened before.
The complain mainly stems from the fact that AOSP roms don't have this problem.
Still pictures quality is adequate. If you're into editing your photos then they're quite amenable to post-processing. Videos, on the other hand... well you've heard it from the others already.
here's my first 720 test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7_DlJ53NI
I hate the camera, on such an expensive phone why did they **** up the camera?
le3ky said:
this is my test 720p
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1moRohDoEg&hd=1
good enough for mobile imo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why do my 720p videos keep freezing for a second, every 4-5 seconds?
i have actually never had any issues with 720p recording on leodroid's rom. Frame rate is more than just good. As for the camera, its ten time better than droids.
garese said:
Why do my 720p videos keep freezing for a second, every 4-5 seconds?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you got A2SD or even worse, A2SD+ (dalvik cache to sd) ?
That can explain it, I think, along with some or a few background applications doing stuff while you record.
And, obviously, a slow sd card.
Not worth, I confirm that 720p is worthless on HTC Desire. Apparently the upgrade is software upscale. There is NOTHING difference in picture quality in video capture between 720p and 800X480 resolution. It's hardware suck and can't bring you any improvement in software. What a shame with "HD" recording in Desire.
lhoang8500 said:
Not worth, I confirm that 720p is worthless on HTC Desire. Apparently the upgrade is software upscale. There is NOTHING difference in picture quality in video capture between 720p and 800X480 resolution. It's hardware suck and can't bring you any improvement in software. What a shame with "HD" recording in Desire.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any proof?
There is another thread lying around where some tests indicate that, while 720p isn't HD for sure (nor is the ifonz one), there is a higher level of detail compared to 480.
There might be some upscaling or not, you might find it useful or not, but there is definitely some more quality in the image.
the problem seems to be the framerate and the SOUND, how can they screw it so bad? awful sound.
whats the problem with the sd card ? if i have a class 2 card for example ( 2 mbps) and the video is supossed to use 3 mbps what happens?
Hi all,
I have a touch pro 2, have upgraded from a touch pro, and its an all round better phone than its older brother.
However, the Camera on my old TP is so much better than mine on my TP2. On both the stock Rom, and my Energy rom the picture is total rubbish at all resolutions that its taken from. all the images seem very grainy and distorted compared to my TP.
I have tried cleaning the lens, and that hasnt seemed to make any difference either.
Has anyone else found this?
I completely agree with you on this. I remembered I was watching a video review on this device and they noted that the severity of the camera graininess is carrier specific due to the different battery covers. The other day I took a Pic with the battery cover off just to see if their was a difference and the pic was definitely a little bit sharper.
The clear window on battery cover can severely degrade image quality if scratched or greasy. The TP2 camera takes very nice pictures set at highest resolution and with good/bright light. Not so good in dim/poor light situations.
I've seen the same thing. Detail is all mushy. It reminds me a bit of some noise reduction software set too high. Since the tiny sensor in this phone would be prone to noise (small sensors have small pixels, so their light gathering capability is boosted by amplification, adding noise), so the Tilt2/Touchpro2 may have excessive noise reduction running.
Just a thought.
Images taken w/TP2
I am surprised to hear these comments! I have had a couple people mention how good images look that I have taken (using default settings). I have the T-Mobile version TP2 and am using b16b's AthineOS 21914 (superb) and am OC'd @729mhz. I have attached a couple photos taken recently that show what my device produces with it's camera. I am not a photographer by any means, and the image quality isn't amazing compared to a high-end digital camera, however, for my everyday usage which is somewhat limited to impulsive shooting of animals or car-wrecks & bum-fights, it seems to take fairly decent pictures. I do want to also mention that I take great pains to keep my device clean and use microfibre cleansing material frequently. Also, most of my use is outdoors, I have noticed that indoor usage doesn't give great results unless there is PLENTY of light available. Lack of a flash really disappoints me, however, overall I am very satisfied with my TP2!
The quality of 1080p video is terrible, according to Eatmycomputer:
http://eatmycomputer.com/2011/11/20/eatmycomputer-take-the-galaxy-nexus-for-a-1080p-walk-round-town-london-town-that-is/
Maybe they got an early pre-relise device or is it always this bad? Can someone who has a Galaxy Nexus check it out?
watched it and about 10 others on 4 phones, they are all pretty crappy, even the 4s which seems to be the best...
it will never be production quality, but it is 1000x better than what i have got so far with the Desire so will be happy with that.
The quality isn't poor so much as the auto-exposure settings which is resulting in poor shots, this could be improved with software updates or by manually setting the exposure.
1080p video samples, raw and unedited:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvaL4I4NCf4
It feels like taking the video under water,
and most of the sample video on Youtube are the same.
The video quality of this phone is indeed terrible
It's a cellphone. Don't be blinded by 1080p!!11
Jerky video no matter you slice it. It is what it is.
-GNEX owner
Just tried it and it doesn't seem that bad. At least it's continuous autofocus.
Just like with photos, resolution does not equal quality.
I dont see why everyone thinks its so bad, for a cell phone its pretty damn good for everyday use since you will pretty much carry it everywhere with you, much better camera then my thunderbolt had thats for sure.
ptscon said:
Just like with photos, resolution does not equal quality.
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Click to collapse
Yes, I don't mind having 5MP before seeing the video sample.
The "under-water" like feature for video is not acceptable at all.
hi all. today I got my new m9 and I admit that I'm really excited. despite all the talks about the bad camera, this does the job for me. however the video recording is really bad. I noticed very poor performance indoors (with quite much sun light in the house) with very few details and basically one of the worst video recordings. the video gets better outside but when I zoom at max, the image looks so bad. I recorded the same scene with the m9 and my previous htc one s and the one s captured more details at max zoom and the image looked cleaner. all this happened with at 1080p recording. when I switched to 4k things were better, the video was at the same level, maybe a little better than my one s. but this isn't supposed to happen. the photos taken in max zoom are good but when i record video they are much worse. i think using the google camera that things are a little better at video shooting. also i think that when I start recording video, it automatically zooms a little bit. I have installed latest OTA and latest camera update from playstore. I will appreciate if you can share your video shooting experience here, basically if you experience such bad image quality when you fully zoom in at 1080p. Thank you.
StorZ said:
hi all. today I got my new m9 and I admit that I'm really excited. despite all the talks about the bad camera, this does the job for me. however the video recording is really bad. I noticed very poor performance indoors (with quite much sun light in the house) with very few details and basically one of the worst video recordings. the video gets better outside but when I zoom at max, the image looks so bad. I recorded the same scene with the m9 and my previous htc one s and the one s captured more details at max zoom and the image looked cleaner. all this happened with at 1080p recording. when I switched to 4k things were better, the video was at the same level, maybe a little better than my one s. but this isn't supposed to happen. the photos taken in max zoom are good but when i record video they are much worse. i think using the google camera that things are a little better at video shooting. also i think that when I start recording video, it automatically zooms a little bit. I have installed latest OTA and latest camera update from playstore. I will appreciate if you can share your video shooting experience here, basically if you experience such bad image quality when you fully zoom in at 1080p. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know what you mean, it gets really pixelatedat max zoom, I believe this is to do with the sharpness which hadn't been completely addressed, the ip6 and note 4 are far more capable in terms of the camera, bit of a bummer but not a great deal you can do about it. Try a different camera app, snap camera is quite good.