Hello folks,
I tried to record decent 1080p video on my SGSII. Turned out that really gets a problem.
My device runs on Android 4.0.3 (IML74.XXLPQ) in combination with the Siyah kernel (3.0.32-Siyah-v3.2.5.2+ [email protected] #113). Secondrom is some CM9 ROM.
First, I just tried the stock Samsung camera app, but I can't work with the refocusing. Seems impossible to turn off the autofocus.
Besides that, the automatic white balance is crap. When I run through, wearing an orange shirt, it fu**s up the white balance and the picture gets a blue tint for a few seconds. Presets aren't the best, too.
I tried the ICS camera (while using CM9 secondrom). Same problems, but video stops recording after 16 minutes or so, and it doesn't proceed. I mean, what the f**k?
At this point, I'm looking for a camera app that:
- (optionally) has manual white balance (for me to set it using a white sheet of paper).
- can set the focus to fixed.
- records as long as I want it to, until the memory is full or I interrupt it. (When hitting 4GB, it will have to split, but it should automatically continue recording).
That was when I started looking for good camera apps. I tried some, and the best I could find until now was lgCamera. I used the free variant.
It works mostly like I want it to, though I have to set the white balance to some fixed setting. Focuses and fixes it. Everything seems to be okay.
Then it continuously stopped recording, after 4:17 minutes (@30Mbit/s), or after 1:32 minutes (@100Mbit/s). Looking at the files, it only uses 765 MB before stopping. Remember, it has to run as long as I don't stop it and there's memory left!
Of course, I used the free version, but the Play Store says:
Free version limitations:
-sometimes program shows BUYME dialog.
-program icon with red label FREE.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried the Pro version, but it keeps stopping.
BUT not enough with stopping recording! lgCamera also freezes some times. Especially while recording at 100Mbit/s (usind only 65) when stopping, it just freezes to death, leaving the phone unusable and I have to reboot. Yup, I waited whole 15 minutes, before I rebooted. I also saw how it worked like it should. Very slow when stopped, but hey, no freezes.
At this point, the app also should:
- never freeze! (Can't be that hard to find for an ex-mainstream phone...)
In addition to all that what I mentioned above, the phone loses battery like hell, of course. So I also look for a ROM which is very stable (!) and also very battery-saving while not limiting power used by the video recording app.
Aaand... And this one is a huge bummer... Absolutely every app with which I recorded produces unbelievable crappy framerates!
I set it to 30fps and I get random sh*t between 25 and 32 fps. This is a big downside, because I really get problems working with it in Adobe Premiere/After Effects and also encoding it. Even if I encode it to a “real” framerate, which all editing programs understand, it's still async!
So after I collected hours and hours of material, I don't really want to encode (assuming it would work) every single video (of whose every single one has a different framerate!), because it would take ages (and, of course, the encoding will cost a little quality)!
At this point, it has to:
- have conform fps output (29.970 or 30.000) or at least another fps which stays the same in every video!
- run on a stable, battery-saving ROM.
I don't need any other apps besides the recording one, because I will edit the video on my computer.
If you have read all this, I hope you also help me out.
Which ROM should I use as a pure video recording ROM?
Which app is a stable one for use on the SGSII and has the features I mentioned above?
Do you have any tips for me, how to get the perfect video?
I really hope anyone will help me with this.
Thanks in advance!
Great post.
I will be recording a conference using my SGS2 but, its a long video and I wanted to recorded without crashing the app after I stop the record as it happen using the deffault camera with ICS 4.0.3
Nice post.
I'm looking for exactly what you had written especially a camera application that can automatically resume recording after it reach 4Gb file limit.
I tried several program such as IgCamera and others application but it won't work.
After googling around and spend about a few hours, I found some methods that might workaround this issue.
A. Month External_sd card to NTFS.
This method might workaround 4Gb limit problem for FAT file system and with this I think that Camera application may not automatically stop when recording video file reach their limit.
From camera behavior , It seem that camera application can record video at maximum size upon maximum size of current file system.
Then , I suggest that if event "Reach max file size" occurred , android system whose monitor events will send some signal and command to stop camera application.
So if I can month external_sd card with NTFS file system , I can workaround this issue.
Unfortunately , After I read several topic and spend a few hours to find out how to month NTFS on my android device.
I'm still no luck . I got "fuse device is missing try modprobe fuse as root" and I read somewhere on internet,
someone said that this message may telling me that my kernel won't support the NTFS month.
Now I'm going to move forward to another kernel that have capable of month NTFS as native and trying to month external_sd in NTFS format in a few day.
B. Modify Camera.apk
This method can workaround 4Gb limit problem for FAT file system If you could modify camera.apk.
by modifying method that will be called when recording file reach 4Gb file limit, adding a few line of code to start a new record automatically. I think that this might work.
Some of xda member (Potatoman and rafalense), had successfully modified bitrate and audio sampling rate of camera application
(http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1104051)
They grab some camera application for their phone , decompile binary source into .class to locate a sample rate of video. After they found an integer that represent a sample rate of video, they made another decompile binary source into a file called ".smali" with a lot less understandable than a class file then edit it and recompile the program.
But, This method won't only just modify a sample rate of video, we needed to modify some part of method.
Since modify Camera application won't easy like sample rate, you needed to grab your camera application from your phone, decompile a binary source, unsign , sign , compile and etc and it is a long story. So I decided to move to another method.
C. Automatic touch simulate program by period.
This workaround work without modify any of your file format , kernel or anything.
If you could find some application to trig the record button after some period of time. So file size limit event won't occur anymore.
Only concern about this method is automatic touch simulate program may not survive long enough to trig the record button for all day.
I'm finding these kind of application and if anyone whose read this topic and know these kind of application , please let me know.
D. Compile your Camera application from Opensource
This is a last method I will ever choose. This is a really hard method but really easy to explain.
This method is about download sourcecode of your rom , edit camera application at the first place then complie it yourself. Since I din't complete reading a guide for compile a rom , I suggest that inorder to make modified camera application work , you may need to compile all of rom.
From my phone manufacturer(samsung), they had released some sourcecode of for Galaxy S2 ICS ROM
For anyone whose interest please find it in the link below.
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Update
Hi , all
I just successfully found a workaround for video file size limit issue.
This workaround is based on approach C. Automatic touch simulate program by period and it also need a root access.
All credit goes to Yahor Paulavets from
http://softteco.blogspot.com/2011/03/android-low-level-shell-click-on-screen.html
To complete this workaround , I write some shell script that send a low-level script via Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A) to stop video recording then send the same command again to start new record before its size reach 4 Gb. After finished writing shell script, I use terminal editor (with root access) to run this script when I start recording video.
That sound easy, but in fact, you need to capture a "touch event" with have difference signature based on the device.
Yahor Paulavets write some great article which explain how to capture this signature in the link below
http://softteco.blogspot.com/2011/03/android-clickonscreenxy-shell-script.html
____________________________________________________________________________________
Below are list of related topic that might help you
[1] Is there anyway around the 4GB video recording limit?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1140483
[2] How to mount NTFS or EXT4 format microSD to tab
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1552674
[3] [MOD] Hacked Camera.APK for better audio quality, usage with any battery life & MORE!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1104051
[4] App for long video recording
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1471449
[5] How can I bypass the 4gb limit on filesizes for HD Recording?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1130973
[6] Month ExternalSD Card to NTFS for Android
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=15167790&postcount=41
[7] Samsung opensource
http://opensource.samsung.com
Hello together,
I installed the CM10.a9 a few weeks ago on my HTC One X and till now I was missing / unable to find two functions.
The first thing is, that you normally can take pictures while recording movies (both in HD), but I could not figure out, how to do this in this particular mod. The second problem is, that I didn't found a way taking multiple pictures with just one click. I know that I was able to do this under the original firmware with just holding the button.
Are these features not implemented yet or am I just too blind to find the functions?
Kind regards,
NyphoX.
PS: Sorry for my bad english.
Those features aren't present in the stock cm camera; you'll need to use an alternative camera app if you want those functions. LGcamera allows you to take photos while filming, and also has a burst mode (although you have to select that mode rather than just hold the shutter button to automatically activate). I'm sure other camera apps will give you similar functionality, I don't really use either function so I've not looked to much into it.
Thanks for the quick reply, I think I have to look for a good camera app now.
Is there a plan to implement those features in the future or will it be not integrated in the CM-Camera app?
Is there any way to save my pics to my SD card instead of internal storage on the S3 running CM 10.1. I'm using the stock camera app.
is there no option in the camera settings? i am using tasks aokp. in camera, i long press the screen and get the multiple camera options. i select settings and then see a "storage" option. i set mine to sd card.
as of nightly 0415, the camera for cm10.1 has the ability to save to the SD card. But for some reason the last few nightlies have borked the camera.
I'm using build 0317 and installed the camera from 0415 and it's working fine. except for exposure settings.
Hi,
Does for someone using CM9 the camera store location feature work?
I activated it in the options menu of my camera.apk but when uploading the pictures via Google+ Instant Upload there is no location set in the properties of the picture.
Can anyone confirm this?
Storing location from camera works with the unmodified ErwinP CM9 build. Thus the problem was related to AOKP Light ROM which I was using.
This is one of the most useful guides I've ever found as it stops Photos asking you for permission every time you delete or edit a photo & also allows edits/deletes made via the web Google Photos to be synced to the phone - Android 11 makes Google Photos annoying to use for some, but there may be a fix