Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I actually agree with you there. So many are 'it kinda works' category:
- Maps (you know why)
- Media Player (such weak features and options)
- Email (same here)
- Video recording (my N95 8GB was better)
- Phone app (super basic with twitchy rotation)

I'm glad there are so many good apps made by the community to ease the pain somewhat.
N900 is awesome But it could be sooo much better if Nokia really cared about it after its release.

Anyways. We know hardware can do 720p video record and playback.
But will we ever get the N900 to do it? Hmm. I think it's a bit tougher than overclocking.
I would love it to at least be able to play 720p videos...

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

What are the chances you'll ask this question in its appropriate thread, and not try to snatch or divert the current thread's subject?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I am, still running tests, but so far it's almost perfect. Especially since such a load on a multitasking phone is never camera-smooth.

If you would have read the whole thread you'd know it will not help. This is a storage/conflict issue. If it were a power issue, 640x480 would have worked fine. Also, 600 Mhz to almost 1200 would have helped. It doesn't.

Because N900 has issues with recording, and adding more strain would have broken recording.

I am 100 percent confident it can be done with N900. Needs to be done by Nokia, most likely. Might be a driver limitation.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Well, find a codec that can compress 720p in realtime..

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Isn't /dev/video and various ioctl()s fairly standard? Surely the max IO of the internal flash is enough for a weak/no encoded userspace dump? You can root level nice -19 the job, nice +20 the others, perhaps even send a SIGSTOP to a few likely culprets like the thm indexer? I notice somebody tried ffmpeg, but what caused the resolution limitation?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Possibly. It's also possible that at the same bitrate, the jump from 400K to 900K video the loss is bigger by compression than by optics. Artifacts could be bad enough that we get a clearer image at 800x480.

Why this isn't configurable is beyond me. I'm thinking driver?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

From attempting to play 720p files via mplayer and vlc:

VLC says:
"Video Acceleration Driver does not support the required resoution 1280x720 pixels.
The maximum supported resolution is 864x648. Video output acceleration will be disabled."

mplayer says:
"Source image dimensions are too high: 1280x720 (maximum is 864x648)
FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver"

To me, this sounds like a video driver limitation and may be related to the video recording also?
Is there a way to remove the maximum resolution limit for hardware gpu acceleration?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

i see that there is some progress here, no ?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Those are both decoder issues. For a decoder to accelerate video it needs a known, supported profile. It does not necessarily exclude encoder's abilities. It's just very, very likely. Trying to stay positive. It's possible that, because the screen was 800x480 that the decoder was intentionally limited.

Software encoding is out of the question, so, either they let us have it or we're boned.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I've understood that the IVA2 component of the omap3 CPU is entirely undocumented, and that there are some third parties which have been supplied documentation on it, and have created an enhanced decoder capable of 720p decode, and is selling it at enormously high cost.

Uncompressed 720p requires about 40 megabytes per second. The flash certainly can't handle that, and I don't even know if the bus that the camera is connected to can handle that much :)

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I hope you meant 40 megabits per second(Mbps) and not megabytes(MBps).

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

1280 pixels * 720 pixels * 30 frames per second * 12 bits per pixel (this would be 24 if the camera sends data in RGB and not YUV, that is, double) = 331776000 bits per second
Divide by 8: 41472000 bytes/second
divide by 1024*1024: 39.55... megabytes/second
Double that if it's RGB..

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

That would be correct for a raw sensor dump - it never leaves the camera, as it actively works differently in video and camera mode. It delivers a partially compressed stream in whatever mode that is, otherwise there would be no HD cameras, at 250M/s the data is too much for any portable storage system (even a SSD).

Also, there is no way that tiny unshielded connector phone cameras or video cameras have can take 250M/s. that would mean at least a 2Gb link.

Not even DSLRs deliver uncompressed raw data, all real life RAW formats I know are compressed. My A200, e.g., delivers 10M at 12 b/plane (48 bit, 6 byte), that's at least 60 MB of data, in a RAW 5-10 MB in size.

It's not entirely impossible to do it like that but I don't know of a single device (other than dedicated capture systems) that delivers raw data like that. Actually, I do, but it's way, way beyond the scope of this discussion.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Compression does not mean loss of data. So there is no need to pump out uncompressed raw data to storage directly. It's all compressed and decompressed on the fly usually by a dedicated image processor of some sort.

We already know that N900's hardware is capable of much more than what Nokia made it do. Obviously they didn't want the N900 to be their HD capable phones. That's reserved for the upcoming N8 and later models.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

No, not necessarily. Though I don't expect any lossless compression from such a compact and low powered device. Also, it's entirely possible this wasn't a Nokia decision, it could be a restriction by manufacturer.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

htc desire got an update of android yday. and now can record 720p. surely this is possible with n900. is this being developed? or is it not possible? the hd recording on the desire looks really good

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Can only hope Nokia give a toss but release 1.2 is most likely the last well hear from Nokia.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I still find it very odd that my N9 could record video stutter-free, but my N900 with better HW cannot. I didnt expect the quality to be superb, but to record a video without lag shouldt really be an issue.. It makes me sad.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

IMHO the video recording is stuttering even now with stock speeds (haven't really stress tested with PR1.2), so unless there is underutilized hardware, or worse, not utilized at all, and an update from Nokia, there is not much to do. The hardware can do only so much...

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

True. But the N900 hardware should at least give us stutter-free recording with the stock res.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

i dont think this will happen until maemo gets completely revamped.
but i guess in this case its easier to start completely over than fix whats broken, hence meego... i hope meego will feature a fluid UI and smooth video-recording.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Did you read back and try my tracker/indexer disabling? In my case, N900 delivered smooth recording on eMMC with tracker off.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Could you please write a super small tutorial? the Tracker tool has A LOT of options, which ones to disable and what to leave on?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I second this :)

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Disable indexing and watching, reboot.
Shoot video.

--

In theory, it's the watching that triggers index and thumbnailing whan shooting, but indexing could kick in, too. Also, due to memory fragmentation bug, high uptime (48h is "high") can hit performance. Make sure it's fresh.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Spark up the debate of 720p :D

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

SSD connected to PCI-e allready has speeds of up to 650 MB a second. so you should leave that storage device out of the picture here.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I was reading about the fragmentation problem, but where do you read it was 48hrs exactly? I know the N900 becomes slow with high uptime but didn't know there was a number

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

There is a lengthy discussion in bugs.maem.org, a bug about audio chopping and high cpu usage after unlocking. I'm on the road now, so it's tedious and expensive, but if you can't find it I'll link later tonight (my timezone).

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

actually, this might be sufficiently proper documentation:
http://focus.ti.com/dsp/docs/dspsupp...ocCategoryId=6
for example:
http://www.ti.com/litv/pdf/spru732j (C64x+ DSP CPU and Instruction Set Reference Guide)

or it may as well not be sufficient.

im not sure what IVA2 represents... if its software or hardware based?
maybe its TI's name for a software suite for the C64+ DSP?
maybe its standalone silicon in the SoC?

personally i think IVA2 mostly reffers to TI's software that comes bundled with the C64+ DSP - everything ranging from compilers/SDK's to pre-built codecs (coded with those SDK's).
but like u said - it seems quite undocumented, unless the link above provides some info reffering to the IVA2.

im still investigating if its worth undertaking the task to create a clean "Camera OS" for the N900, and code some lightweight capture codecs...
Im not even sure that i can learn all relevant documents, since its so much.

...about undertaking the task to coding a new codec:

* the DSP have very limited cache resources and it cant process a complete 1280x720 picture in one sweep (of course).
* if regular RAM is used instead - it will hog the BUS.

therefore, i think the best approach is to compress each frame - segment by segment (which will cause blockiness), and save them one by one to RAM... writing to the eMMC will have to wait until the video is finished.
Using this approach, will put a time-limit on how long the recorded videos can become, but it will atleast provide plenty of resources/speed for capturing in HQ and high fps.


...still i know too little to make qualified judgements - so all of the above should be taken with a grain of salt... we'll see if i manage to learn enough to undertake this task.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Any good news about 720p encoding?
I've seen that Nitdroid drivers can play 720p and 1080p with a bit of frameskip..if we can take a look inside the Nitdroid drivers, we can achieve new results ;)?

Did anyone tried again to ask Nokia for the source code of the drivers? :(:(:(

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

It'd be great if running fluently