Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Hi Everyone,

I'm waiting for the N900 to be available so that i can buy one.
The only thing i'm worringing about is the video recording and
auto-focus.

I saw several videos on the internet that tells me that the N900 does NOT re-focus. Whats up with that!!!

Does somebody know more... Is nokia going to fix this....????

Please get back to me..

Many thanks...

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

That's correct. Focus only happens before starting the video recording session. If you're referring to autofocus while recording, good luck finding a phone that does that.

Nokia did once mess around with continuous auto focus on the N93i, here's a video of it working on pre-release firmware

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_j2nX1Gc4Q

but was later scrapped due to the motor being too loud. I think if this would be implemented now, you'll still be able to hear the motor of the unit autofocusing. Rather than dealing with all the complaints of motor noises coming out of autofocus while recording, Nokia just decided to give the camera a fixed length focus or, additionally, the ability to focus before recording.

My personal concern is the lack of video stabilization in the N900. Is this feature even present at the moment? I've seen dozens of recorded N900 videos with horrible shaking and has led me to believe video stabilization is not implemented (where every s60 cameraphone has this feature).

Another question (sorry to hijack your thread) but in a similar topic, is there a way to choose lower quality settings for video recording? For example, choose 640x480 / 30fps recording instead of the default widescreen 848x480 / 24 fps. I would imagine there would be additional options for recording as other video phones do.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

I would actually like an autofocus feature, even given the noise. If it has issues with motor noise, I can understand it being disabled by default, even being hidden away from regular users. I would however be fine with that if I could use an external microphone instead when using autofocus. Perhaps a community provided app can serve here if Nokia provides access to the necessary parts?

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

let me guess... another deal breaker?

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Actually, I thought the video demonstrating that it was missing was incredible. Amazing quality from a phone! If I want better than that, I'll carry a camcorder.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

If i want to have ring - USM focusing, fullHD recording capable sensor, f1.0 max aperture, ... then I should not buy a internet tablet but pro -level camcorder instead ;)

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

I never said it was a dealbreaker, but it would be a very useful feature to me, so more of a dealmaker!

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

The gst_photography interface only seems to allow you to perform autofocus on a paused pipeline, so that's not all that useful for focusing while you use the video camera. But I was only looking for single "right now" focus, it may be possible to enable continuous autofocus.

Otherwise you could always drive the ioctls yourself and implement your own focus algorithm by intercepting the gstreamer video stream.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

The N900 isn't "missing" any feature anymore than the rest of the industry. The only autofocusing videophone is the N93. Period. Nokia plans to update it in Q4 2010. That the N900 allows any video focus at all is amazing in itself. Not many phones with the N900's great capture quality have that, either.

You'll be eating your words sooner than you think. Nokia has already shown proficiency with video autofocus. Full HD video recording won't be hard to do, and is only a hardware and chip issue that will be solved with tech progression. Now the aperture... Not sure about that one. But I've watched the mobile photography space for awhile, and progress has been exponential. Pretty soon, especially with new sensor architectures, high quality imagery will be possible sooner than we all ever imagined. Movies are being filmed on Nokia Nseries devices, as well as music videos.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Personally I would like this ability too. Often I am just capturing video not audio so this would be a nice feature to have - maybe auto-mute the inbuilt microphone too? Suspect that this might chew the power as well though.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

I actually had an idea to use accelerometers as a ring replacement (focus by turning, tap to finalize), but I don't know enough about the details of the focusing 'engine' (yet) to make it happen :)
.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

What about this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_j2nX1Gc4Q

It looks really good and it should work with N900, too! The autofocus noise isn'is really quiet and if there are other louder noises like speech you won't hear it. AND, N900 has USB and an open source OS, so you could use an USB micro with some effort, so you could prevent recording the noise anyway...

I really hope video autofocus could be done by software and N900 is powerfull enough to do it.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

mhm... right. i usually take very short video clips and edit them to a longer video when finished (at least i used to do that on my S60 phone - can the N900 edit videos?), so continuous autofocus has less value for me personally.

but video stabilization would be great. - would the accelerometer be good enough to do this? you know... realize when you tremble and adjust the image accordingly. if it works it could be better than trying to guess from the video information itself.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

well what about the option for autofocus by pressing a button or tapping the screen?

While it is recording if you want it to adjust the focus you simply tap the screen and it autofocuses. That would be a nice implementation, and would avoid unwanted noises if you don't want it to autofocus costantly.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Good idea. Let us hope it's just a software problem! :)

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

i believe that's will do ..
i would call it (Tap2focus)

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

I like the screen tapping idea - you can use this to indicate what to focus on.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

This question has two parts - first, the sampling rate and second, the linking of the accelerometer data to the actual frame - which is not as easy as it may seem at first sight (you have to account for component lags, the 'empty' space between the actual frame exposures, etc, etc). It might be possible, but it's not an easy task without dedicated hardware.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

After doing a bit of playing around, focusing the camera manually while recording a video is really easy. It shouldn't be too hard to bind the appropriate commands to the volume keys, giving you manual focus while recording. Autofocus on the other hand would need something a bit more intelligent, but the hardware is definitely capable. Maybe gst-opencv could be of some help. If not for autofocus, then at least for cool things like face detection and face blurring.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5TqbtXwLpQ for a horrible quality video of it.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Greetings guys,
I'm waiting impatiently for the autofocus feature on the N900 to get implemented ASAP. It's very important to me because I use the phone to record the lab assistants' explanations in my anatomy class (for later reference). So it's very important to keep clear focus on the structure that's being explained, especially on the smaller and more complex ones. The recordings really help to understand anatomy, and help me get good grades on practicums.
Please, smart people out there, make it work on the N900.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

What would be pretty cool (if continuous auto-focus is impractical) is a script to allow the camera to refocus by hitting the shutter button again, halfway. Having to use on-screen buttons (like with the current camera hack script) is too much of a pain in the butt to be useful. It just creates additional shakage, audible noise, and the need to bring the phone closer to see what you're doing - no good if you're trying to shoot above a bunch of people's heads.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

N93i has Optical Zoom and lense. That's why the focusing motor making noise. N900 doesn't really have any moving part, despite the 0.1cm movement of the actual camera lense when focusing. Althought it is moving, there shouldn't be any noise from it. N93i on another hand it makes noise when focusing and zooming.

I think this could be possible if someone actually get a hold of the source code of the Camera API and application. If Nokia ever going to release it that is.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Someone please make this happen!! We really need autofocus or Press2refocus on the camera button

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Maybe some folks more familiar with the N900 lens/focus specs can help work out the depth of field and hyperfocal distances for the lens via the light meter app.

Then you could just check the light meter, and stay within a range of distances to remain in focus.

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Someone did it for N8! Why not for N900??

I mean continous auto-focus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0SOPvT5b7c

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

Touch to refocus would be great though autofocus is better but Noise is not so good. I mean an on screen button to tap2focus then tap again to focus. I think this way it's more handy

Re: Nokia N900 Video Recording and Auto-focus
 

i installed it and it worked but then i software update my phone and then the 2 logo were not there on the status bar i reinstalled and unistalled it like 20 times but still the same thing.then i install the 9. version but it says uncomplete pacage...please reply me...