N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I searched to see if this was discussed before, but I didn't find anything.

With Nexus and Desire, 720p capture was unlocked via means of software.

Now that methods of overclocking the N900 are available. Has anyone investigated achieveing 720p video capture? or is processor speed irrelevant?

Can the n900 camera allow it? or the n900s camera cannot handle it?

Just wondering.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

that would be really good if it works

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

doubtful you would be able to get deep enough into the camera stack to enable it, and even if you could it would probably perform badly.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Are the camera stacks open source? Or closed?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

The low level driver is closed source, at least I believe it is.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Alot of manufacture are sending OTA updates to phones enabling 720p vid recording. So I think its not that impossible, I think the hardware is capable, but needs hacking-coding-etc to make it work.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I'd be happy with video capture without freezing/dropped frames. Then we can talk about 720p. I don't see it happening.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

The N900 cant even capture its normal quality stuttering free, i doubt if it could do 720p...

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Really? I haven't experienced any of that......but I haven't recorded anything over 2 minutes.....

You experienced this when recording for how long? was anything else running at the time?

Darn it. if it's closed source then we're screwed.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

There's someone on youtube who claims to have been able to modify the hardware of the N900 to capture 1080p video. The poster is German, and I failed at using a translator, so anyone want to give it a try and ask the poster how he/she did it?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

i believe thats just upscaled

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Mine does not stutter, unless it's recorded onto a (slow) microSD card. That's however where it defaulted for me, and not the internal memory which at least in my case works 100% stutter free.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

he says in the comments that normally he doesn't tell nobody but you should remove your battery and peel of the silver sticker you will see a switch for the camere.

what a lame idiot :D

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

well, did anyone try doing what he said?
maybe, just maybe it could work
i cant cuz my parents wont let me modify cuz it might break...

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

A switch under the label, huh? :rolleyes:

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

The reason why Iphone 4 has the best 720p recording is not because of their optics,lenses,zoom capabilities nor megapixels, it has the best film processing on any phone and that is just a matter of software optimized for the camera.that was why the iphone 3gs had a 3.2 mpg camera and looked great all in the excellent film proccesing

I think if nokia made a well optimized and fast rendering film processer for the nokia phone model and not just for operating system(maemo,symbian,meego etc)It would actually look better on the n900 with carl zeiss optics,duel flash and 1ghz oc on n900

cheers

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

lol even if it IS 1080p witch its obviously NOT the quality of that video sucks big time for 1080p! :P

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

god i wish someone hacks us this feature
that man would be the biggest legend

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I think the maximum quality is set at like 576p or something like that in the driver. Someone could write a new driver though.

http://talk.maemo.org/archive/index.php/t-50298.html

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I'm very dissapointed with the actual camera... I wanted to use the video recording for a big project... all i needed was a smooth capture and i can't even reach it... Lot's of frame drops, very choppy... Seriously, is Nokia considering to improve the camera? Overclocking the phone solves the problem? Is there a way to create an app that forces the processor to be only available for the camera processing?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

the DSP cant handle it no matter how hard you try (at least talking in hardware-assisted video capturing) and... by software, if anybody codes a hack to enable HD video capturing, it would be sloooow as hell, so no, it cant be :(

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

em, the beagle board (which uses the 3530 chip can cope with hd decoding on its 530mhz dsp, we can overclock dsp to 530mhz so why would it not work

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

N900 has OMAP3430, but if dj_steve saids it would be possible, i can only say AMEN! xD

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

in theory the onlydifference is the cpu core (beagle is 720mhz i think) the dsp core is the same i think and im pretty sure titans kernel can push dsp to 530mhz.

dont hold me to that tho im not 100% sure

edit:
compare the 3430 and 3530 lines here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_I...nts_OMAP#OMAP3

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

i believe it would be possible to achieve perfect 25/30 fps 720p recording with the N900 hardware:

i think the secret would be to use a MJPEG encoder - as its much less CPU/DSP hogging than h.263/h.264

the downside is that filesizes will get bigger, but i think the N900 storage will be able to cope with the writing speed required.

very old digital cameras can even cope with MJPEG when recording 640x480 video in 30 FPS - with enough bitrate to keep very high quality.


if 720p cant be achieved on the N900 i atleast think 1024x768 would be very achievable.


another "plus" with MJPEG is that its usually less blocky and captures much more details than a regularly configured h.264 realtime encoder (on mobile phones).


...if i learn assembler coding i will try to make a lightweight MJPEG encoder for the N900 but theres a long way to get that experienced.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Samsung OmniaHD has same OMAP3430 @ 600Mhz but it can record and playback 720p videos. (even divx/xvid 720p avi files)
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i891...review-380.php

N900 has basically the same hardware. Just not the drivers and the software to do the same.
If Samsung can do it with the same hardware using Symbian S60 OS, why can't Nokia do it.

Is it more like they won't do it or don't care?

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

That would be great and I suppose it is achievable, just like in the case of overclocking possibility, which was firstly proved by an overclocked DROiD and later made working on n900.

Now, as other devices which were mentioned before got 720p recording support by altering the software part only should also prove that it is doable on n900...

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Well the most I can get out of ffmpeg's mjpeg encode is 20 fps.. at 352x288 ;-)

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

We could give this one a go as well, if we can OC the CPU why can't be OC the GPU? I'm sure we can. If we can't get 720p resolution, at least get 30fps or even 35fps with the current resolution. The smoother the better doesn't matter the resolution is the same.

I just want it to stop dropping frame while recording. I asked many times if this possible but no one actually able to answered my question. So since Maemo5 is a college dropped out, then why not Nokia let go of the classified profiles and documentation? Since their next big kid is so called MeeGo, Maemo is no longer remembered by them.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Yeah, we just need an insider or some guru to figure out how to utilize the DSP properly like the Samsung Omnia HD. Then, we should be able to playback 720p videos and also record them. But this is a much tougher task than overclocking as kernel already had a support for changing frequency.

It's funny how Samsung has a Symbian S60 phone that can record and playback 720p videos while Nokia doesn't. Wish Nokia took more time with the multimedia part of the N900. They obviously didn't put too much time into it. Media player is extremely basic for music playing, can only play SD res videos, can only record 800x480 res videos and not at a butter smooth 30fps either.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

According to the videographer on youtube (and google translate), it seems there is a hardware regulator he accessed by removing the rear cover and battery, and there is some reference to a silver tray so maybe the battery tray covers something interesting.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

this is just a random idea that probably won't work be heres what i come up with.
as vlc 1.1 now uses the dsp is there a way we could make it access/open the camera and capture it to a file and achieve 720p this way, or contact/help the vlc devs to see if this would be possible to do or add? :confused:
thanks

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I really hope someone comes up with a fix for this soon, it's driving me nuts.

It's such a shame to have such an advanced piece of equipment capable of so much but has issues when it comes to simple video recording.

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

It has issues with an OC N900, no relief there.

It is, however, MUCH better on internal storage. I can see it stutter, but it drops one frame, not 10

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Why can't Motorola do it (the Droid as shipped also does not do 720p) ? Samsung is secret saucing there. The hardware is originally NOT meant for 720p and TI is not selling it as such. Whether they cheat, funk with frame or bitrate, have extra hardware besides the OMAP3, I don't know, but the 3430 is no HD chip.

As for stutters - my experience is that it happens due to either swapping or some background tasks mucking around (usually it's not the task per se but the disk activity is generates).

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I'd be happier even if the current 848x480 res is made to record smoothly than how it does now but I guess its up to Nokia :(

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

Why do you want poor 720p30 quality like this???

iPhone 4 son of an apple:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryuh5BwUuzY

Omnia HD is the same:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdYt_cvfaNM

Galaxy S:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIcRhyu2Gc8

These aren't real HD 720p30 quality!

Compare it to the real HD 720p30:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBBnZ9yg9TY

I don't want sh** 720p recording for my N900. It only drains the battery hellfast!

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

its better than what we have and the 720p video from the iphone is damn good and at 30fps
we can do this we just need someone to fiddle around

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I'm not sure what it does, but I've noticed a big improvement from setting "Show captured video" from "For 4 seconds" to "No."

Re: N900 720p Video Capture?
 

I tried this, and the recorded video resolution is 1080p30 FULLHD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!