Thread: N900 Video Recording - Questions/Concerns
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jessi3k3 is offline jessi3k3
2009-11-25 , 12:05
Posts: 304 | Thanked: 176 times | Joined on Oct 2009
#1
I've read tons of videos concerning video playback but not so many on video recording. Now that retail units are out I was wondering what owners think of video recording? How's the quality/framerate?

Watching recorded videos (many pre-release firmware and some retail), all seem to have the following issues:

- Frame drops throughout recording
- Shaky videos (lack of Video stabilization)
- Excessive brightness unbalance (flickering)

Here's a video where some of these are exhibited
Phone Arena's review (retail firmware):
http://www.phonearena.com/ftp_access...900_Review.mp4

GSM Arena's review (retail firmware):
http://pic.gsmarena.com/vv/reviewsim...arena_v001.mp4

Youtube video (pre-production):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOCYPuOOeNE
(not so much flickering here)

As far as features go, these are some concerns that I have that I'm afraid wont be addressed:
- Lack of lower video quality selection (Ex: 640x480@30fps, 320x240@30fps, etc)
- No LED Flashlight available while recording

I was wondering if users could confirm/deny these issues and perhaps offer some insight if these would be fixable with further firmware updates.

I'm wondering what are the current limitations that are causing these things to happen on the N900. The N900 should be more than able to record at 848x400@24fps when the Samsung i8910 is able to do 1280x720@24fps. Is the camera module the limiting factor here? I dont know if this is the correct question (or assumption) but is the recording being hardware accellerated?

I pose this question because conducting a comparison between 640x480@30fps recordings provided by the N95 (OMAP 2420 + PowerVr) versus the N97 (Freescale, no GPU) show that the N95 is the clear winner.

Here's an excerpt from an AAS review comparing the N97/mini vs other devices
As with stills/photos, we came quite a way in this decade, from phones which could only shoot video at 176 by 144 pixels at 15 frames per second through to full VGA at 30 frames per second, through to .... oh, hang on, we're still there. In fact, video quality on the N97 and N97 mini is arguably worse than that shot by the N93 in 2006 and the N95 in 2007, with lower quality encoding and 'inifinite' focus, meaning that any subjects nearby (e.g. people) are blurry.
....
As you can see (despite YouTube's efforts to add extra artefacts), there are distinct problems with lens flare (again), with the encoding of areas of greenery and with general 'mushiness'. In contrast, video from the older N95 and N93, and video from the new N86, is much crisper, thanks to dedicated camera/graphics electronics.
The N900 uses the same camera module as the N97, but is there any hardware encoding being provided by the OMAP 3 SoC? Is it that the N900's OMAP 3 package did not come with an Image Signal Processor (ISP) to accelerate recording that's causing it to chug when recording at 848x480? As far as I know (and other chipsets), these SoC allow oem's to choose and pick certain features in order to keep costs down.

If possible, can users post sample videos preferribly in daylight? Thanks!
Last edited by jessi3k3; 2009-11-26 at 19:46.
 

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