Oh, just in case it wasn't obvious, I was referring to the stuttering.

I think there are a number of different issues about the video camera.
Different people are addressing different aspects, at least in terms of complaints. I agree the first priority should be fixing the "stuttering", which is simply unacceptable for this kind of hardware!

Have you had a look at this bug report?
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7062

Clearly Nokia itself at one point acknowledged that performance was an issue, but then they decided it is a wontfix. At the same time, the homepage for the N900 at nokia still states that the device record dvd-quality video!! I think we as users should politely put some pressure on Nokia for this. This is a promised feature, one of the device clear selling points, so it's even more of a failure than the delay with turn-by-turn Ovi Maps, in a way (since that was not promised when we bought the device)

As you can read in that bug report, the range of experiences is pretty wide. One user claims that by using the memory card to save files, the stuttering was fixed for him. I bought a class 6 card to test (the same as he bought), but couldn't see a whole lot of difference between saving there and on the main drive.

However, today I did some tests, and learned that I only get a high number of dropped frames when I pan with the phone while shooting a video. If I keep the phone absolutely still and I take a video of a subject moving (whether it is a hand, or a person talking and moving), the video is very good. I am not very technical, but to me this seems to indicate that the problem is the software encoder, uncapable of keeping up with the amount of information "changing" when the lens is panning around.

Perhaps this is obvious to all of you...

Fresh flashed N900 can't do capture on a fast card. Also, fresh N900 doesn't do flawless capture on internal storage, either, it's just that stutter is minimal.

What exactly do you see wrong with that 720p?

It seems 720p to me. Remember, 720P is just a tad over the standard DVD compression for a mobile applies, as does re-compression by youtube. Make sure you switch YouTube to 720p before viewing

Other than that, it's a clear, nice image. Please point out the problem?

You might have kinked the wrong bug, that's about the camera software behaving oddly with a locked/corrupted card. One can't be expected to run under the conditions.

@maemomatic

I specifically had the n900 constantly panning up, down and all around when testing my above mentioned settings change. Give it a try.

EDIT: It's just an improvement, but it's far from perfect.

Just out of curiousity, the author points that 5 mins of recording equals 500mb... what exactly is the file format output created? I have some 500mb 20-minutes episodes in 720p on .mkv format

Sorry, I got the wrong link - check this one instead:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7062

Make sure that you know what 720p30 exactly is.

I don't see a real big difference. It seems to produce random results, at times a bit better than with the default settings, other times equal. I think that we deserve something better than this, not so much in resolution, but definitely in terms of real fps

Your post is made of exactly 0% actual information. I'll repeat, could you point out the problem with the video?

ETA:

@maemomatic

The bug seems to be almost solved down the line, apparently we have a fragmentation issue. It's hard to believe this, as flash storage is virtually immune but if they say so?

My N900 stores 26 M/min. That's about 430K/s? With a decent buffer it should be just fine?

But how else to explain the solid boost I get from internal storage versus card? Driver problem? Buffer issues?

Edit2:

Well, this is new? Tracking my N900 while making a video seems that the CPU peaks and the culprit is video thumbnailer and tracker?

Could it be this silly-idiotic simple? Start recording and they all jump to see the new video? Over 60% on a 900 MHz N900 CPU taken by gst-tumbnailer and tracker. Not to mention they all scratch storage.

Be right back.

-----------------------

I'm back. Is this smooth enough? I mean it, I'm asking, ignore quality, the source was really bad.

@ndi

I saw your video, and it doesn't stutter that much. I wonder if the panning around (which you don't do in this video) has any influence. As for myself, I can take videos with almost no stuttering if the camera is still, but not if it is moving, which would seem to imply a problem with low framerate and perhaps not fast enough encoding more than anything else. I am experiencing some of the same problems also if I reduce the video resolution, what about you?