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
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!

The huge review from michal at my-symbian provides 2 sample videos with no moving objects and one with 2 dogs, which shows that the frame rate and quality are really nice, just the resolution is a bit to low if you ask me.
With 600Mhz and ability to browse the web while capturing videos, maemo team should upgrade the resolution for video capturing IMO.

Here's an example just recoredered for you (25 sec) !
Fw version : 1.2009.42-11 (not the latest)

http://www.sugar0.net/20091125_003.mp4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m94dE6ljNJk

I stick to my opinion the quality is quite okay, the framerate is very good but the resolution could be way better.

I don't know, it jitters a lot, it's pretty difficult to call that good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fymYO...layer_embedded

this was made with a pre production model.
The problem really seems that it gets brighter and darker all the time.

This is a little shakey if you are asking me. Need Video stablelization like the N95. Quality is OKAY. But difinitely need to stablelising the image. Better software needed.

+1

Aout getting darker or brighter, at least in my unit, i think this is due to the some places being actually darker or brighter... Otherwise you would not see anything in darker places..

I just checked and there is exposure and brightness options so you can regulate how you want... The shakyness is more a "problem" in my opinion.

Could you please then record a video, where you see that its not switching from dark to bright all the time because of better settings and uload it? Would be awesome.

Thanks for the video! I saw two things that concern me on that video.

- Frame rate dropping (All over the place, you can really see it when you pan the camera down to the grass)
- Lack of Video Stabilization

What I'm suggesting is that the hardware should be able to properly cope with this level of video recording. The N95's OMAP2 SoC had none of these problems recording at 640x480@30fps. Just the idea that OMAP3 is the next logical upwards step in hardware makes me thing that 848x480@24fps should be no problem.

In fact, look at this. You are hardly pushing that much more pixels when recording compared to a Nokia N95.

640x480x30fps = 9,216,000 pixels per second

while the N900

848x480x24fps = 9,768,960 pixels per second

Given a difference of about 500,000 pixels, you would think newer hardware (OMAP2 -> OMAP3) would be able would be able to easily cope with such a small relative increase of bandwidth. Also, not to mention that the N95 can pull this off while performing Video Stabilization algorithms at the same time.

For comparison sake, the i8910 can push
1280x720x24 = 22,118,400 pixels per second, almost 2 times what the n900 can push

I'd hate to think but is all of the recording being pushed through the CPU instead of being assisted by other hardware?