Forget 30fps cap. Fix our video camera first.

[tmaxey1]

I was watching the camera videos filmed at droid Dog site of the samsung g vibrant and another camera beats ours. The iphone 4 is the leader in video but htc can't even beat samsung. Is this hardware or software? This is worth rooting over if we can match the competition video quality. I love the phone but come on htc you can do better.

 

[eieio]

Actually the pictures from mine are pretty nice.

I read the users manual and change the settings based on my lighting and type of photos I am taking..

Works out pretty good

 

[tmaxey1]

Still photos are decent. It's 720p video where its blurry and grainy and it drops frames. Even outdoor.

 

[thebrain]

I agree. I was at the zoo over the weekend, and had an opportunity to capture some video of a polar bear swimming. The captured video was choppy and would freeze and then jump 3-4 seconds. The audio was fine.
I was so disappointed in my EVO's performance. It would have been a sweet vid, we were in a glass tunnel with the beer swimming over us.
At least I know not to leave home with out my flip video cam in thefuture.

 

[eieio]

Still photos are decent. It's 720p video where its blurry and grainy and it drops frames. Even outdoor.

I have not tried the phones video camera/software yet, all of my videos have been shot with Qik so far

 

[thebrain]

Sorry double tap.

 

[EarlyMon]

From what I've read, the weakness is in the codecs provided within Android by PacketVideo. From the following, you can see that we can decode all sorts of stuff, but our video encoding is quite limited:

Android Supported Media Formats | Android Developers

PacketVideo

As you can see, the MPEG 4 (Part 2) encoding for our Evo videos was added - by HTC.

For my own part, if my further reading is correct (and this is worth everything you're paying for it, but I did _TRY HARD_ to get this right), we'll see a change to that Android codec list when a switch is made from PacketVideo to CoreCodec in 2.2.

The CoreCodec guys have been working on the native development kit since April 2009 and have been hampered by some of the fundamental limitations in the Android architecture that, according to CoreCodec employee speaking on behalf of their company on their forum, will be appropriately changed with Froyo.

Meanwhile - no need to throw out the 30 fps cap buster - the geniuses at XDA have that fixed for Epson and Novatel screens, HDMI working, camera working. HTC would do well to simply buy those changes if they don't have them already. (LOL on them doing that, but it's _possible_.)

Basically, the sensor and lens on the iPhone are said to be better - but a good H.264 (MPEG 4 Part 10) encoder would work wonders for us. Others are calling for a higher bitrate with the existing codec, but my personal opinion is that's a no-win scenario.

Meanwhile - we're waiting for Godot.

 

[tmaxey1]

If the limitations are android 2.1 related and not htc then does that mean samsung used better sensors and lens on the galaxy? Because the video recorder from the droid Dog video makes our look really bad. Watching that and the iphone video really upset me. I actually used my video camera a lot. I have 2 kids and love taking on the fly videos of them.
I worry that HTC will just push updates out and never address this. Will xda be able to customize our video camera codecs with 2.2 to give us less blur.

 

[nomunk]

my 720p Videos look really good

 

[malibu23]

i set mine 2 800x480. nice quality. who wants a 30mb 30s clip anyway?

 

[Cobravision]

I took a bunch of photos and video yesterday on a sunny day outdoors (needless to say, the grainy low-light pictures have a lot to be desired). The photos are very nice if a bit oversaturated. At this point, the Evo is not a bad substitute for my P&S, especially since that has some battery issue(!) where it won't stay charged.

The video was actually better than I thought it would be based on the comments I've read here and practically everywhere. They aren't super smooth (whenever the camera moves, there is distortion int he picture) but I've had no dropped frames and they are nice, if a bit over-compressed. I'd use this over my non-HD Flip any day. But yeah, the audio is jacked.

But if they could make them look and sound better, it would be like getting a Flip HD for free. But I don't know if any update is coming. I agree with the sentiment that HTC kneecapped this on purpose to keep something back for the Evo successor.

 

[R1_Rydah]

My outdoor vids look pretty good, the sound sucks, but the video is great for a cell phone :shrugs shoulders:

 

[Babbit]

This is a hardware issue, so there's not much HTC can do to drastically improve image quality. For any camera (SLR, P&S, or cell phones), it's all about sensor size per megapixel. The iPhone 4 and EVO both have the same size sensors (1/3.2") yet the EVO needs to fit 8 megapixels compared to iPhone's 5 megapixels in the same area. There just isn't enough light reaching each pixel on such a dense chip. HTC should have stepped it up and used a 4-6 megapixel sensor instead of cheapened out with an 8.

That is why high end compact cameras use 10 megapixel sensors whereas cheapo $50 cameras use 14 megapixels.

One thing HTC can do with software is to get rid of the purple fringing. Every photo when zoomed in has a purple halo around the edges. If they can fix this, the EVO will at least output middle of the pack pictures.

 

[Aldo Junior Ao2]

Recording 720p 30fps Video Development - Page 5 - xda-developers

I have been working on it. If your rooted give this a try. Go to post number 43. I'm running the new Cyan mod 6 with froyo. I'm seeing if anything is different hopefully something i can play with. They have a new camera and camcorder on there

 

[theintoxicatedmofo]

Agreed..the 720 P video on the Evo is just plain HORRIBLE...freezes here and there followed by a 4-5 second jump..its just plain horrible idk why or how HTC released this device with such crap video recording capabilities at 720P...lower setting recordings work extremely well..camera is also good but 720P video is horrible!!

 

[Aldo Junior Ao2]

Agreed..the 720 P video on the Evo is just plain HORRIBLE...freezes here and there followed by a 4-5 second jump..its just plain horrible idk why or how HTC released this device with such crap video recording capabilities at 720P...lower setting recordings work extremely well..camera is also good but 720P video is horrible!!

Take a quick video showing the skips and then i'll use the one from Cyan to see if there is any difference. I tried it and was shaking the crap out of it and no stutter. I'll take a quick vid and upload it.

 

[ODog2323]

i set mine 2 800x480. nice quality. who wants a 30mb 30s clip anyway?

+1

 

[pwnst*r]

my 720p Videos look really good

Can you put one up on youtube? I've yet to see one that even looks "good", much less, "really good".

 

[bossxii]

i set mine 2 800x480. nice quality. who wants a 30mb 30s clip anyway?

Then why bother putting 720p video capabilities in the phone to begin with?

Secondly making excuses for HTC and their poor choice of sensors sadly reminds me of all the Apple forums where people make excuses why their iPhone won't do this or that. HTC blew it and they need to fix it if it's possible via software update/codec change.

 

[Painkillaz]

I agree. I was at the zoo over the weekend, and had an opportunity to capture some video of a polar bear swimming. The captured video was choppy and would freeze and then jump 3-4 seconds. The audio was fine.
I was so disappointed in my EVO's performance. It would have been a sweet vid, we were in a glass tunnel with the beer swimming over us.
At least I know not to leave home with out my flip video cam in thefuture.

I dont know if you are having the same problem as me but when I started using the video camera and i moved over a video to my laptop the video was very choppy but the audio was fine. I then created a thread and asked why this was happening and someone told me ot use quicktime and that fixed the choppiness

 

[docprego]

This is a hardware issue, so there's not much HTC can do to drastically improve image quality. For any camera (SLR, P&S, or cell phones), it's all about sensor size per megapixel. The iPhone 4 and EVO both have the same size sensors (1/3.2") yet the EVO needs to fit 8 megapixels compared to iPhone's 5 megapixels in the same area. There just isn't enough light reaching each pixel on such a dense chip. HTC should have stepped it up and used a 4-6 megapixel sensor instead of cheapened out with an 8.

That is why high end compact cameras use 10 megapixel sensors whereas cheapo $50 cameras use 14 megapixels.

One thing HTC can do with software is to get rid of the purple fringing. Every photo when zoomed in has a purple halo around the edges. If they can fix this, the EVO will at least output middle of the pack pictures.

It's not a hardware issue at all. It's been widely acknowledged that the camera is recording in a lower quality format and that the bitrates are too low and compression is too high, all of which can be fixed in software.

 

[Cobravision]

Wait a minute -- all of the posters who complain about shoppiness and dropped frames -- is this evident on the phone on playback or when you transfer the video to the desktop/laptop?

 

[tmaxey1]

The motion blur is happening no matter if you are watching the videos on the phone or on the computer. I do agree that quicktime plays the files better than windows media player does.

But the problem is even some of my videos i recorded in the bright sunlight will still drop frames and stutter. It will sometimes skip ahead ect. If i try recording in a regular room lit conditions any motion at all will turn the video into an unwatchable mess of blur.

I dont know about sensors ect. But i do know that when my friend showed me a video he recorded of his daughter and the only light was from the iphone's led light it really shocked me. It was a nice video. I hate apple and i hate to give them credit but they came through with the video player.

 

[Deleted User]

Meanwhile - no need to throw out the 30 fps cap buster - the geniuses at XDA have that fixed for Epson and Novatel screens, HDMI working, camera working. HTC would do well to simply buy those changes if they don't have them already. (LOL on them doing that, but it's _possible_.)

If the XDA guys do the right thing(tm) and release the source to their code, HTC will simply be able to incorporate it back for free, to the benefit of us all in a future release. That's the whole point of open source, after all.

 

[MrX8503]

Still photos are decent. It's 720p video where its blurry and grainy and it drops frames. Even outdoor.

You think thats bad, you should look at the data info for the sound on the video. When I saw its bitrate and sample rate, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. The video is bad, but the audio is plain out terrible.

From what I can see, it seems like this can be fixed through software. Don't know for sure though.