What makes our 720p recording inferior (imo) to the iphone, nokia n8, and samsung galaxy?

[Vincent Law]

You are incorrect, as you are unaware that the Evo has a variable recording fps. It goes as high as 24 fps in good daylight, but can go as low as 9-10 fps indoors.

If the recording setting is 24fps, then I'm not incorrect, thanks for playing.

 

[zpilot]

Why can't people just accept the fact that the Evo pales in comparison to the iPhone's camera? It's evident in all the pictures and videos put out by both phones.

 

[TravyEvo]

I LOVE my EVO. Don't have any regrets at all. But I knew even before the iPhone 4 samples came out that it would take better pictures/video. I don't know why this offends certain people. I have seen some excellent pictures with the EVO, but the video at 720 is rarely good (I've seen a couple of decent ones, but the majority is really bad).

You can definitely hear the difference 9khz AMR audio codec. You can't polish a turd.

.

You must not watch Mythbusters. You can polish a turd, they did it!

 

[mrspeedmaster]

If the recording setting is 24fps, then I'm not incorrect, thanks for playing.

you didn't get the memo. the fps will drop regardless of the settings depending on the light conditions.the other phones appear to be 30fps regardless.

 

[EarlyMon]

Why can't people just accept the fact that the Evo pales in comparison to the iPhone's camera? It's evident in all the pictures and videos put out by both phones.

Because Android is an open source software effort.

Acceptance of facts laid down by whatever corporations want to spoon-feed us is not within the purview of open source, where people collaborate, share ideas and actually fix things.

Even if the manufacturer doesn't want to fix them.

The iPhone got video right because it has a longer evolutionary history than the Android platform - and things like the video codec is dictated foremost by the platform.

 

[Enellz]

To be truthful its a nice feature but if people really want HD video get a dedicated recorder.

 

[EarlyMon]

To be truthful its a nice feature but if people really want HD video get a dedicated recorder.

I've been into HD for 7 years. Can't get enough. More is better. If I can start using my phone for it too, then I really, really need it.

Honest.

 

[Enellz]

I've been into HD for 7 years. Can't get enough. More is better. If I can start using my phone for it too, then I really, really need it.

Honest.

Well of course its wonderful to have, and its convenient none the less. But what I hate is how people want to make it a big deal with comparisons, its just an camera on a phone. People make them out to be a big thing, like it'll truly impress a video guy or something. But hey people love comparisons

 

[EarlyMon]

Well of course its wonderful to have, and its convenient none the less. But what I hate is how people want to make it a big deal with comparisons, its just an camera on a phone. People make them out to be a big thing, like it'll truly impress a video guy or something. But hey people love comparisons

I don't want to compare to the iPhone. Its side-by-side performance with the Evo did inspire me to think and look into things. Now I just want the best HD I can get on my phone and I think that it will improve. When I have that, I still won't care what's better.

And for my separate camcorder, it's always a three chip camera, even since my SD days.

Sold my medium format still cameras, still use 35 mm though.

My camera is now like my disposable cameras of days gone by, but plus video - I just want the best I can carry in a pinch.

The worst camera or camcorder of all is the one you don't have on you at the precise moment that you need it.

 

[awesomerobot]

fps has been resolved, and soon by htc so the video should improve.

I hope you're trolling, because that's the most uninformed answer I have ever seen. The FPS cap has everything to do with 2D and 3D graphics performance and absolutely nothing to do with video recording.

The EVO suffers from pretty terrible compression, which is why the video is so sub-par to other offerings.

 

[MiDri]

BTW if you want to see the video FPS drop in real time Install Android SDK and Eclipse then plug your EVO in via USB and set it to HTC Sync. Open your camera app on the phone and then in Eclipse read the logcat readout.

It read FPS out second by second for you. Phone drops down to 7-9fps whilst in the dark.

 

[MrX8503]

Not even close. Your making this info because you know the specs for this. But no way you will see a difference here with your eyes.

Of course i am expecting you say the opposite.

No glasses needed here

Dude, just look at the videos, You can see that the quality is crappy.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I'm sure a class 6 card is gonna break the bank and make this phone prohibitively expensive. Better yet, HTC should of just left their crappy class 2 card out.

Why can't people just accept the fact that the Evo pales in comparison to the iPhone's camera? It's evident in all the pictures and videos put out by both phones.

Because people don't like to admit an inferior feature. Honestly you can have all the evidence in the world and people won't admit to it.

A better answer would be whether or not camera quality matters to the user. Instead of making up lame excuses for the phone they own.

To be truthful its a nice feature but if people really want HD video get a dedicated recorder.

To be truthful, that kind of thinking holds tech advancement back.

 

[captjoe06]

The quality of the 720P video taken with the EVO is pretty bad and I feel somewhat misleading to the consumer. I don't know of another 720p camera that performs as poorly.

Love the EVO but calling it like it is, the video quality is not great and no replacement for even a $100 flip cameras or many cheap compacts that take video.

 

[KoukiFC3S]

The main reason for the low bitrate and high compression on the Evo is so they could ship the phone with class 2 SDHC cards, which will cause issues with full quality 720p recording. a class 2 SDHC means it is designed to never drop below a 2Mbps write speed...


Recommended Video for 720p HD youtube

1280

 

[dr g]

Why can't people just accept the fact that the Evo pales in comparison to the iPhone's camera? It's evident in all the pictures and videos put out by both phones.

That's not actually true as far as photos. The Evo is capable of quite excellent photos.

Why people need to make such sweepingly false pronouncements as a sort of doom-and-gloom statement is the mystifying thing.

 

[talz13]

The Speed Class Rating is the official unit of speed measurement for SD Cards, defined by the SD Association. It is equal to 8 Mbit/s, and it measures the minimum write speeds based on "the best fragmented state where no memory unit is occupied":[9]
The following are the ratings of some currently available cards:

• Class 2: 16 Mbit/s (2 MB/s)
• Class 4: 32 Mbit/s (4 MB/s)
• Class 6: 48 Mbit/s (6 MB/s)
• Class 10: 80 Mbit/s (10 MB/s)

Class 2 has minimum write speed of 16Mbit/s.

 

[KoukiFC3S]

Class 2 has minimum write speed of 16Mbit/s.

This, and my 16GB class 2 SanDisk is giving me speeds of 3.5MBps!

 

[finndo77]

That's a reasonable hypothesis to draw, but my personal opinion is that it's incorrect.

The Sprint manual shows that playback of video is limited to 6000 kbps -- and anecdotal evidence so far shows that playback (of externally loaded content) above this bitrate will result in frames dropping. This would lead one to believe the more likely reason is that it's a processing limitation.

That said, bitrates taken in isolation are extremely misleading. I've transcoded movies to 720p, H.264, with a bitrate of 5 Mbps and they look great. The problem with the evo is not necessarily the bitrate, but the lack of the H.264 codec encoding, and some possible combination of the sensor and the lens.

Just my opinion, but I think the topic is about recording quality, not playback. There is a big difference...

 

[finndo77]

Actually class 2 is 2MBps, not 2Mbps, so it's plenty fast for HD video recording.

That is funny, because I had 2MBps and was not sure, so I searched online and saw it referenced as 2mbps, so I changed it. HA! Should have stuck with my instincts!

 

[sitlet]

The video from the samsung is a bit better than the evo. But the Nokia video blew me away. That is amazing.

I work in the television industry, so i have a bit of a background in this stuff. The main thing limiting the evo is the codec and bitrate. 3gp is an old codec that needs a lot of bitrate to look good with. As many have stated, an h264 video at 4000kbps looks fantastic. The image sensor in the camera has a little to do with it, but if you look at the still pictures from this camera, they look pretty decent. So again, the bottleneck here is the compression. Hopefully there will be a hack to fix this. Until then, im recording at 800x480, as the video looks much smoother and less compressed.

Some people are talking about the memory card being the bottleneck. Well here is a simple question to figure that out: Do people with class 6 cards have better looking video? I still have the stock card, so if somebody who has replaced their card can take a video with that, and another with the stock card, that would be great. I would totally purchase a new card if it helped the video.

 

[Headcase_Fargone]

Some people are talking about the memory card being the bottleneck. Well here is a simple question to figure that out: Do people with class 6 cards have better looking video? I still have the stock card, so if somebody who has replaced their card can take a video with that, and another with the stock card, that would be great. I would totally purchase a new card if it helped the video.

The type of SD card you have in your EVo is irrelavent as the software is hardcoded to a certain bitrate. They could at least offer us the option of a higher bitrate encoding. Maybe at some point they will.

 

[talz13]

The type of SD card you have in your EVo is irrelavent as the software is hardcoded to a certain bitrate. They could at least offer us the option of a higher bitrate encoding. Maybe at some point they will.

I have noticed some pauses and skips when recording video. I thought it was something wrong with youtube, but it was the same when I played it back on the phone it had the same skips in the same places. This was on a 16gb class 2 card. Any idea why it would be skipping?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyNkjfNhB8

 

[NeoteriX]

Just my opinion, but I think the topic is about recording quality, not playback. There is a big difference...

Yes... and if we are processor-limited to a certain bitrate for playback... then a reasonable person would conclude that we would be processor limited for recording as well, which is, if anything, a more processor intensive task than playback.

That's why playback is relevant here.

 

[EarlyMon]

The type of SD card you have in your EVo is irrelavent as the software is hardcoded to a certain bitrate. They could at least offer us the option of a higher bitrate encoding. Maybe at some point they will.

That's a no-gain scenario. By the time you increase MPEG-4 Part 2 to a sufficient bitrate for motion, your data feed is so high that your recording time will be seriously curtailed, all things being equal.

Then comes the power to drive things around the main board and the SD card at those rates.

Then comes the temptation to show it off via HDMI - and if mrspeedmaster (I believe I'm attributing correctly here) is indeed correct about the HDMI semiconductors being based on a 65 nm process, then it will indeed consume power quickly and more importantly heat up piping that lovely data out.

We want H.264 - at least, I sure do.

Still might not help the potential for the HDMI heating issue, tho. Might make it worse. (temptation to record and play longer movies because of the quality)

There's always USB. A lot of the modern HDTVs have USB ports that can bufffer and play movies off of a mounted device. Mine can - .3gp, .mp4 (MPEG-4 and H.264) so that might not be too big an issue. Might depend on the user's plumbing.

 

[Enellz]

To be truthful, that kind of thinking holds tech advancement back.

I'm curious how so? I'm not saying its not needed or don't use it, but its a phone first. They can put the best quality camera lens in the evo, and ill still say the same. It just bothers me people put such a emphasise on video for a phone. It's like buying a new car for the tires, its nice to have but you didn't buy it just for that.