Ok we need less subjective analysis and more objective facts!!! We need someone to download the video file to their computer and tell us what the codec is for video and sound and what the bitrate is.
Mecha posted this in another thread: (http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g/127093-forget-30fps-cap-fix-our-video-camera-first-3.html)
Ok, the update's out. I took advantage of this glorious time to download the OTA file from HTC's website and unzip it into a folder. Upon opening the media_profiles.xml file, I came across some pretty depressing information.
Quote:
<EncoderProfile quality="high" fileFormat="mp4" duration="60">
<Video codec="h264"
bitRate="3000000"
width="720"
height="480"
frameRate="24" />
<Audio codec="amrnb"
bitRate="12200"
sampleRate="8000"
channels="1" />
</EncoderProfile>
This is what's going to be labeled as 'High Quality' for the camcorder app. As you can see, while it does record as an .mp4 file under the h.264 codec, the bit rate is set to 3 Mbps. Now, I don't know how good that's going to transfer over to the codec, but it doesn't look all that great to me. What makes things even worse, however, is the fact that HTC is still using the HORRIBLE amr audio codec at 12 Kbps. Now, onto the encoder settings for h.264
Quote:
<VideoEncoderCap name="h264" enabled="true"
minBitRate="64000" maxBitRate="6000000"
minFrameWidth="176" maxFrameWidth="800"
minFrameHeight="144" maxFrameHeight="480"
minFrameRate="1" maxFrameRate="30" />
It seems that the codec has the ability to record at a bit rate of 6 Mbps. If there's a 'custom' option under the camcorder app, that's great. What ISN'T great, however, is the fact that there's NO 720p recording under the h.264 codec! What the hell, HTC? This is your device and you don't know how to fix the same issue Cyanogen has on his rom? The only codec that has the ability to record in 720p is the default, m4v, which remains at a bit rate of 8 Mbps. Absolutely nothing new there.
Worst of all, though, HTC neglected to enable a better audio codec with this OTA. Until somebody like aldo can manage to get the AAC codec working with the device, we're all stuck with what may be the worst audio to be recorded on a smartphone.
Maybe I'm looking too far into this; maybe HTC did something outside of the media_profiles file that makes the video and/or audio quality extraordinary! But based on what I've seen in this zip file, I'm not impressed at all.