[Q] Touch-to-Focus while taking video? - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Has anyone heard or seen any demos/reviews/preview videos of someone taking a video and re-focusing by touching the screen? Relying on only autofocus on the S2 made many unfocused videos unwatchable.
The One S has it (I played with it), as well as iPhone and the Razr.
YAY! Update:
According to the manual, touch to focus while recording video is confirmed!
5 Select [REC button] to start recording.
●● To change the focus, tap where you want to focus. To
focus on the centre of the screen, select [AF button].
●● To capture an image from the video while recording,
select [STILL SHOT button].
6 Select [REC button] to stop recording.
The video is saved automatically.
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Update 2:
On another note, it looks like anti-shake is available for video, too, unless it was a copy/paste mistake from the Photo/Still Camera section of the manual.
Anti-Shake
Activate the anti-shake feature to reduce
blur caused by the device’s vibration or
movement.
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naddie said:
Has anyone heard or seen any demos/reviews/preview videos of someone taking a video and re-focusing by touching the screen? Relying on only autofocus on the S2 made many unfocused videos unwatchable.
The One S has it (I played with it), as well as iPhone and the Razr.
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Dude you can do this on the S2 I use it ALL the time..

fOmey said:
Dude you can do this on the S2 I use it ALL the time..
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On TW ROMs while taking a video? Are we talking ICS? I haven't tried taking a video on a TW ICS ROM yet.
Regarding the S2, I'm not the only one who sees this limitation:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1541019
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1471112
Anyways, I'm concerned because I know stock ICS doesn't do it, so I hope the S3's camera app finally has TOF while videoing.

I flashed to the stock ICS TW ROM and verified that touching the screen while videoing does not allow for Touch-to-Focus, either. There's nothing in the settings to allow it either. When I touch while videoing, it says "Zooming is not supported while recording Full HD Video". When not filming at 1080p, it just zooms instead of focus.
Are you using a custom ROM, 3rd party app, or modified camera.apk?

Yeah I've seen many videos where this was done, Samsung even added automatic face recognition when you take a photo and instantly sends them to all your friends in that photo.

That's all fine and dandy, but sometimes, you want to control where you want to focus. Short of an unfriendly manual focus slider, touch-to-focus is a quick way to kick the focus algorithm in gear.
Relying on the auto focus to adjust itself doesn't work well on the S2. Sometimes it tries to refocus when it's already in focus and everything becomes blurry for the next 2-3 minutes, ruining the video. Happens a lot in low-light conditions (indoor).

naddie said:
I flashed to the stock ICS TW ROM and verified that touching the screen while videoing does not allow for Touch-to-Focus, either. There's nothing in the settings to allow it either. When I touch while videoing, it says "Zooming is not supported while recording Full HD Video". When not filming at 1080p, it just zooms instead of focus.
Are you using a custom ROM, 3rd party app, or modified camera.apk?
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lgcamera works flawlessly for this. Bitrate customization, touch to focus etc

DramatikBeats said:
lgcamera works flawlessly for this. Bitrate customization, touch to focus etc
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I'm talking about the stock camera app. I hope someone can verify if touch focus on the S3 will finally have it.

According to the manual, touch to focus while recording video is confirmed!
5 Select [REC button] to start recording.
●● To change the focus, tap where you want to focus. To
focus on the centre of the screen, select [AF button].
●● To capture an image from the video while recording,
select [STILL SHOT button].
6 Select [REC button] to stop recording.
The video is saved automatically.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Related

[Q] Camcorder and camera focus question

Guys I have noticed that my Atrix does not focus on something when I'm close to it like 5"-10". Basically I get blury image in camcorder and camera view. Is this normal?
erikmarko said:
Guys I have noticed that my Atrix does not focus on something when I'm close to it like 5"-10". Basically I get blury image in camcorder and camera view. Is this normal?
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When using the camera, try setting it to "Macro" in the Scenes selection. As for the camcorder, it might take a little time for it to focus on something up close.
I tried macro setting already but it didn't make a difference. How close can you get to lets say page with text on it so you don't lose focus?
erikmarko said:
I tried macro setting already but it didn't make a difference. How close can you get to lets say page with text on it so you don't lose focus?
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I can get right up to 3 inches away, which is about as good as you're going to get with a camera on a phone. Lighting has a lot to do with it as well I think.
well I got the camera to work, I didn't hold the button to focus duh! but the video camera still does not focus upclose. Is the focus automatic or is there a way to focus manualy? How close can you video something with focus?
erikmarko said:
well I got the camera to work, I didn't hold the button to focus duh! but the video camera still does not focus upclose. Is the focus automatic or is there a way to focus manualy? How close can you video something with focus?
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Click to collapse
I think someone has mentioned before that the camcorder on the Atrix is NOT auto focus or continuous focus. It probably won't do close ups.

[Q] Video recording close-up doesn't focus well? (on screen panels)

I tried to record some real time data on some equipment's panel screen today (at work place) using the sgs2 stock camera app video recording..
Many had told me the video recording suppose to have auto focus but the wordings are very blur and I can't identify each words at all during recording and also when playback.
At the end I have to borrow my colleague's iPhone 4 to get the job done, it focus immediately on the screen wordings and appeared clearly..
Normally I never use video recording but now I'm bugged by it lol
Am I doing anything wrong here? I'm using Checkrom 3.1.1 though I doubt they have tweaked anything on the camera app, it looks the same as the stock one.

[Q] Camera clicking?

Whenever I focus the camera, it makes a clicking sound. Is this normal?
Edit: I really don't care too much about it, and it's not something that I'd return my Prime for. Especially since it's not like I'm going to use it to make movies or anything. The clicking happens in the Stock ICS Camera app whenever I tap the screen to focus, and whenever I'm recording video. In video it's really noticeable.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3k24yF9lkk
Look closely at the camera while you focus. It is motorized. That click is the mechanical focus.
If you change the focus to infinity, that click will stop.
wpghtc said:
Look closely at the camera while you focus. It is motorized. That click is the mechanical focus.
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It is?! That's really surprising! Especially for a Tablet so thin.

[Q] Touch to focus Video?

When i record video, everything always goes out of focus. is there any way i can get touch to focus on my galaxy sII while recording video?
srivas95 said:
When i record video, everything always goes out of focus. is there any way i can get touch to focus on my galaxy sII while recording video?
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Good question, the continuous autofocus on my i717 is completely useless. I miss my Motorola Atrix 2 with its awesome touch to focus. I don't think it is possible to enable touch to focus.

Video Stabilization off when setting is set to "on" and vice versa.

Anyone notice that one the T-Mobile Edge, that when you set "Video Stabilization" to "On" it actually doesnt stabilize the video?
Only when you set it to "off," it'll stabilized the video recording?
It's kind of the opposite, not sure why no one else noticed.
Could be wrong here, but I believe that while recording you not going to notice any stabilization. It's happening but you won't see it until replaying the processed video after the recording is done.
Pure+ said:
Could be wrong here, but I believe that while recording you not going to notice any stabilization. It's happening but you won't see it until replaying the processed video after the recording is done.
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To check video and photo stabilization, try zooming in to 3x, point it at something and try to do a recording with it On and off, the video will do the opposite.
It work none the less, but it's counter intuitive to have it day off when it's actually on.
OP seems to be spot on. Same problem with my regular S6. Video stabilization = off turns stabilization on. With it = on, videos are jittery as hell where even my pulse through my fingertips causes the camera to shake.
So guess there's a bug in the camera app.
I just noticed the same thing with my unbranded regular Galaxy S6. If you have video stabilization turned on in camera app settings it is in fact turned off. I was surprised how poorly it stabilizes the video, so I had to use 'Stabilize' option in YouTube. Then I thought maybe my optical image stabilization component is damaged so I started playing with it and once I turned it off my video stabilization started to work very well. So it seems to be a bug in camera software. Anyway - if you want to have video stabilization you need to have it turned off Samsung logic
The reasoning is because the video stabilization setting in the camera app turns on DIGITAL Image Stabilizing by Samsung via software which is really just counterproductive to the Optical Image Stabilization already built into the camera.
So yeah, trust the OIS hardware because typically hardware > software in this field.
facetubespam said:
The reasoning is because the video stabilization setting in the camera app turns on DIGITAL Image Stabilizing by Samsung via software which is really just counterproductive to the Optical Image Stabilization already built into the camera.
So yeah, trust the OIS hardware because typically hardware > software in this field.
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Click to collapse
Just a question so OIS is default by default and always on am I right? Even on UHD recording?
More evidence that the switch in the camera options refers to DIGITAL image stabilization:
Set video resolution to FHD (not the 60fps option). Otherwise, the Video Stabilization setting is not available (grayed out).
Set the Video Stabilization setting to "ON".
Go back to the camera, zoom in fully (8x). While pointing at something easily identifiable, without shooting video, note that the image is stabilized quite well -- you can simulate "shaky hands" and the image is very stable, not jittery. However, you are not shooting video yet, so settings specific to video are not activated. What's happening here is the OIS is working, and doing a very good job.
Now, click the video recording button. You will notice two changes in the image: It will zoom in a little bit more without any zooming input from you, and the image will get rather UNSTABLE.
It turns out, what you had selected in the settings is actually, truly, being invoked. No, this is not a bug. The switch is not acting the opposite of how its labeled, even though the RESULT is exactly that in practice.
Here's what's happening: As someone else noted, that switch controls digital image stabilization. This is a software process, that basically crops off a small margin all the way around the picture and reserves these pixels for calculating a smaller moving "window" in the larger captured image space. The software tries to move this window around so that it follows the random small movements from jiggling, unsteady hands, etc. In this way, the image appears stable rather than moving around in the capture space.
This is why, when DIS is turned on, the displayed image zooms a little bit -- that's the "reserve image edges" being cropped off and the remaining image being expanded into the display area.
So, here's what I think is happening: When you have Video Stabilization on, the phone turns off OIS and enables the DIS algorithm. The OIS camera hardware is something like a Googolplex times better as IS than Samsung's crappy algorithm, so the end result is the appearance of IS being turned OFF and a little loss of resolution of the video image as well.
Once the video is stopped, after a few seconds you'll see the DIS turned off, OIS turned back on, and the image will zoom out a tiny bit and become very stable again.
Bottom line: The Video Stabilization setting in the S6 camera app is worse than useless. It's adverse. It should be left off at all times under all conditions.
How did this happen? My guess is, the engineering team responsible for the hardware was organizationally distant enough from the camera software team (keep in mind the latter are trying to develop an app that can run across many phones). The hardware guys put this incredible camera in the phone with awesome OIS. The software guys, not focused only on the S6, passed through the DIS that's been in the camera app forever, and no one engineer was responsible for integrating all this stuff for the camera feature itself, testing it, making sense of it, blah blah blah.
And here we are.
Bottom line: Because of the OIS in the S6, the DIS feature in the camera app is unnecessary and should be left OFF. In fact, the way it works misleads the user into thinking IS can't be had with the video resolutions higher than non-60fps FHD. In fact, exceptional IS is available at all times in all resolutions for stills and video -- the hardware OIS is always on the job, unless you turn it off by turning on the [digital] Video Stabilization option in the settings.
The only bug here, if any, is that this setting seems to turn off OIS, when it doesn't need to. Perhaps with OIS on, and the DIS processing applied to that stabilized image, we might get something even better than OIS alone. Alas...

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