When recording in 1080p using the camera it is zoomed in. When using 720p you can see a lot more in the picture, where as 1080p seems to zoom in on the central object.
Now I was just wondering is it possible to mod this to make 1080p video record without being zoomed in (like how 720p does it) or is it impossible and it has to work that way ?
sorrowuk said:
When recording in 1080p using the camera it is zoomed in. When using 720p you can see a lot more in the picture, where as 1080p seems to zoom in on the central object.
Now I was just wondering is it possible to mod this to make 1080p video record without being zoomed in (like how 720p does it) or is it impossible and it has to work that way ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out the video recording review in gsmarena.com
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9100_galaxy_s_ii-review-597p9.php
Here's a thread about it if you want more detail.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=959475
when the sensor chip (the camera) cannot crank for example 30FPS at 1080P resolution, "zooming" is a trick.
The sensor has less surface to scan with the zooming and can then crank out the said fps at said resolution.
The exynos chip however does "real" 1080p encoding and the image is really 1080p, but appears zoomed, and therefore contains slightly less details than if the sensor did not zoom (since parts of the field of view are not viewable)
bilboa1 said:
when the sensor chip (the camera) cannot crank for example 30FPS at 1080P resolution, "zooming" is a trick.
The sensor has less surface to scan with the zooming and can then crank out the said fps at said resolution.
The exynos chip however does "real" 1080p encoding and the image is really 1080p, but appears zoomed, and therefore contains slightly less details than if the sensor did not zoom (since parts of the field of view are not viewable)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So would it ever be possible to have 1080p video without 'zooming' by modding the firmware/ in a custom rom?
Or is it hardware limitation ?
sorrowuk said:
So would it ever be possible to have 1080p video without 'zooming' by modding the firmware/ in a custom rom?
Or is it hardware limitation ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Physical Hardware limitation
Native res of sensor = 3264x2448
HD Video = 1920x1080
3264 / 1920 = 1.7
so the only way to record 1920 is to bin the .7 thus cutting out much of the screen.
now 720p HD only has a horizontal res of 1280 that goes into said sensor 2.55, so you only need to cut out the .55 (less than full hd) and then read alternate pixels and bin the rest.
Hope that makes sense
deanwray said:
Physical Hardware limitation
Native res of sensor = 3264x2448
HD Video = 1920x1080
3264 / 1920 = 1.7
so the only way to record 1920 is to bin the .7 thus cutting out much of the screen.
now 720p HD only has a horizontal res of 1280 that goes into said sensor 2.55, so you only need to cut out the .55 (less than full hd) and then read alternate pixels and bin the rest.
Hope that makes sense
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Click to collapse
I think that even binning the 0.7 factor should give a better result than the actual "zoomed in" effect. In the other hand whe should have the zoom function at 1080P resoultion too.
DrSlump76 said:
I think that even binning the 0.7 factor should give a better result than the actual "zoomed in" effect. In the other hand whe should have the zoom function at 1080P resoultion too.
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Click to collapse
Look at the calculations, you cant zoom in 1080 cause the sensor res aint enough!
deanwray said:
Look at the calculations, you cant zoom in 1080 cause the sensor res aint enough!
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Click to collapse
Humm... i'm still dubtfull about this limitation. Correct me if i'm wrong, but i think that the htc sensation is able to apply digital zoom @ 1080P, and it should have an 8Mpixel camera too, isn't it?
I can't post a link but if you searc for "HTC Sensation takes FULL HD 1080p videos " in youtube you will find a video taken with htc sensation with digital zoom!
I don't think that the galaxy s2 hardware is unable to do the same thiks that htc sensation does...
Oh, digital zoom is easy, but a bit pointless. So no point zooming if your source resolution drops, why not record native at the lower res and increase on pc? You will get better result that a phone attempting bilinear calculations .. So probably excluded cause of it being pointless.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
deanwray said:
Oh, digital zoom is easy, but a bit pointless. So no point zooming if your source resolution drops, why not record native at the lower res and increase on pc? You will get better result that a phone attempting bilinear calculations .. So probably excluded cause of it being pointless.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
digital zoom during video recording is not applied by a simple bilinear calculation. Its quite the opposite:
No zoom -> use the whole sensor area and then "downsample" it to obtain the desired dimensions
Zoom->Sample the exact dimension from the center of the sensor.
Infact, if you watch two videos of the same scene taken with the sgs2 720P and then 1080P, you will notice that the 1080P gives a zoomed effect, becouse samsung only uses the rectangle on the center of the sensor to sample the frames, while with 720P uses the whole sensor area.
Power limitations? Unskilled Samsung's engineers? Who knows..
DrSlump76 said:
Hi
digital zoom during video recording is not applied by a simple bilinear calculation. Its quite the opposite:
No zoom -> use the whole sensor area and then "downsample" it to obtain the desired dimensions
Zoom->Sample the exact dimension from the center of the sensor.
Infact, if you watch two videos of the same scene taken with the sgs2 720P and then 1080P, you will notice that the 1080P give a zoomed effect, becouse samsung uses only the rectangle on the center of the sensor to sample the frames, while with 720P uses the whole sensor area.
Power limitations? Unskilled Samsung's engineers? Who knows..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think that it's neither power limitations or unskilled samsung engineers. At 1080p, it uses most of the sensor, so zooming in will decrease the quality of the image to the point of being pointless at filming 1080p.
The reason why 720p uses the entire sensor area is because it does something called pixel binning. It uses the adjacent pixels to determine which color/info is more accurate (so a single pixel in the middle uses the ones around it to determine which color is closer to the actual source).
See here for more info:
http://www.svi.nl/PixelBinning
With pixel binning, you get less noise but at a cost of lower resolution. Therefore, they implemented zoom for 720p and the reason why 720p uses the entire sensor.
So the reason for why the 720p uses the entire sensor and 1080p only uses a section IS due to hardware limitations. 1080p needs at least a 12.4MP resolution for pixel binning.
As there is pixel binning, 720p will produce higher quality zooms than if 1080p could've zoomed using crop and bilinear enlargement (which will create pixelated images). That is why I assume they didn't include 1080p zoom - for quality purposes.
BTW - pixel binning is a technique also used by the iPhone 4.
DrSlump76 said:
Hi
digital zoom during video recording is not applied by a simple bilinear calculation. Its quite the opposite:
No zoom -> use the whole sensor area and then "downsample" it to obtain the desired dimensions
Zoom->Sample the exact dimension from the center of the sensor.
Infact, if you watch two videos of the same scene taken with the sgs2 720P and then 1080P, you will notice that the 1080P gives a zoomed effect, becouse samsung only uses the rectangle on the center of the sensor to sample the frames, while with 720P uses the whole sensor area.
Power limitations? Unskilled Samsung's engineers? Who knows..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats wrong! It's only correct if the sensor has the physical resolution that surpasses the target res by 2 exactly! Look at my previous post, I explain it a bit better. Your taking about sensor crop and pixel binning, not digital zoom.
Oh and bilinear is not simple, when you think of the amount of subpixel influence you have to create.
Neways, point is digital zoom creates pixels from thin air, well, programatically. So the detail is not present, hence why digital zoom is a consumer buzz than a valued feature.
Thanks for your replies guys. I would like to bring two more arguments for my theory:
1) The 720P recordings that we can find in the net shows a low quality zoom
2) In the other hand, there are some videos taken with the htc sensation that shows an almost perfect zoom @ 1080P
The question is:
if the htc product uses virtually the same sensor of the sgs2, how can they implement the zoom??
Here a video sample with digital zoom @1080P:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZDcpggOHRc&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=SP9E838D931C71486D
Thanks!
DrSlump76 said:
Thanks for your replies guys. I would like to bring two more arguments for my theory:
1) The 720P recordings that we can find in the net shows a low quality zoom
2) In the other hand, there are some videos taken with the htc sensation that shows an almost perfect zoom @ 1080P
The question is:
if the htc product uses virtually the same sensor of the sgs2, how can they implement the zoom??
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The answer is: Digital Zoom lol
Tis easy to see in the video that detail is lost, pixel get bigger then filtered etc. So Digital Zoom is a software feature, not hardware!
Also people seem to forget a few very important things regarding capture quality, the bitrate of the encoding profile in use. From what I see the sgs2 has a variable 10-14mbit profile active for full HD. Some of my pro cameras use 35-50mbit. So I'm going to look into how to mod this if i can since the hardware should be able to handle a higher rate, busy at the mo though.
at the end of the day though, tis a phone, if you want really good quality get a pro sumer hd cam, or a 5dmk2, or if you won the lottery get a Red Epic and shoot 5k res at 1000's fps. However none of those have mail/chat or phone capabilities
for 1080p are taken 1920x1080 pixels from the center of 8Mp sensor... (in this manner there is a "zoom effect" of about 2x and less view)
for other resolutions are applied pixel binning tecnhique (all pixel from sensor are used, and is scaling from 8mp to output video resolution)
take original pixels produces better quality (because are original pixels and not scaled), but less signal/noise ratio (but, because galaxys2 sensor is good, noise is low also if you take original pixel and don't use pixel binning that increases signal/noise ratio)..
also, use original pixels and don't use pixel binning, requires less power (in this manner you can have 1080p video at about 30fps and high bitrate)
deanwray said:
The answer is: Digital Zoom lol
Tis easy to see in the video that detail is lost, pixel get bigger then filtered etc. So Digital Zoom is a software feature, not hardware!
Also people seem to forget a few very important things regarding capture quality, the bitrate of the encoding profile in use. From what I see the sgs2 has a variable 10-14mbit profile active for full HD. Some of my pro cameras use 35-50mbit. So I'm going to look into how to mod this if i can since the hardware should be able to handle a higher rate, busy at the mo though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok deanwray, you're perfectly right, but i would prefer to choose by myself if i wish to use the zoom or not, awared that if i use the digital zoom, the quality will be affected. In the other hand, in this way, the 1080P video would have better field of view (instead of the zoomed effect we have now) and less noise.
About the bitrate: maybe it's possible to raise it to 20Mbit, but i think that going above this limit is quite difficult. According to me, it's better to implement the zoom in 1080P and a better audio recording.
I was thinking: if they're unable to implement such features... how can we hope to obtain higher bitrates.. ?
DrSlump76 said:
Ok deanwray, you're perfectly right, but i would prefer to choose by myself if i wish to use the zoom or not, awared that if i use the digital zoom, the quality will be affected. In the other hand, in this way, the 1080P video would have better field of view (instead of the zoomed effect we have now) and less noise.
About the bitrate: maybe it's possible to raise it to 20Mbit, but i think that going above this limit is quite difficult. According to me, it's better to implement the zoom in 1080P and a better audio recording.
I was thinking: if they're unable to implement such features... how can we hope to obtain higher bitrates.. ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's not firmware (camera firmware) limited, there are calls in the android sdk to set bitrate, I would probably look at writing a camera when I have time. Never looked at attempting to mod the default one. Have found something odd though, did a few tests, and there should be perceptual zoom due to sensor cropping at 720p, but compared against an 8mp photo, there aint! So thats a bit wierd to me
deanwray said:
If it's not firmware (camera firmware) limited, there are calls in the android sdk to set bitrate, I would probably look at writing a camera when I have time. Never looked at attempting to mod the default one. Have found something odd though, did a few tests, and there should be perceptual zoom due to sensor cropping at 720p, but compared against an 8mp photo, there aint! So thats a bit wierd to me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
According to you, is it possible to modify/create a camera app that implements a digital zoom or better algorithms for image sampling?
What kind of access is possible to gain to the application processor's peripherals with android os?
There are some realtime image scaling algorithms that could be implemented via gpu or, better, via dsp if the exynos integrates a dsp onboard (like the TI's omap do).
Wondering how much storage space will one picture take for the Google Pixel 6 take with the new 50MP camera. My current Google XL 2 using a 12MP camera would take ~5MB/picture.
The sensor uses pixel binning, so the output image is 12,5 MP.
The binned picture file size is also worryingly low. I wish they gave us more.optiions to select and store higher quality images and video.
You can always save in raw + jpeg, though I'm not entirely sure if it processes the raw image
This main 50 megspixel camera is compressing the photo so much that having 50 mp is useless. Too much compression and still using their computational technology at 12 megapixels so we aren't really seeing what the difference a 50 megapixel camera would make. File sizes should be 25 mb or higher with a jpeg at 50 megapixels. Yes I'm a photographer
treIII said:
This main 50 megspixel camera is compressing the photo so much that having 50 mp is useless. Too much compression and still using their computational technology at 12 megapixels so we aren't really seeing what the difference a 50 megapixel camera would make. File sizes should be 25 mb or higher with a jpeg at 50 megapixels. Yes I'm a photographer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are right. Apart from some improvement to noise levels and colour, the details are virtually the same as my pixel 4xl.
I think the only real benefit of the 50MP sensor is when you zoom (hopefully). So when you zoom in it no longer pixel bins and you're using a native 12MP section of the sensor before you get into digital-only zoom.
WibblyW said:
I think the only real benefit of the 50MP sensor is when you zoom (hopefully). So when you zoom in it no longer pixel bins and you're using a native 12MP section of the sensor before you get into digital-only zoom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't found that to be the case. There is a 2x zoom that doesn't look too bad (slightly oilpaint like) and a 4x that is the optical zoom on the telephoto sensor that's very good... Another issue is the camera automatically switches between the main sensor at 4x and the telephoto 4x sensor depending on focal distance so you can't use the 4x optical to take close shots.
So what's the point of a 50MP sensor binned to 12.5MP if it always does it? Why not use a native 12.5MP sensor and get even more light in, by avoiding the gaps between the pixels used in each 'bin'?
WibblyW said:
So what's the point of a 50MP sensor binned to 12.5MP if it always does it? Why not use a native 12.5MP sensor and get even more light in, by avoiding the gaps between the pixels used in each 'bin'?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
better low light, better noise reduction
WibblyW said:
So what's the point of a 50MP sensor binned to 12.5MP if it always does it? Why not use a native 12.5MP sensor and get even more light in, by avoiding the gaps between the pixels used in each 'bin'?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As above, better noise level and light input.
Definitely better pictures on the main and 4x sensor than the pixel 4 xl for sure.
I just wish we had a full size version and higher quality image export.
So using 4x small pixels in a bin is better than one big one the same size for noise/light (assuming the technologies are the same)?
Ok so that seems to be the case
Hamamatsu Learning Center: Pixel Binning
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is a semiconductor ideally suited for use in digital imaging applications as a means of transferring integrated photogenerated charge.
hamamatsu.magnet.fsu.edu
Photos would be much better in well-lit situations using 50 megapixels. Pixel binning down to 12 megapixels would be fine in low light but it's not acceptable to me to do this in well-lit situations. They need an update for the camera to decide when the situation is lit well enough to use the 50 megapixels and to decide when it's not lit well enough and use the 12.5 megapixels as they are. Because regardless of what anyone thinks s 50 megapixel photo would have much more detail than what's being done now by binning every photo. Google has to make a decision to move forward with their camera and use it to its fullest potential in which they are not doing now.
If i want a photo with 50 mpx can i just use raw ? Or it still bins?
DMart9406 said:
If i want a photo with 50 mpx can i just use raw ? Or it still bins?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still a 12mp image. The file size is larger however and there's more info from the sensor to play with.
RAW images will also not be compressed in a lossy way
Maybe some gcam ports will allow us to take photos in 50 mpx...
I invite you to my post here:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/samsung-isocell-gn1-sensor.4359031/#post-85911883
Its a quad Bayer subpixel layout. Because it groups four of the same color pixel together it only has 12.5 mp of color data. The 50 mp claim is marketing bs. Essentially it just upscales the 12.5 mp image using the extra luma data. The sensor is also too small for 50 mp to turn out well.
The main advantage is you can do an HDR photo with one exposure. Because there's four subpixels, you can have four different exposure values with one photo. Although I don't think Google is utilizing this.
A 50mp picture would be a total waste with the lenses in these phones. The "extra" detail that a 50mp could show would be offset by the poor quality lenses (I'm speaking in general terms here - not specifically about one phone or another). These tiny phone lenses can only produce so much sharpness, clarity and detail. In other words, eventually it's the lenses that are the limiting factor in the picture quality and putting in a sensor with such high resolution that it greatly exceeds the quality of the lens will not produce better images.
By binning the sensor pixels, you get the benefit of "larger pixels" (so more light absorption) without exceeding the quality limitations of the lenses.
Hey all,
New owner of Pixel6 here. I have question about photos resolution. I upgraded from prehistoric Motorola Moto X Force. Photos from this phone was in "full chip resolution" - 21Mpx. It was very good when I tried to record some details (little cracks, surface imperfections) in my work. Just zoom to 100% and voila! And without "standard" camera device.
Pixel 6 have 50Mpx sensor (by specification), but photos have only 12Mpx. So I have only half of details compared to old Moto. Is possible to make photos with higher resolution? I dont need full 50Mpx, but about 20MPx can be very nice.
Thank you in advance!
T.
Male_zvire said:
Hey all,
New owner of Pixel6 here. I have question about photos resolution. I upgraded from prehistoric Motorola Moto X Force. Photos from this phone was in "full chip resolution" - 21Mpx. It was very good when I tried to record some details (little cracks, surface imperfections) in my work. Just zoom to 100% and voila! And without "standard" camera device.
Pixel 6 have 50Mpx sensor (by specification), but photos have only 12Mpx. So I have only half of details compared to old Moto. Is possible to make photos with higher resolution? I dont need full 50Mpx, but about 20MPx can be very nice.
Thank you in advance!
T.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mpx doesn't mean quality
Photo compare Motorola Moto X Force vs. Google Pixel 6 - GSMArena.com
m.gsmarena.com
Old and new phone comparison
The option to take a 50mpx shot would be nice but would require some specific lighting conditions
think its called pixel binding? Where 1 pixel has 4 sub pixels so thats why its 12.5mp x 4 = 50mp. This way it can take 4 photo's in 1 time with different exposure so that tricks like HDR etc gets done on the fly.
As of now you can't use the full 50 mp on the Pixel since as stated it does Pixel binning to give 12 MP images.
If you need high MP then maybe phones like S21 Ultra maybe a better option.
Or unless google activates the option in future updates if it's possible.
It's possible because my Huawei P20 Pro did the same trick and offered full res without the AI 0hoto features. Don't know if Google wants to do that since it will let the overall hdr etc
Use the digital zoom function. The resulting file should still be 12.5 Mpx