[TESTING] Infuse 4G Video Recording & Playback Tests With Stock & Custom Roms

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Infuse Video Camera Recording Tests With Stock And Custom Roms

For those of you who are interested in the quality of your homemade video recordings and playback
please read on. Check out these tests which were made with all the stock and custom roms.
(these tests were conducted using a tripod and good indoor lighting)

Stock Froyo 2.2 Rom: Excellent very smooth, virtually no hesitation or lag during recording and playback of moving objects on preview screen.
(Ultimate Unbrick - Return to Stock)

Froyo 2.2.1 Custom Roms:Excellent very smooth, virtually no hesitation or lag during recording or playback of moving objects on preview screen.
(Infused 1.5.3, Infused 1.6.0, Refuse 1.7, Bionix Infinity 2.0)

Basically all the Froyo 2.2.x based custom roms all have the same results. Excellent video recording quality, smooth and virtually no noticeable hesitation or lag while recording and playback of homemade video. (I have tested different formats, 720p, 640x480 etc.)

Gingerbread Based Roms: Testing Rogers Gingerbread 2.3.x based Infuse i997 custom roms such as Infuse 2.1, CyanogenMod 7 and Hellraiser with i9000 Gingerbread based roms the video recording and playback quality with these roms were very poor with constant jerkyness, hesitation and lag due to only capturing up to 15fps like many cheaper cell phones do.
(even tried "CWM_UXKG3-rooted-de-odexed-updated_no_bootloaders_v2 & Odin_UXKG3_rooted_no_bootloaders_v2" GB roms with same results.)

These same recording/playback tests using Froyo based roms have no jerkyness, hesitation or lag due to capturing the full 30fps as advertised in the Infuse i997 specifications. (very noticable differences when comparing)

The Real Test: Record video while in Froyo based rom, flash any Gingerbread based rom, record video in gingerbread based rom then playback and compare the two videos. (this will take some time to test but for those who care enough about video recording quality it will be worth while)

You can easily see this hesitation/jerkyness while in a Gingerbread rom and the lack of hesitation/jerkyness while in Froyo roms by just starting up the camera app, switch to video camera and turning the phone in landscape mode moving slowly from left to right / right to left then speeding up little by little while looking thru viewfinder at objects on your table or desk without even starting the actual video recording.

It took me over 3 hours to conduct all these tests, I wanted to be sure that I tested the Froyo stock and custom roms and all the Rogers Gingerbread based custom roms available for Infuse i997.
These tests were all conducted in the exact same lighting conditions indoors with good lighting and using a tripod.
All recording and playback tests were made with homemade videos, not movies or other videos downloaded from the web.

It would be very interesting to find out other peoples video recording and playback results and experiences under similar conditions with these Froyo/Gingerbread based roms.

I have a strong suspicion that until the DEVS get their hands on the stock AT&T retail Gingerbread rom made for Samsung Infuse i997 we will need to choose between the stock Froyo/custom Froyo roms with excellent quality homemade video recordings and playback or the much faster Gingerbread based custom roms with all the extra bells and whistles (features and options) but lacking the video record and playback quality we have in Froyo based roms.

All the DEVS here in this Infuse 4G forum are constantly working and striving to improve these custom roms for our phones and have done and are doing an excellent and wonderful job. (thanks!)

So it’s up to each of us to choose which roms to use and how important quality video recordings and playbacks are to us.

Many people here may not use the camera in the phone much at all so video recording quality is not important to them
however for those of us who do a lot of video recording with our phone and want the very best possible quality this can
and will be of great importance.

I would really like to read other people’s opinions and comments about this.

If you are interested in seeing the technical details & results with exact framerates you might want to test
using "MediaInfo". It's excellent way to test & compare results between Froyo & Gingerbread based roms.
It's fast and easy to use. It adds mediainfo into explorer's shell options.

Other than visual inspection.. Watching the vids...have you torn apart the vids and looked for specific differences in codecs, bitrate etc?

Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Video Bitrate & Codecs

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Originally Posted by 00mred00

Other than visual inspection.. Watching the vids...have you torn apart the vids and looked for specific differences in codecs, bitrate etc

Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I wish I were technically oriented enough to check for specific codecs & bitrate differences but unfortunatly I am not. However I am trying to learn.

It seems to me as if not only the frame rates (just visually speaking) seems to drop to a low enough level so most anyone conducting tests like this could easily see and compare differences, but even just looking into the viewfinder without recording anything it seems like either frame rates get dropped and/or the screen is not refreshing itself as it normally does with Froyo based roms.

Right now I am using GTG's Infuse 1.5.3 which is a Froyo based custom rom, it may not be the latest and greatest of all custom roms for the Infuse i997 but since quality video recording is a must-have for me it's my first choice as of now.
It's approx. 2X faster than stock Froyo rom and has a lot of extra features and options compared to stock.

I just hope that the DEVS get the complete FULL AT&T Stock Infuse GB rom soon so perhaps it can also do quality video recordings just as good if not better than AT&T Froyo based roms.

Hopefully one of these days I will have learned enough about these things so I could make a more informed and techincal explaination to all these tests I made.

I really love photography, especially now since the Infuse is so good at video recording, just about as good as many camcorders and I always have my phone with me wherever I go.

Thanks for your comment.

Looks like u answered my question about the video recording its a Rogers rom issue I take it..I'm running a gb rom on my infuse and a froyo rom on my wife's infuse and compared the 2 cause I'm always using my camera to record my lil girls.. the froyo rom records twice as fast as gb roms..frames per second..like u I have tried all gb roms too and have had the same issue which really sucks..love the bells and whistles of gb but hate the recording so I keep going back to infused 1.5.3 froyo.but thanks for answering my question cause I was getting really frustrated with it..also I work for Att and a gb update is coming very soon..read it today on our internal stuff..

Looks Like I am NOT Alone!

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Originally Posted by Task775

Looks like u answered my question about the video recording its a Rogers rom issue I take it..I'm running a gb rom on my infuse and a froyo rom on my wife's infuse and compared the 2 cause I'm always using my camera to record my lil girls.. the froyo rom records twice as fast as gb roms..frames per second..like u I have tried all gb roms too and have had the same issue which really sucks..love the bells and whistles of gb but hate the recording so I keep going back to infused 1.5.3 froyo.but thanks for answering my question cause I was getting really frustrated with it..also I work for Att and a gb update is coming very soon..read it today on our internal stuff..

So you are running the same rom as I am, it looks like you have done your homework about this as well as I have. (testing video recordings).

Well at least now I know that I am not the only one who has noticed this video recording issue which by the looks of it is not much of a issue for most people here in this forum. So far I have not read any posts here which mentions this video recording issue. (except yours)

I guess that most people here just do not pay much attention to the video quality which our Samsung Infuse is capable of or don't use the camera part very often to notice the differences in frame rates. (big difference)

Personally one of the main reasons for getting the Infuse 4G for me was the video recording quality it can produce.
(for the price we pay for the Infuse it better have excellent video recording quality)

I am certain that after the DEVS get their hands on a 100% stock AT&T Gingerbread rom that within a couple days more or less this video recording issue will be a thing of the past and we can move up to Gingerbread custom roms and have at least as good quality video recordings if not better than these Froyo based custom roms which we are using now.

Thanks for your comment!

There is a program was used with the EVO to show in that case (same type of suspicions) that there was actually no difference.

I will see If I can find it...

it was mmpeg something or another I believe

For reference, here's a MediaInfo dump of a video I took on June 09 (on a Froyo ROM):

General
Complete name                    : C:\video-2011-06-09-17-08-30.mp4
Format                           : MPEG-4
Format profile                   : 3GPP Media Release 4
Codec ID                         : 3gp4
File size                        : 249 MiB
Duration                         : 2mn 53s
Overall bit rate                 : 12.1 Mbps

Video
ID                               : 2
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : Baseline@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC           : No
Format settings, ReFrames        : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP             : M=1, N=30
Muxing mode                      : Container profile=Unknown@1.1
Codec ID                         : avc1
Codec ID/Info                    : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                         : 2mn 53s
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 12.0 Mbps
Width                            : 1 280 pixels
Height                           : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive
Stream size                      : 248 MiB (99%)
Language                         : English
Material_Duration                : 173098
Material_StreamSize              : 260103689
Material_FrameCount              : 5201

Audio
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AAC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                   : LC
Codec ID                         : 40
Duration                         : 2mn 52s
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 60.3 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 68.9 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 1 channel
Channel positions                : Front: C
Sampling rate                    : 16.0 KHz
Compression mode                 : Lossy
Stream size                      : 1.24 MiB (0%)
Language                         : English
Material_Duration                : 172900
Material_StreamSize              : 1295557

Although it's not specified in the container, the video plays at 30 frames per second.

Infuse 4G Video Recording

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Originally Posted by 00mred00

There is a program was used with the EVO to show in that case (same type of suspicions) that there was actually no difference.

I will see If I can find it...

it was mmpeg something or another I believe

Well you just about made my point, I am writing about homemade recordings, and the format the camera uses for video recording is NOT MPG.
Our cameras record video in 3GP video format.

I know that there is nothing wrong with the playback of avi/mpg/mpeg4/mkv/divx formats. The playback using those formats are excellent, but those are not the formats our phones use to record homemade videos.

When we download or watch videos or movies from internet and different sources like YouTube or if we encode DVDs and play them on our phones they all play perfectly well with close to 30 FPS.

It's just like I said in the original posting, the HOMEMADE videos which we record on our phones are not up to par at all if we use the current Gingerbread based roms.

With Froyo based roms these Homemade videos are just about as as good as watching HD movies on TV. (sometimes better).

Make the test yourself. I have Avatar the full movie (AVI format) on my external sdcard and it plays 100% perfect on either Gingerbread or Froyo based roms. (but its not a homemade video recorded on the phone)...

Have you guys tried comparing the videos on a computer instead of just playing them back on the phone? Maybe the issue is with video playback only and not with the actual recording.

Oops, this post was in error...