Petition for Samsung NX1 hack

[sandro]

I clearly saw them at ISO 3200 in video mode in dark areas... I will try to take a pic somehow.

[cisco150]

18 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

If you need anyone to help test im down !!!

Ill test too i love beta testing. 

[SMGJohn]

2 minutes ago, cisco150 said:

Ill test too i love beta testing. 

Just be aware of the risk, we have no clues how to reset the camera if you brick the software and I am sure Samsung Support is not going to be very helpful resetting it for you, who knows but there is a risk

[cisco150]

1 minute ago, SMGJohn said:

Just be aware of the risk, we have no clues how to reset the camera if you brick the software and I am sure Samsung Support is not going to be very helpful resetting it for you, who knows but there is a risk

Thanks for the heads up. I was part for the DJI Inspire 1 beta, i can say you 100% right to risk our equipment and sometimes we have to be guinea pigs lol but ill be careful.

[Marco Tecno]

I guess the ideal thing would be to write a virtual machine for running experimental NX1 fw into it. It won't guarantee that no risk is taken once ported onto the real thing, but it would actually lower the risk by a large margin. I don't know if this is easily feasible, though.

 

Another great (but difficult thing) thing would be a "fw pushing" service from a PC, so that you can push a new fw onto NX1 no matter it's state.

Another ideal thing would be a recovery, to be invoked by some keypress.

[SR]

I wonder if this is how Magic Lantern got started.

[Chant]

17 hours ago, Syme said:

Out of curiosity, how did you find the clock speed?

It was in a cpu config file. But in early firmware, I am plotting the changes and original values to see what sort of leverage can happen with them.

 

12 hours ago, derderimmermuedeist said:

If i see it right (in the Chart) then the maximum Bitrate for the H.265 HEVC is at Level 5.1 (found this Level in the File-Infos of my NX1-Videos) 160.000 kbit/s, approximately 156 Mbit/s.

And interessting too, the maximum Frame rates:

c4k @ 60p

UHD @ 64p

an FHD @ 256p

This is something that I have also been looking into. With luck it is just the change of an output flag and see if things can be pushed to a higher limit. HEVC and other compression systems are less intensive with less compression, so in theory it should be able to bump up to the bus limit and have less compressed files. In the later firmware the change from 15fps to 25fps for the raw output sort of shows the ceiling of bandwidth the processor can handle. Give or take 30MB raw file x 25fps data stream is 750MBs/6000Mbs

My goal is to see how close to the spec of a red weapon the nx1 can be. HEVC is sort of a pain but the way it works is more like the wavelet based .r3d files when HEVC is at lower compression rates. But the more I find the more interesting things get. And the things they did for this camera make it vastly unique compared to a canon or a sony.

 

5 hours ago, Marco Tecno said:

I guess the ideal thing would be to write a virtual machine for running experimental NX1 fw into it. It won't guarantee that no risk is taken once ported onto the real thing, but it would actually lower the risk by a large margin. I don't know if this is easily feasible, though.

 

Another great (but difficult thing) thing would be a "fw pushing" service from a PC, so that you can push a new fw onto NX1 no matter it's state.

Another ideal thing would be a recovery, to be invoked by some keypress.

The complexity of the nx1 makes that quite hard, if I am correct and there is an fpga/cpld core on board it gets more tricky. I have seen some signs though. No confirmation yet. More work will be done tonight on the dive though. I have compiled a large data sheet already on the things I have found in the first firmware update. But going though the code takes time.

 

And if people are having issues with HEVC I highly recommend getting a GTX960 so far the only gpu with fully enabled on board HEVC encode/decode and boy does it work well. And they are not very expensive. If you go by how HEVC does compression, when you transcode it would be in the Gbs if the data rate is doubled on camera

[Syme]

According to this Anandtech article Samsung uses something they call the SRP (Samsung Re-configurable Processor) in the DRIMe-5 SoC. They call it a CGRA (Coarse-Grained Re-configurable Architecture), which probably means it is less flexible than a FPGA but more flexible than traditional IP blocks. I have no idea what their source is, but Anandtech is known for being very reliable. Details about the SRP online are very sparse, but there are a few research papers about it being used as an experimental GPU. Apparently it is used in the last generation of Exynos SoCs as an audio processor (not for their latest chips, though).

The SRP is definitely not being used as the GPU in the DRIMe-5, since the kernel source shows it uses a conventional GPU just like in the Exynos SoC it is based on. It also isn't being used for HEVC encoding, since Samsung has special-purpose hardware blocks to do that. As to what they are using it for, I have no idea at this point.

[Chant]

40 minutes ago, Syme said:

According to this Anandtech article the Samsung uses something they call the SRP (Samsung Re-configurable Processor) in the DRIMe-5 SoC. They call it a CGRA (Coarse-Grained Re-configurable Architecture), which probably means it is less flexible than a FPGA but more flexible than traditional IP blocks. I have no idea what their source is, but Anandtech is known for being very reliable. Details about the SRP online are very sparse, but there are a few research papers about it being used as an experimental GPU. Apparently it is used in the last generation of Exynos SoCs as an audio processor (not for their latest chips, though).

The SRP is definitely not being used as the GPU in the DRIMe-5, since the kernel source shows it uses a conventional GPU just like in the Exynos SoC it is based on. It also isn't being used for HEVC encoding, since Samsung has special-purpose hardware blocks to do that. As to what they are using it for, I have no idea at this point.

This is good news to me, it has answered a lot of the questions on what I have been finding in the back end. It is a dsp block, from what I have found so far there is some documentation out there. Lots to read tonight. But this has made a huge step forward for me. I dont know how I never came across the article mentioning that information before I found the fpga+asic article I found!
But much thanks!

[Chant]

Talking to a few people I know who do front end. Seeing what can be done about having a set up like magic lantern for ease of use. That or writing the menu itself to add in the options. If its a possibility we will try to keep is as far from sonys menu as possible. If anyone has used their gear.

[kidzrevil]

58 minutes ago, Chant said:

Talking to a few people I know who do front end. Seeing what can be done about having a set up like magic lantern for ease of use. That or writing the menu itself to add in the options. If its a possibility we will try to keep is as far from sonys menu as possible. If anyone has used their gear.

If we see progress with this soon we can start funding ??

[Jimmy]

If you need help with the UI, just message me... I design for Android, so should be fairly similar.

[Mattias Burling]

1 hour ago, Chant said:

Talking to a few people I know who do front end. Seeing what can be done about having a set up like magic lantern for ease of use. That or writing the menu itself to add in the options. If its a possibility we will try to keep is as far from sonys menu as possible. If anyone has used their gear.

Agree, but please avoid Magic Lantern as menu inspiration as well. IMO the Samsung menus are pretty nice. But Blackmagic really have the menu thing down. Easy and intuitive.

[sandro]

5 hours ago, Chant said:

It was in a cpu config file. But in early firmware, I am plotting the changes and original values to see what sort of leverage can happen with them.

 

This is something that I have also been looking into. With luck it is just the change of an output flag and see if things can be pushed to a higher limit. HEVC and other compression systems are less intensive with less compression, so in theory it should be able to bump up to the bus limit and have less compressed files. In the later firmware the change from 15fps to 25fps for the raw output sort of shows the ceiling of bandwidth the processor can handle. Give or take 30MB raw file x 25fps data stream is 750MBs/6000Mbs

My goal is to see how close to the spec of a red weapon the nx1 can be. HEVC is sort of a pain but the way it works is more like the wavelet based .r3d files when HEVC is at lower compression rates. But the more I find the more interesting things get. And the things they did for this camera make it vastly unique compared to a canon or a sony.

 

The complexity of the nx1 makes that quite hard, if I am correct and there is an fpga/cpld core on board it gets more tricky. I have seen some signs though. No confirmation yet. More work will be done tonight on the dive though. I have compiled a large data sheet already on the things I have found in the first firmware update. But going though the code takes time.

 

And if people are having issues with HEVC I highly recommend getting a GTX960 so far the only gpu with fully enabled on board HEVC encode/decode and boy does it work well. And they are not very expensive. If you go by how HEVC does compression, when you transcode it would be in the Gbs if the data rate is doubled on camera

with what editing software? Adobe premiere afaik doesn't support hw decoding of hevc

39 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

If you need help with the UI, just message me... I design for Android, so should be fairly similar.

i can help as well

[chauncy]

"with what editing software? Adobe premiere afaik doesn't support hw decoding of hevc"

latest update of adobe cc2016 does. Davinci's latest does as well

[Otto K]

Ok, few short notes. 

First of all, there are two operating systems running, tizen and t-kernel based real time OS. What we see and can access is just a nice front end that issues messages to RTOS that actually does all the hard work. If some function is not implemented in it it's unfeasible for us. 

Regarding GUI - I'm working on it now and it's the most hostile toolkit I have ever worked with - EFL. Android is walk in the park compared to this hell.

As you can explicitly set readout to 120fps it either works slower (why?) or faster (240fps declared in the same NX1 launch event that also declared CGRA). 

Cpu cores are most likely based on 1600MHz A9. 

[chauncy]

19 hours ago, SMGJohn said:

Of course someone is working on this, if you actually bothered to read it would be pretty clear. His name is Chant and some other people are fiddling around in the system files and looking through the firmwares. 

Yeah, how could I have missed that. I've checked this thread a hundred times except the last few days and it's mostly been wish list after wish list. The hopeful Chant doesn't popup until page 12 or so.

I was very active testing the gh2 hacks, so I know all about wish lists vs reality and how difficult hacks can be to actually get working and stabil.

And SMG, you're just a member not a moderator. You have no authority, except in your own mind.

 

[undecided]

If I may chime in here. The ideal interface for me would be to drop some files in the sd with names like 4KMax.config, 1080pMax.config for example. The GUI should just get all the file names that end in .config and show them as options. I pick one and the settings from within that .config file are applied. This way, the system could be made very flexible and extensible and people can share settings. The file should probably be in a human-readable format like json.

I am very interested in bumping up the HEVC bitrate to whatever maximum is allowed. I think that will improve the image quality a lot. My PCs have high end GPUs so I am not worried about decoding. I am prepared to contribute $$$ to the effort as well.

 

 

[lucabutera]

samsung nx1 raw? Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[samuel.cabral]

+1 that would donate for a hack.

I know that the priority is the increase of the bitrate and a bunch of other stuff.
But i'd be very happy using my anamorphics with it shooting 4:3 aspect ratio.