Petition for Samsung NX1 hack

[Pavel Mašek]

7 minutes ago, caseywilsondp said:

Seems like the biggest benefactor of this hack is 1080p, which is great because 120 quality was not awesome before.

Yes, but if you consider that it is not exactly 120 fps then it is not so good. If you shoot 25fps then 100 fps could work fine.

I also had problem with macroblocking in 4K30fps but now it seems to be perfect.

Another drawback is (at least for now) slow start of camera, touch display does not work and bluetooth too.

But it is still great if you have 2 fast cards with hacked and non-hacked version...

[caseywilsondp]

5 minutes ago, Pavel Mašek said:

Yes, but if you consider that it is not exactly 120 fps then it is not so good. If you shoot 25fps then 100 fps could work fine.

I also had problem with macroblocking in 4K30fps but now it seems to be perfect.

Another drawback is (at least for now) slow start of camera, touch display does not work and bluetooth too.

But it is still great if you have 2 fast cards with hacked and non-hacked version...

I'm having no such issue... camera boots up at the same speed as before, and no menu/touch screen issues. Maybe I'm doing something different, but when checking the footage it does indeed have the increased bit rate.

Just tested 1080/120 at 180mbps and like mentioned it came out at 109fps and the bitrate was only 160mbps (still a huge increase). However the footage appears to be no different. That was at iso 640, which isn't ideal for this camera at 120, but honestly the 120 is fine at 100-200iso anyways so I was hoping that this would improve that.

Again, just a quick and dirty test, but the footage while having a higher bitrate, is virtually identical in quality.

[Pavel Mašek]

3 minutes ago, caseywilsondp said:

I'm having no such issue... camera boots up at the same speed as before, and no menu/touch screen issues. Maybe I'm doing something different, but when checking the footage it does indeed have the increased bit rate.

Just tested 1080/120 at 180mbps and like mentioned it came out at 109fps and the bitrate was only 160mbps (still a huge increase). However the footage appears to be no different. That was at iso 640, which isn't ideal for this camera at 120, but honestly the 120 is fine at 100-200iso anyways so I was hoping that this would improve that.

Again, just a quick and dirty test, but the footage while having a higher bitrate, is virtually identical in quality.

Maybe it is just because higher ISO which is something that 120fps modes does not like (they are no details so no macroblocking issues).

I am curious what I am doing wrong... will test it more (but I like to hear that camera behaves normaly). 

[Marco Tecno]

120fps sorta requires iso to be max at 400.

 

What happens with the frame rate? Why 109?

[caseywilsondp]

Just now, Marco Tecno said:

120fps sorta requires iso to be max at 400.

 

What happens with the frame rate? Why 109?

yes, but the hope would be that higher bit-rate would help that problem. ill do some tests at iso 100 but I'm fairly positive the result will be the same.

[Pavel Mašek]

5 minutes ago, Marco Tecno said:

What happens with the frame rate? Why 109?

It seems camera is not able to deliver 120 fps together with high bitrate ... it is my conclusion, I really do not know...

[SMGJohn]

From what I noticed the bitrate hack does not work with 1080p at all for me, I use PAL mode, and I did everything the readme file said. Still only uses the same bitrate for 1080p as it always have, only UHD and 4k seem to get a bitrate increase with the hack.

[caseywilsondp]

1 minute ago, SMGJohn said:

From what I noticed the bitrate hack does not work with 1080p at all for me, I use PAL mode, and I did everything the readme file said. Still only uses the same bitrate for 1080p as it always have, only UHD and 4k seem to get a bitrate increase with the hack.

I think PAL is your problem then. Try NTSC?

[vasile]

57 minutes ago, Pavel Mašek said:

Here is comparison of hacked and non hacked 120 fps (200% zoom). There is quite big difference in terms of compression and details.

Problem is that hacked is just 106 fps according Premiere...

 

you might want to gradually decrease bitrate until the fps gets back to 120 - might be a limitation of the encoding block, it may not be able to spit out the frames fast enough at high bitrate.

This way you might identify the highest possible bitrate that still allows true 120 fps, and is still higher than 80 Mbps...

[Marco Tecno]

One thing I don't understand. 1frame at 4k is = 4 frames at 2k. If I can encode 4k@30 at 160mb, why not 2k@120?

[lucabutera]

21 hours ago, vasile said:

http://***URL removed***/forums/thread/3988168

Welcome back and tank you!

 

[vasile]

25 minutes ago, SMGJohn said:

From what I noticed the bitrate hack does not work with 1080p at all for me, I use PAL mode, and I did everything the readme file said. Still only uses the same bitrate for 1080p as it always have, only UHD and 4k seem to get a bitrate increase with the hack.

read page 132 of this: http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/201511/20151102105725627/NX1_English.pdf

The mod currently replaces the instances of 80 Mbit/s from the table with whatever you pick. Other values are not currently affected.

I plan to also enable changing some of the other values but you will need to be patient.

Again, every setting combination that uses 80 Mbits/sec on the original firmware is replaced by my mod. The other values are not. My bet is you try to use a combination that results in 60 Mbit/s with the original firmware and that one stays on 60.

[SMGJohn]

5 minutes ago, vasile said:

read page 132 of this: http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/201511/20151102105725627/NX1_English.pdf

The mod currently replaces the instances of 80 Mbit/s from the table with whatever you pick. Other values are not currently affected.

I plan to also enable changing some of the other values but you will need to be patient.

Again, every setting combination that uses 80 Mbits/sec on the original firmware is replaced by my mod. The other values are not. My bet is you try to use a combination that results in 60 Mbit/s with the original firmware and that one stays on 60.

Oh yeah I completely forgot about the 1080p 24, 25 and 30 being 60mbps and not 80. 

 

1 hour ago, Pavel Mašek said:

Here is comparison of hacked and non hacked 120 fps (200% zoom). There is quite big difference in terms of compression and details.

Problem is that hacked is just 106 fps according Premiere...

First is hacked and second normal:

Amazing, notice how the moire issue on the roof on those houses to the right completely disappeared with higher bitrate.

[Pavel Mašek]

12 minutes ago, SMGJohn said:

Oh yeah I completely forgot about the 1080p 24, 25 and 30 being 60mbps and not 80. 

 

Amazing, notice how the moire issue on the roof on those houses to the right completely disappeared with higher bitrate.

Well, it is still there quite a lot - I think just compression is better.

[ReinisK]

2 hours ago, caseywilsondp said:

I'm having no such issue... camera boots up at the same speed as before, and no menu/touch screen issues. Maybe I'm doing something different, but when checking the footage it does indeed have the increased bit rate.

Just tested 1080/120 at 180mbps and like mentioned it came out at 109fps and the bitrate was only 160mbps (still a huge increase). However the footage appears to be no different. That was at iso 640, which isn't ideal for this camera at 120, but honestly the 120 is fine at 100-200iso anyways so I was hoping that this would improve that.

Again, just a quick and dirty test, but the footage while having a higher bitrate, is virtually identical in quality.

Are you able to get continuos video at 180mbps in 1080/120p and then it shows 109? Or it stops recording and then shows 109 fps? Because from what I have found out, it shows those weird framerates when you can't do continuos video. 

[caseywilsondp]

1 hour ago, ReinisK said:

Are you able to get continuos video at 180mbps in 1080/120p and then it shows 109? Or it stops recording and then shows 109 fps? Because from what I have found out, it shows those weird framerates when you can't do continuos video. 

continuous yes... at least it hasn't cut out on me during my tests yet. later i could try a lower bit rate like 120 or something, but right now I just don't see benefits unfortunately.

[DPStewart]

Well well well, do 30-days for a minor felony and I come back to THIS! A bit-rate hack. Outstanding.

Now, I'd like to make very clear that in the case of the GH2 just increasing the bit-rate often caused as many new problems as it fixed. Generating a compressed image involves a whole slew of data factors that affect each other. That's why there was like 200 different hack patches folks made as they tried experimenting with the different data points.
Many of the attempts simply crashed or injected all sorts of other instability. Some made certain artifacts worse. Some fixed one thing but broke another.

The fact that this mod can double the bit-rate is amazingly promising. And remember - you often won't see any "overall" difference. Especially because this camera generates such a great image already. I would advise looking only at the areas that previously had been problems. That's really all we need anyway. Just those few problems fixed. Then this camera is much more of an all-around winner.

SD-Cards: I would not even attempt to record at these new high bit-rates without a card like the Sandisk Extreme PRO or a similar card. You're begging for heartbreak if you do.

We may very well find that there are hidden data matrices that need to work in conjunction with each other to do things like lessen macro blocking, over sharpening, and noise.
That's what there was on the GH2's. It's reasonable to expect some similar complications.

Rock-On everybody!

[derderimmermuedeist]

I mean that the panning shot is now also much smoother (with the 160 Mb/s).

[kidzrevil]

How do I install the bitrate hack ? ?

[derderimmermuedeist]

Samsung NX1 80Mbit Pro Bitrate Adjustment

                              How To

This refers to version 1.0 of the nx1-pba.sh script and ancillary files
as provided in the original archive.

NB this script forces NX1 to use your choice of bitrate instead of the
80 Mbit Pro rate. It DOES NOT replace other (lower) Pro bitrates.

I might consider replacing other bitrates at a later time but this is
quite time consuming as it involves hand-coding multiple ARM instructions.

Usage:
  0. Make sure your NX1 is on firmware v1.40.
  1. Unzip the archive into the root of your sdcard.
  2. If you are a Windows user, make sure you have either Notepad++
     or another text editor capable of editing Linux-formatted files.
     Notepad++ can be found at https://notepad-plus-plus.org/.
  3. If you are a Linux user you can use vi or nano or your other 
     preferred equivalent tool.
  4. Open in the text editor (see point 2 above) the file nx1-pba.sh
     from the scripts folder of the sdcard.
  5. Uncomment (i.e. erase the # character at the beginning of the line
     underneath the bitrate you want to use as PRO bitrate with NX1.
     Make sure you do NOT otherwise touch the content of this file.
  6. Close and save the file.
  7. Pull the NX1 battery for a few seconds, and reinsert it.
  8. Insert the sdcard into your NX1 - the script won't work otherwise.
  9. Power on the camera - this is a mandatory step !!!!
 10. Wait until the dots on the left edge of the screen appear and
     disappear. This will take a few seconds.

NB. the above steps are one-time (or until you decide you want another bitrate),
and as long as you no longer touch the files you just put on the sdcard
and you keep the sdcard inside the camera, it will keep using the adjusted
bitrate.

Congratulations, as of now and until you power off the camera, your PRO
bitrate will have changed :-)

  A final word:

If you find this script useful, I would appreciate a donation that I will use
to acquire more photographic equipment which in turn will give me additional 
incentives towards spending my nights looking into the NX system :-)...

You can send donations to http://paypal.me/nxplay - thank you in advance.
 

 

(This is the readme.txt)