Petition for Samsung NX1 hack

[tugela]

4 hours ago, MountneerMan said:

The cost of production > the revenue in sales(people will only buy them at a discount now) ...  Simply put it does not make sense for them to make any more lenes

Nah. The bulk of the cost associated with products like this is up mostly front in the form of development and marketing. Once they have all that worked out, the actual manufacture and assembly is relatively trivial. If you go out an buy something in a store, the actual cost of making it is pennies to the dollar. The rest is all derived from other expenses, both net and gross.

They would have abandoned the line not because of manufacturing costs, but because gross revenue was insufficient to pay for support services and the development cost of the next generation product.

[MountneerMan]

1 minute ago, tugela said:

Nah. The bulk of the cost associated with products like this is up mostly front in the form of development and marketing. Once they have all that worked out, the actual manufacture and assembly is relatively trivial. If you go out an buy something in a store, the actual cost of making it is pennies to the dollar. The rest is all derived from other expenses, both net and gross.

They would have abandoned the line not because of manufacturing costs, but because gross revenue was insufficient to pay for support services and the development cost of the next generation product.

Definitely, that could very likely be the reason they discontinued production.

Here is another possible reason, again in formula form

(Revenue of Product A - Production cost of Product A in factory A) x the number of units they expect to sell < (Revenue of Product B - Production cost of Product B in factory A) x the number of units they expect to sell

Where Product A is an NX lens for example
and Product B is a GS7 for example

My point wasn't the exactness of my formula it was that they are looking at actual costs and sales numbers and are making business decisions base on them

[Hanriverprod]

9 minutes ago, MountneerMan said:

Definitely, that could very likely be the reason they discontinued production.

Here is another possible reason, again in formula form

(Revenue of Product A - Production cost of Product A in factory A) x the number of units they expect to sell < (Revenue of Product B - Production cost of Product B in factory A) x the number of units they expect to sell

Where Product A is an NX lens for example
and Product B is a GS7 for example

My point wasn't the exactness of my formula it was that they are looking at actual costs and sales numbers and are making business decisions base on them

Lee Kun-hee, former chairman of Samsung group, has been very ill for a long time, some speculate that he's already gone. His children are consolidating their main brands and shuttering many subsidiaries for tax reasons. Korean owners of conglomerates create many complex subsidiaries to protect themselves from taxes. Besides their core profit streams like semiconductors and smartphones, a lot of their satellite companies and tech are being sold off or restructured. All this is happening because the family members of Samsung are divying up the company right now.

[MountneerMan]

18 minutes ago, Hanriverprod said:

Lee Kun-hee, former chairman of Samsung group, has been very ill for a long time, some speculate that he's already gone. His children are consolidating their main brands and shuttering many subsidiaries for tax reasons. Korean owners of conglomerates create many complex subsidiaries to protect themselves from taxes. Besides their core profit streams like semiconductors and smartphones, a lot of their satellite companies and tech are being sold off or restructured. All this is happening because the family members of Samsung are divying up the company right now.

Yep, I understand how big companies work. I work for and am part owner of one. But I fail to see your point. You think that samsung was making lot of money on the NX cameras and decided to stop production not because is was a financial business decision but because they plan on selling off that division?

EDIT: in any case its not worth discussing anymore, I am sorry for letting it go on for this long. I am just board at work I guess lol.

[Hanriverprod]

51 minutes ago, MountneerMan said:

Yep, I understand how big companies work. I work for and am part owner of one. But I fail to see your point. You think that samsung was making lot of money on the NX cameras and decided to stop production not because is was a financial business decision but because they plan on selling off that division?

EDIT: in any case its not worth discussing anymore, I am sorry for letting it go on for this long. I am just board at work I guess lol.

Even though Samsung and its subsidiaries are 'publicly traded' companies, family members own most of them through other 'companies.' Deals are being made between family members after the former chairman became ill. Parts are being sold off for tax reasons and also for some members to cash out while main divisions are being consolidated under the son who is running Samsung group now. This is pretty common knowledge in Korea, and the camera division is most likely a casualty of intra-family politics. The son is focusing on what will be the core of Samsung while other family members pick up the scraps. The former chairman getting out of the picture is a huge upheaval in Samsung. I can't say this is one hundred percent what happened to nx1 but probably most likely scenario. 

EDIT: Yeah, let's not derail this thread :|

[sandro]

19 hours ago, Pavel Mašek said:

Kino Seed just posted video of 2.5K video without noise reduction - http://***URL removed***/forums/thread/3990893?page=2#forum-post-57632926

Noise grain is very visible here, but we should realize that it is quite high ISO (6400). I think it would be more usable and subtle in 4K.

It is proof that noise reduction is not built-in the codec - really great news I think.

Vasile/Otto - is there any chance if 4K could be inserted into slot for VGA? Maybe then 4K would be without NR.

I am wondering how it would affect 1080p modes which suffer with high NR above low ISO.

I'm not sure how he turned NR off on the nx500? I'm downloading the video file now...

UPDATE: I've seen the video, well the noise is definitely there but it's there in a way that makes me think it's the sensor design that it's not good in low light. Agreed that it's 6400 but isn't the a6300 clear at that ISO? Even the Nikons at 6400 don't look that bad.

[samuel.cabral]

1 hour ago, sandro said:

I'm not sure how he turned NR off on the nx500? I'm downloading the video file now...

UPDATE: I've seen the video, well the noise is definitely there but it's there in a way that makes me think it's the sensor design that it's not good in low light. Agreed that it's 6400 but isn't the a6300 clear at that ISO? Even the Nikons at 6400 don't look that bad.

I woudn't expect nothing comparable to the a6300 in terms of low light performance from the nx1. It's just not made to work in low light.
If i get acceptable 3200 iso, i'm already happy. But of course... without all the nasty macro blocking.
 

[Pavel Mašek]

1 hour ago, sandro said:

I'm not sure how he turned NR off on the nx500? I'm downloading the video file now...

UPDATE: I've seen the video, well the noise is definitely there but it's there in a way that makes me think it's the sensor design that it's not good in low light. Agreed that it's 6400 but isn't the a6300 clear at that ISO? Even the Nikons at 6400 don't look that bad.

We do not now how it it would look like in 4K (according some comparsion 2.5K look a little worse than 1080p). But I still think that NX1 has similar low light performance as A6300 in photo mode (or even better), so problem is in processsing of video (NR, codec?, I do not know...)  which is not so good.

http://***URL removed***/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr18=daylight&attr13_0=samsung_nx1&attr13_1=sony_a6300&attr13_2=canon_eos5dmkii&attr13_3=panasonic_dmcgx8&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=raw&attr15_2=raw&attr15_3=raw&attr16_0=3200&attr16_1=3200&attr16_2=3200&attr16_3=3200&attr171_1=off&attr171_3=off&normalization=full&widget=1&x=0.03542132736763609&y=0.049389567147613764

http://***URL removed***/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr144_0=samsung_nx1&attr144_1=sony_a6300&attr144_2=canon_eos760d&attr144_3=panasonic_dmcgx8&attr146_0=100_6&attr146_1=100_6&attr146_2=100_6&attr146_3=200_5&attr177_1=off&attr177_3=off&normalization=compare&widget=205&x=0.351873536299766&y=-0.18579365079365084

 

[sandro]

6 minutes ago, Pavel Mašek said:

We do not now how it it would look like in 4K (according some comparsion 2.5K look a little worse than 1080p). But I still think that NX1 has similar low light performance as A6300 in photo mode (or even better), so problem is in processsing of video (NR, codec?, I do not know...)  which is not so good.

http://***URL removed***/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr18=daylight&attr13_0=samsung_nx1&attr13_1=sony_a6300&attr13_2=canon_eos5dmkii&attr13_3=panasonic_dmcgx8&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=raw&attr15_2=raw&attr15_3=raw&attr16_0=3200&attr16_1=3200&attr16_2=3200&attr16_3=3200&attr171_1=off&attr171_3=off&normalization=full&widget=1&x=0.03542132736763609&y=0.049389567147613764

http://***URL removed***/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr144_0=samsung_nx1&attr144_1=sony_a6300&attr144_2=canon_eos760d&attr144_3=panasonic_dmcgx8&attr146_0=100_6&attr146_1=100_6&attr146_2=100_6&attr146_3=200_5&attr177_1=off&attr177_3=off&normalization=compare&widget=205&x=0.351873536299766&y=-0.18579365079365084

 

Not sure what to say at this point.

[Marco Tecno]

the nx1 is a bit better than a6300 noise wise, even at iso 3200, in photo mode. There is something going on in video which destroys the output at high iso.

[vasile]

Edit 2. Just thought: what if each frame is first NR-ed and only afterwards sent to the encoder?

1 hour ago, Marco Tecno said:

the nx1 is a bit better than a6300 noise wise, even at iso 3200, in photo mode. There is something going on in video which destroys the output at high iso.

I do not think what we see in the sample is really high iso noise. I have been looking for two evenings in the NX500 code to try to see how the codec is initialized, looking in the drime kernel driver (see open source NX500 package) and various libraries.

I do not yet understand how/when the codec initialization takes place. In any case if you look at the hevc codec interface source code (kernel/linux-3.5/drivers/media/video/drime5/hevc) you can see that there is definitely no NR switch passed on to the codec (which by the way is a FPGA).

In these files you can see all configurable elements of the codec - unfortunately without explanations, but it is pretty clear to me that NR is not part of them.

Maybe someone who is more of an expert can look into these files to see if I have missed anything.

One interesting thing I noticed there is that apparently the codec admits type-iii gop :-) that seems equivalent to Canon's ALL-I gop - https://learn.usa.canon.com/resources/articles/2012/ipp_ipb_all_i_compare.htmlp

The question is how does the di-camera-app set it.

As for NR, given that there's no switch, unless someone finds it hidden amongst codec parameters (see above for where to look) I am afraid we are SOL.

:-(

Edit: these seem the most interesting files: d5_enc_host_api.c, d5_polarisCodec_host.h and d5_host_params.h - I attach them to this post.

Edit 2: What if the image is denoised before being sent to the codec?

d5_polarisCodec_host.h

d5_enc_host_api.c

d5_host_params.h

[vasile]

I think someone said that on old firmware versions the photo NR settings would also apply to video. I tried to find the post but could not.

Would a kind soul point me in the right direction, and could someone retest that firmware version to confirm?

Maybe I can dig something out from that firmware to see what they changed for current firmware version.

[Marco Tecno]

not sure about that. I remember that nr setting for pictures did NOT remove nr completely from higher iso, when turned off, in early fw.

[vaga]

Hmm very interesting that the NX1 photo high ISO is that clean in the tests. I think one of the main reasons NX1 noise looks better than a6300's is because it has a higher resolution sensor, so the grains ate individually smaller. 

@vasile  I guess you're right: must not be entirely ISO noise. The pattern didn't look completely like still image one. It also seems to have less color noise. 

[Soul-Brother]

so I was blindly searching the the nx500 armv7l file and found these terms; in a drime5 folder.

probably unrelated, but thought I should post in case its relevant to noise reduction in nx500 

/* IPP - Image Post Processing */
#define DRM_DRIME5_IPP_GET_PROPERTY 0x30
#define DRM_DRIME5_IPP_SET_PROPERTY 0x31
#define DRM_DRIME5_IPP_QUEUE_BUF 0x32
#define DRM_DRIME5_IPP_CMD_CTRL

[kidzrevil]

any luck with in camera sharpening ? I can live with the NR (I suspect NR is apart of h.265) but if we can get absolute zero digital sharpness that would give us a better image

[/Chop N Shoot Films/]

could the be an adverse effect to turning off the sharpening.  Like why would the not make 0 an absolute 0?

[vasile]

Request:

http://***URL removed***/forums/post/57640350

Thanks

[BopBill]

9 hours ago, vasile said:

I think someone said that on old firmware versions the photo NR settings would also apply to video. I tried to find the post but could not.

Would a kind soul point me in the right direction, and could someone retest that firmware version to confirm?

Maybe I can dig something out from that firmware to see what they changed for current firmware version.

Did you meant this post http://***URL removed***/forums/post/57598414

[vasile]

9 hours ago, Marco Tecno said:

not sure about that. I remember that nr setting for pictures did NOT remove nr completely from higher iso, when turned off, in early fw.

But that is OK, if you could positively confirm that. The question is not whether they completely eliminated NR but whether they influenced NR.

Actually an even better question is whether they make, right now, even a minor difference between high NR and no NR setting.

Because if yes it might mean that the image is NR-ed before being encoded, and that Samsung imposes a floor NR level - that is, refuses to turn it completely off and limits it at say "low" for video, even if the setting might be "off".