Petition for Samsung NX1 hack

[sandro]

5 hours ago, chauncy said:

About the NR jump. Yes. It happens to everyone from 1600iso to 3200, it's weird, it's a bug or just the way they handle it with the hardware of software. There's no way around it. It's a limitation

Try enabling half stop ISO and see if you see a jump from 2000 to 2500. I believe the jump is there exactly. Seems completely software though... It seems like the jump also affects exposure.

[MountneerMan]

23 minutes ago, sandro said:

Try enabling half stop ISO and see if you see a jump from 2000 to 2500. I believe the jump is there exactly. Seems completely software though... It seems like the jump also affects exposure.

I personally think what ever is happening is happening inside the HEVC encoder. 

Has anyone tested the ISO of MJPEG on the NX1 and compared it to HEVC?

[tugela]

On ‎8‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 10:29 AM, chauncy said:

About the NR jump. Yes. It happens to everyone from 1600iso to 3200, it's weird, it's a bug or just the way they handle it with the hardware of software. There's no way around it. It's a limitation

It may be that 1600 is the sensor's native ISO, so you don't see a rapid fall-off in S/N until you hit that point.

[kidzrevil]

1250 is the ceiling for me. I try to stay away from 1600 if possible but have no problems using it if need be. Master pedestal however is the tricky part. I assume samsung decided to crush the blacks cause consumers like the contrasty saturated look and also to help mask the NR. Thats my theory

[Happy Daze]

18 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

1250 is the ceiling for me. I try to stay away from 1600 if possible but have no problems using it if need be. Master pedestal however is the tricky part. I assume samsung decided to crush the blacks cause consumers like the contrasty saturated look and also to help mask the NR. Thats my theory

Hi Kidzrevil

I've seen you mention this many times about "crushed blacks" but I do not understand why you say it. I have never had crushed blacks with the NX1 so can you please explain.

I am wondering if you are talking about blacks in Adobe Premiere as there is an issue in that Premiere does not recognise 0-255 correctly.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers.

[kidzrevil]

@Happy Daze I convert to 16=235 before I grade in premiere because premiere does not render 0-255 correctly and the issue is still there. At the default master pedestal level the black level is extremely low and some details do not get recorded. I've tried lowering contrast but that effects more of the midtone area more than the shadows do. It's only when I started using master pedestal did I notice that at +15 MP deep blacks were slightly above 0 in the 0-255 range were as at 0 MP there was information in the shadows that were lost

[Happy Daze]

8 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@Happy Daze I convert to 16=235 before I grade in premiere because premiere does not render 0-255 correctly and the issue is still there. At the default master pedestal level the black level is extremely low and some details do not get recorded. I've tried lowering contrast but that effects more of the midtone area more than the shadows do. It's only when I started using master pedestal did I notice that at +15 MP deep blacks were slightly above 0 in the 0-255 range were as at 0 MP there was information in the shadows that were lost

Strange, I almost always shoot slightly underexposed at -2/3 of a stop and I never suffer clipped blacks unless contrast is extreme like shooting with the sun in the frame.

If by converting to 16-235 you mean adjusting the output levels slider in "Fast Colour Correcter" then I find that this does not work, and it's about time Adobe fixed it so that it recognises the 0-255 correctly. I solved this issue by moving my editing to Davinci Resolve 12.5 the colour grading is much better IMHO and of course it's free, the only down side is that the free version does not support H.265 but it's worth it to me to convert the clips first to Pro-Res.

In Premiere try this instead: Import your clip in to the timeline: add this effect (it MUST be this one) Video Effects: Color Correction: Brightness & Contrast : set contrast to -15 and brightness in the range of -3 to 0. This will bring it to near enough the same level as you would get if you were to capture a still from a movie in camera and then load that still into Premiere.

Try the Premiere fix above and I'll be very surprised if you don't start seeing some shadow detail instead of clipped blacks.

Cheers.

[sandro]

Hi is there a way to shoot a timelapse (basically Interval Capture) while keeping the screen off to save battery or at least switch to EVF while still shooting to use less battery than the big screen? If not I suggest this as a feature request for the hack(s) 

[kidzrevil]

@Happy Daze gonna try that out thx

[Otto K]

@sandro I created a small tool that shows a button with black background and white text at given position and size that enables one to have on screen "button" for REC or SHUTTER or whatever. 

You could use it as it is as a "black screen" (just set the text to " " and position to 0 0 and size to 720 480) and to start the time lapse. I do it often to preserve the battery (AMOLED uses almost nothing for black screen). To remove it from screen just press and hold it for 5+ seconds. I also made a separate tool for time lapse that can have black screen as well as black screen with small red frame counter (useful). It can also make short videos instead of photos (let's say 10s video every 2 minutes, etc). 

[kidzrevil]

@Happy Daze i set my camera to 16-235 and nothing clipped ! Think your right about premiere...hmmm may have to move to davinci to use 0-255 footage

[Marco Tecno]

I always use 16-255, as per andrew's instructions.

[لطفي بوعكاز]

I spent the entire day testing 0-255 vs 16-235 vs 16-255 and thanks to the tip for "brightness -3 and contrast -15" that I can for sure use 0-255 in premiere cc 2015 and wont have any clipping, while maintaining the full color for exporting in DNXHD and also maintain the Legal color for Youtube and Vimeo. 

when I used 16-235 I did a test while reducing exposure and it looked very nasty in premiere with banding everywhere, looked very clean in 0-255.

with 0-255 you can recover superwhites, like clouds for example, the detail in shadows is much more and the blocking, artifacts is not there "when using bitrate hack"

when using 16-255, this was better than 16-235 but still not as good as 0-255. 

I did notice that VLC plays the 0-255 while all other players didn't read the superwhites in 0-255 so that could be an issue. 

so my advice is use 0-255 with -3 brightness and -15 contrast but export 2 versions, one Legal for web players and TV and keep the original for the future. 

[Happy Daze]

8 hours ago, لطفي بوعكاز said:

thanks to the tip for "brightness -3 and contrast -15"

I did notice that VLC plays the 0-255 while all other players didn't read the superwhites in 0-255 so that could be an issue. 

I am pleased that this has worked for you.

I have VLC but I find playback more reliable with MPC-HC another free media player. https://mpc-hc.org/

Cheers.

[sandro]

On 8/14/2016 at 7:33 PM, لطفي بوعكاز said:

I spent the entire day testing 0-255 vs 16-235 vs 16-255 and thanks to the tip for "brightness -3 and contrast -15" that I can for sure use 0-255 in premiere cc 2015 and wont have any clipping, while maintaining the full color for exporting in DNXHD and also maintain the Legal color for Youtube and Vimeo. 

when I used 16-235 I did a test while reducing exposure and it looked very nasty in premiere with banding everywhere, looked very clean in 0-255.

with 0-255 you can recover superwhites, like clouds for example, the detail in shadows is much more and the blocking, artifacts is not there "when using bitrate hack"

when using 16-255, this was better than 16-235 but still not as good as 0-255. 

I did notice that VLC plays the 0-255 while all other players didn't read the superwhites in 0-255 so that could be an issue. 

so my advice is use 0-255 with -3 brightness and -15 contrast but export 2 versions, one Legal for web players and TV and keep the original for the future. 

Could you post some comparison? -15 contrast sounds really extreme. Anyway can't you just go back to 0-255 in premiere even if shot at 16-235? 

[Happy Daze]

4 hours ago, sandro said:

Could you post some comparison? -15 contrast sounds really extreme. Anyway can't you just go back to 0-255 in premiere even if shot at 16-235? 

-15 contrast is not extreme, it just restores the original exposure value in a premiere timeline when shooting with 0-255. The only need for this measure is that Adobe is at fault for not recognising the 0-255 footage correctly and sticks on the timeline as though it were shot at 16-235, this is so wrong and it's about time Adobe did something about it. I now use Davinci Resolve which can handle 0-255 footage without a problem rendering no clipped blacks or burnt highlights.

Why shoot at 16-235? There are a lot of complaints about 8 bit video recording which basically gives you 256 shades of each colour and then some go ahead and reduce that further by removing 36 shades of each colour (red, green & blue) thereby losing over 14 percent of the possible gradations and then worse still they stretch out the resulting footage (220 shades) to 256 shades thereby introducing banding. Makes no sense. Capture at maximum colour and then render the footage to the correct medium afterwards, it's not like you are going straight from camera to TV so the output can be reduced to 16-235 if you must, but modern equipment can handle 0-255 fine.

[Marco Tecno]

Some say that captured footage is same at 0-255 or 16-235, but just rendered differently when played back. So you should not lose info by shooting at 16-235, you just instruct the player on how to read the same information.

[kidzrevil]

@Happy Daze you are not losing data shooting at 16-235 http://blog.josephmoore.name/2014/10/29/the-three-most-misunderstood-gh4-settings/

[vaga]

^well how do you know for a fact that that applies to NX as well?

[kidzrevil]

@vaga i've driven myself mad trying to figure this out and master pedestal since I've had the NX1. As a premiere user 16-235 works for me with no visible banding or artifacts so it works the same on the NX1. 0-255 always gives me mixed results when grading in premiere even with raised master pedestal. So yeah im personally sticking with 16-235.

sidenote : in the spirit of keeping this thread alive I am still experimenting with NX1 settings. 

normal gamma,standard profile -5 sharpness, -2 saturation w/ 16-235 luma underexposed by -0.6 with 160-200 mbps hack.