NX1/NX500 Hack Test Footage

[TheRenaissanceMan]

Thought it'd be fun to have an official topic for footage from the new Samsung hacks so it doesn't clutter up the hackers' topics and get lost in the shuffle.

Anyone using the higher bitrate on the NX1 or the new 2.5K mode on the NX500? Veeeeeeeeery interested to see some samples from each. 

[Andrew Reid]

I've tried it.

It's very early days with this mode I think. The quality is just not there yet, very highly compressed and soft. Once new settings are discovered I am sure it will improve!

The 2.5K Samsung originally had on the pre-production model was pretty good quality and the setting must be lurking in there somewhere.

[Andrew Reid]

If anyone else wants to test it, here's the shell files from my card

Just unzip, put all the files on the root of your card and start the camera, hit video record (ignore the menus, they won't change to say 2.5k).

Also please check out Otto's readme so you can easily understand what the shell files are doing and how they link together https://github.com/ottokiksmaler/nx500_nx1_modding/blob/master/README.md

nx500-2-5k-patch.zip

[TheRenaissanceMan]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

I've tried it.

It's very early days with this mode I think. The quality is just not there yet, very highly compressed and soft. Once new settings are discovered I am sure it will improve!

The 2.5K Samsung originally had on the pre-production model was pretty good quality and the setting must be lurking in there somewhere.

Think it would work for shallow focus close ups intercut with the normal 4K/1080p footage?

[Andrew Reid]

Erm, no. You're better off shooting 1080p or even 720p. Just wait for it to improve (if that is possible) or see what interesting things can be done with the 4K/1080p.

[Geoff CB]

Andrew, bitrate has been hacked at 2.5K by Vasile. Need him to get back to tell us the method to do so. What I'm curious about is how is the rolling shutter in that mode? 2.5K + Samsung Color + great rolling shutter performance is a dream camera.

[mercer]

So, in the 2.5k mode, this is just a bigger crop?

[Liam]

3 hours ago, mercer said:

So, in the 2.5k mode, this is just a bigger crop?

No it's the full sensor. Don't think it's full pixel readout though.

[Pavel Mašek]

I was curious if in-camera playback will work with high bitrate hacked video. Andrew mentioned in old article ( http://www.eoshd.com/2014/04/nikon-d800-hacked-50mbits-high-bitrate-recording-option/ ) that D800 was not able to playback its own hacked videos.

So I have put Vasile's high bitrate hacked clip to SD card and try to play it in my NX1 ............. and it works without any issues!

So now I am curious how high can we go with bitrate to keep playback working :-)

BTW - ISO in his clip jumps from 400 (brightest parts) to 1250.

[Geoff CB]

On 3/28/2016 at 2:29 AM, Pavel Mašek said:

I was curious if in-camera playback will work with high bitrate hacked video. Andrew mentioned in old article ( http://www.eoshd.com/2014/04/nikon-d800-hacked-50mbits-high-bitrate-recording-option/ ) that D800 was not able to playback its own hacked videos.

So I have put Vasile's high bitrate hacked clip to SD card and try to play it in my NX1 ............. and it works without any issues!

So now I am curious how high can we go with bitrate to keep playback working :-)

BTW - ISO in his clip jumps from 400 (brightest parts) to 1250.

Great idea! That's fantastic that it can plya back in camera. How do you determine ISO in playback? I had no I idea that was possible. 

[Pavel Mašek]

4 minutes ago, Geoff CB said:

Great idea! That's fantastic that it can plya back in camera. How do you determine ISO in playback? I had no I idea that was possible. 

- pause footage during playback -> capture frame using Fn button. Such a jpg has ISO and shutter speed in EXIF

[Marco Tecno]

I asked him not to disappear, since in the past we had some users who managed hacking the nx system and shortly after went MIA.

[Pavel Mašek]

2 hours ago, Tommix said:

Im still waiting for my nx500 to arive, but anyone tried to copy camera app from NX1 and upload it (replace) with NX500 camer app? We have telnet so we can put camera app and libs if needed to sd card and copy to system. Or maybe there is some camera app config in witch is resolutions and bitrates, framerates... 

Waiting vasile, he made 90mb/s 2.5k video and left us waiting :DD

Patience... hopefully just one week of waiting :-)

[Marco Tecno]

Tommix, as far as I can tell, the process is all but simple. As pavel wrote, patience is a keyword here. Otto created some nice scripts. Vasile seems to have upped the bitrate. Chant is delving into the main code.

Three must be the conditions joined by a logical AND:

- Interested in nx system

- higly knowledgeable in sw development and Linux system

- have time

 

Not that easy to return a TRUE value ;-) 

[Geoff CB]

Tommix. It's cool that your really interested in the hacking project, just like everyone else in this forum. But knock off the attitude. These guys are putting in their spare time to give you extra camera features for free. Everything they do is a gift to the community, they don't owe you or me anything.

 

[MountneerMan]

3 hours ago, Tommix said:

where i said someone own me something? All im saying that all i see is 2 people doing something-rest just waits. How many of you looked at source codes? Only me? We cant wait for others to do things, as i get suggestions to  we must work together and all.  Now im comparing kernel source differences between NX1 and NX500.

Kernel config file have option like CONFIG_MACH_D5_NX1 so easy to search source files and see what changes in code depending on this condition met or no. SO far trying to see is there any CPU related differences.

That is really cool. Keep up the good work. Me any alot of others thank you for your contributions but unfortunately there is not much I can do to help.

I am good at many things but hacking is not one of them. Do you need me to build or maybe climb something? Or perhaps I could film something for you? I am quite good at those things  

 

P.S. I did spend over 3 hours looking at the NX1 source code and found some interesting things (see earlier post from like 2 months ago) However I really have no idea what any of it means or how to do anything with it.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I'd love to see someone post some footage from the new high bitrate 2.5k hack!

Let's remember, this topic is for footage and discussion of footage, not general discussion or whining about the community. Thanks!

[Last Leaves]

I just tested the NX500 1080p @120FPS via Otto K's github. By no means am I complaining, but the initial results were very disappointing. I saw that Otto said "not a real 120fps" but I wasn't sure what he meant.

First of all, when I try to open the h.265 files in VLC (which usually plays h.265s straight off the NX500 without a problem) there are strange glitches in the footage. Every few frames displays completely full of strange artifacts (see pictures), like a corrupted or incomplete file. The strangest thing is that, similarly to Vasile's bitrate-boosted aquarium clip, the data rate is all over the place. (Note: From limited testing that I have done, NX500 footage with normal ("non-hacked") settings shows up as having a rock solid data rate with no fluctuation at all.) On one 1080p120 test clip I shot the data rate fluctuates from roughly 2Mb/s to 380Mb/s! This, to me, seems very bizarre. 

I decided to transcode this footage to see what it would do with the glitches. I used Rocky Mountain Movie Converter to transcode into Prores LT. Playback then showed no glitchy artifact-filled frames, but it did show duplicate frames. It reminded me of the HVX200 days when people would shoot with the framerate pull-down and forget to remove duplicate frames with Cinema Tools. I conformed the clips from 119.880120fps (that's the exact number produced by this method) to 23.98 and, strangely the playback is in near real-time with short pauses every dozen frames or so.

TL;DR 1080p @120fps on the NX500 produces bizarre results with glitches, duplicate frames, and extremely variable data rates. 

What the clip should look like:

What the strange artifacts look like in VLC:

 

[Last Leaves]

34 minutes ago, Tommix said:

i may sound like apple hater which im am -but really - it's mac. in windows world i do not even have idea how it's possible to not decode video. Can you share your clip to test on windows?

PS variable bitrate is good. some scenes have less info than others so variable bitrate saves space on card.

I am skeptical that it is an apple issue. I'm pretty sure the file produced by the NX500 with the 1080p120 setting is messed up. I have never had any issue decoding any other NX500 clip (even on my brand-new-top-of-the-line-piece-of-shit apple machine that I shouldn't have bought because "really - it's a mac").  I know that variable bitrate can be good, but jumping from 2MB/s to 380Mb/s and back when the only thing changing in the shot are a few falling snowflakes does not seem like a good management of bitrate.

Here are two test files straight off of the NX500's card: http://www.filedropper.com/lastleavesnx5001080p120test

[MountneerMan]

25 minutes ago, Last Leaves said:

I am skeptical that it is an apple issue. I'm pretty sure the file produced by the NX500 with the 1080p120 setting is messed up. I have never had any issue decoding any other NX500 clip (even on my brand-new-top-of-the-line-piece-of-shit apple machine that I shouldn't have bought because "really - it's a mac").  I know that variable bitrate can be good, but jumping from 2MB/s to 380Mb/s and back when the only thing changing in the shot are a few falling snowflakes does not seem like a good management of bitrate.

Here are two test files straight off of the NX500's card: http://www.filedropper.com/lastleavesnx5001080p120test

Compressed video usually only records the change in pixels compared to a reference frame.

http://www.axis.com/global/en/learning/web-articles/technical-guide-to-network-video/video-compression-guide

So a very detailed scene could have the same bitrate as a pure black scene as long as nothing is moving in either. Every few seconds a new reference frame is encoded witch would cause the bitrate to jump especially in a very detailed scene.

Honestly I am a pretty big noob when it comes to all this stuff and there are a lot of people on here who know and understand this stuff alot better than me but this is how I understand it.