MountneerMan

2 hours ago, vasile said:

How To - recording limit - NX500 and NX1

YOUR WARRANTY IS NOW VOID.

http://***URL removed***/forums/post/57446101

YOUR WARRANTY IS NOW VOID.
YOUR WARRANTY IS NOW VOID.
YOUR WARRANTY IS NOW VOID.
YOUR WARRANTY IS NOW VOID.
YOUR WARRANTY IS NOW VOID.

What else is in this DEV menu?

Care to take some screen shots and upload? 

Also on behalf of everyone thank you your hard work is much appreciated.

6 hours ago, Marco Tecno said:

I sent the news to both photorumors and mirrorlessrumors, but neither of those published it. Probably this is too 'certain' for those sites.

I was thinking about more reputable sources like ESOHD

Actually it would be nice for it to go up on some sites like gizmodo or techradar. Places where people tend to be hackers/programmers first with a passion for film oppose to here where I feel like most people are cinematographers who have a passion for tech second.

8 hours ago, tugela said:

It doesn't sound like it is easy to hack them, but clearly there is great untapped potential in the cameras.

It is too bad that Samsung themselves could not have enabled some of these features when they were developing the cameras. I guess if they had stayed in the market many of these things would have come in firmware updates.

Agreed I might have got a liltle excited to say it is easy to "hack". But the fact it will run Linux scripts from the SD card for things like focus stacking is really easy.

2 hours ago, Hanriverprod said:

Good idea, the angle could be:

Samsung abandons their loyal nx1 customers, but a community tries to keep the future of the camera alive.

Thats funny. I think you were trying to trol but that is actually the angle i was thinking. 

The article would talk about how exactly samsung has abandoned their camera system yet dispite this their cameras are/were so good that people continue to use them and that people are even able to improve them. The article would also talk about how easy people are finding them to hack and how much potential these dead cameras have. 

My hope is to draw in more people to hacking these cameras to help unlock things like higher bitrates and removing the recording limit. 

I really want to see this story picked up by some popular camera news websites, help build some more momentum. 

On 3/5/2016 at 2:08 PM, Marco Tecno said:

Top 3 for bokeh on NX1 (native lenses) is, IMO:

85/1.4

50-150

45/1.8

After that I'd say 50-200 and 60mm macro. Only after those, there comes the 16-50s

Top 3 for AF:

50-150

45

16-50s

Top 3 for sharpness:

60 macro

50-150

30mm

I only have the 16-50 f/2-2.8 50-150 f/2.8 and 50-200 f/3.5-5.6 and in my opinion out of those three lens I would orer them like this

BOKEH & SHAPRNESS:

1. 50-150
2. 16-50
3. 50-200

The 16-50 is definately alot sharper and has alot more bokeh than the 50-200(IMO). But I definately agree the 50-150 is better then the other two across the board except for weight and for that reason I hardly ever bring it climbing. That is why I bought the 50-200 in the first place.

On 3/5/2016 at 8:18 AM, woozie said:

Is the NX 50-200mm as good as the movie pro 18-200mm lens, for video?

I have never used the 18-200 but from what I understand it is far inferior to the 50-200. I have heard It is quite soft, significantly slower at all focal lengths, costs almost 3 times as much and weights quite a bit more. If you are considering this lens compare getting the 50-200 with either the 16-50PZ or a few primes like the 10mm, 30mm f/2 or 45mm. I think you will end up with better performing lense for less money and will weight less in your bag.

by lag I mean the time between things actually happening and when it appear on the screen. If you look into the EVF of a sony a6000 you would see what I mean by lag lol.

as for the ISO thing I am not quite sure what I am thinking. I guess what I was thinking is if the camera is binning the sensor resolution(6480x3645) down to 1920x1080 than it is grouping 11 pixels into one and since ISO is related to the sensor area by having a larger area representing each pixel it would lower the effective ISO. But I am sure I am wrong now that I think about it.

Why is it that when you enter video standby the noise increases then?

without knowing anything else like what other equipment you currently have. I would say the a6300 is the better option but wait for a few months till their are some good independent reviews up by reputable reviewers to confirm what we have seen so far about this camera.

I don't expect it to get bad reviews but I personally never buy a camera right out the gates because I buy gear with the expectation it will last me 4 or 5 years so I don't mind waiting an extra month or two.

4 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

I'm afraid all the replies so far aren't right.

The NX1 uses a power saving live view mode when not in video standby mode.

In this mode for framing up a shot, there's hardly any rolling shutter skew because the sensor is doing a very fast sweep, missing out a lot of pixels and lines. We call that binning.

In video mode it does a 6K full pixel readout for the great quality 4K recording it has. That takes time... approx 30ms for the rolling shutter to expose the entire sensor, which is what creates the skew in video mode.

Switch to 1080/120fps and it reverts to pixel binning and there's less skew.

Yea thats sort of what I always thought.

So just to wrap things up

1 hour ago, MountneerMan said:

EDIT: so basically what I am asking is

1. Why is the rolling shutter worse in video standby then regular live view
2. Why is their more video lag in standby mode
3. Why is the noise performance worse in video standby mode

1. The rolling shutter is better in regular live view because the camera is pixel binning the entire sensor at a faster rate. When recording the camera is down sampling the entire 6.5k sensor so takes longer to read out each pixel.

2. Same reason as number one. More processing power is required to down sample vs pixel bin.

3. When the camera is pixel binning the noise performance is actually = (current ISO)/(6480x3645)/(1920x1080). for example if the camera is set to ISO 3200 that would be equal to ~ISO 280 in live view

Am I correct?

Why is it there significantly less rolling shutter in the live view when you are not in video standby mode or recording? Is it because the camera is doing line skipping in live view giving for faster sensor refresh but when it records it down samples the entire 6.5K image?

I noticed this a long time ago and always just figured my assumption above was correct but never confirmed it.

Here is a test if you do not understand what I am talking about. Turn off video standby and pan back and forth or just look around relatively fast. As you are panning start the standby mode and continue to pan you will see the rolling shutter (as well as video lag and noise performance) significantly increase.

The reason why I have been thinking about this some more lately is because with a possible NX1 hack around the corner I have been thinking about possibility of being able to dump the live view output to the card similar to how ML gets RAW video and thinking about what kind of image we would get.

P.S I apologies in advance as I am sure someone has already asked this question or the answer is already on the internet but I could not find it.

EDIT: so basically what I am asking is

1. Why is the rolling shutter worse in video standby then regular live view
2. Why is their more video lag in standby mode
3. Why is the noise performance worse in video standby mode

35 minutes ago, SR said:

I noticed something strange with this charger during a recent trip to shoot. The batteries charged a lot faster (about two to three times) when plugged into my laptop than when it was plugged straight into a wall plug. 

Check the amp rating on your wall wart. USB can range from 1.5A - 5.0A(i think).

I have this charger as well, it came with the "pro" kit.

I have it elastic-banded to a 20,000mah battery pack and what I do is just continually rotate one battery charging in my bag and one battery in the camera. By the time the battery in the camera is almost dead the battery in the charger is done so this give me constant mobile power for ~3-5 days of filming (I don't tend to film long 10+ min clips so I only go through ~2 batteries/day)

I do wish this charger was USB 3.0 as it would charge the batteries alot faster.

I really want to buy a few more NX1 batteries before they become extinct but I have never needed more then two so they tend to be the first thing I cut from the shopping cart when I go to check out and realize I have >$500 worth of gear and all I was originally planning on buying was a new microphone lol. But I really should get some more batteries If i hope to keep using my NX1 for another 3 years.

EDIT: This is the battery pack I have if you were wondering http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00X5RV14Y/ref=pe_386430_121528420_TE_dp_2

31 minutes ago, Chant said:

If we could get a list going of what people would like to see it could help focus the work better. Unlike other cameras the firmware is complicated but not near as obfuscated and vastly lacking encryption as other systems. Open source really makes it easy even if the sdk isnt public.

http://***URL removed***/forums/post/56619379

What about decoding?

I feel like decoding 400Mbits/s HEVC  would be ridiculous both in time and finale file size.

I also think that most computers wouldn't be able to edit 400 MBits/s HEVC natively using adobe cc (or any other program that can handle it natively like edit ready or wondershare).

Edit: Removed post

20 minutes ago, Marco Tecno said:

Why do you say IQ would be bad? It would have a 1:1 pixel readout w/o downscale, but no line skipping or else. Hence should be fairly good with a good lens, like 50-150s is...

The NX1 and NX500 have the same sensor so this is not really a theoretical question and is something someone can test right now. I do not own an NX500 but from what I have seen the IQ is not as good as the NX1.

It would be interesting to compare the NX1 cropped to 1080 and the NX500 with same lens and FL cropped to 1080 and well.

My money is the IQ on the NX500 is noticeably worse.

Granted there would be less moiré but that has never been an issue for me on the NX1 at 4K.

6 hours ago, Marco Tecno said:

Nx1 only shoots with a full sensor readout (1.5 crop factor from 35mm fl). Nx500 only shoots with cropped resolution, i.e. a total of about 2.53 crop factor from ff fl).

 

Hence the 150mm has an effective fl of 225mm on nx1 and of 380mm on nx500. 

 

The cool thing would ve being able to use both on the nx1, so to use a digital zoom with the same lens, as Mattias already explained.

Agreed, And with cropping the 4K in post would allow some decent reach. Probably somewhere around 450mm(35 equivalent) before the IQ got too bad. The IQ even at 380 would be quite bad but would definitely be usable in a pinch.

Someone should try and recruit some of the ML community development staff.

I am sure there are a bunch of really smart programmers who are starting to get board of working with Cannon cameras and wouldn’t mind getting in on the ground floor of a new development.

From what I am hearing it sounds like making software for Samsung cameras is going to be significantly easier than cannon as well.

1 hour ago, Chant said:

sd card bus speed(its quite low should be ush1 u3 but its not set close to the speed stated in the sd association docs) 

 

Do you think this is a limitation of the hardware or could this be unlocked with software?

2 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

Samsung capped the bit rate so you can pop the sd card into their tv's and watch it. They capped it to the max their tv's can handle. The nx1 is pretty much optimized for their displays

 

This is interesting I didn't know this and never thought about it. Has this been confirm by either Samsung or by trying to run higher bit rate HEVC video through a samsung TV? I mean it would make sense not to allow a bitrate that their TV's cant run because that would make both products look bad.

This makes me excited for possible higher bit rate. 

34 minutes ago, SMGJohn said:

If I remember correctly from working with GH3 footage the banding was nowhere near as bad as on the Samsung NX1 of course Samsung fixed a lot of the shitty colour bleeding and terrible banding issues with the newest firmwares but the banding still persists, its there if you pay attention and you definitely will see it when you work with the files.

I can apply the LOG profile from EOSHD to the NX1 footage with the proper settings in place, if I push colours too much I see banding, I have some GH4 footage I shot before I sold it duo to the low light performance being unsatisfying, I can push the colours quite extreme without seeing any form of banding, even in the 1080p footage. Obviously the NX1 has way better colour range than the GH4 with Cine-D and I sadly its almost a year and half since I sold the GH4 and back then we had no idea there was an actual LOG profile coming for it at all, not even the news about the beta LOG being worked at. 

Its pretty clear its the HEVC codec doing it, I have reproduced some of the nastiness of the HEVC by using clean high bit depth images with gradients applied and noise in sections to see what the codec does to it, indeed the codec does cause banding at 8bit output, it also smoothens out noise in low detailed areas, I further checked with a still picture shot at 1600 ISO with some fine grains, again I see the same the codec smoothens out the flat areas, in high detailed areas it leaves but every area that has no details the codec smooths out, the earlier versions of HEVC were terrible at detecting detailed areas its gotten better. I will just assume here the NX1 uses the earlier version of the HEVC codec because its clearly destroying details in out of focus dark areas were the codec is struggling to detect details. It gets worse when you lower the video bitrate as well of course the in-camera noise reduction in video does not help at all just makes the issue far worse than it should be. 
Its managable but if we can turn off noise reduction in video, that would be a life saver for all of us because many of us does not have the luxury of light to shoot one or two stops over. Some of us are forced to shot stops under, its either that or very high ISO and we all know what happens then... 

I agree with pretty much all of this especially turning off the NR. But then I just think... I got this camera for $2,200 CAD with the 16-50S lens almost a year ago. Sure when compared to a $3,000 USD body only FF camera doesn't win but it still competes quite well.

I think my point is we should not nit pick the IQ of the NX1 too much but I am definitely all for turning off that annoying NR.

With regards to bit rate does it make sense for samsung to handicap the bit rate in the NX1? I mean the NR makes sense because they want to give us the best picture straight from the card witch doesn't necessarily give you the best picture possible but if the bit rate is adjustable i would think samsung  did some testing to determine the optimal bit rate.

For that reason I am trying to focus on encouraging the addition of "new" features that samsung never developed and/or implemented or removing features like NR or time limit that were implemented for various reasons none of witch include any of our semi professional needs.

I watch Casey’s vlogs almost every day. They are very inspiring that he can produce such good content on a daily basis. Also IMO Casey is the godfather of the current YouTube film style. If you ever watch his HBO series(witch I recommend everyone goes and watches) he was making modern vlog style YouTube content back in 2008 when YouTube was just a place to upload high school fight videos.

That aside I was really happy to see this vlog yesterday which means that Samsung is starting to think about marketing.

I still think that Samsung has left the ILC market (for now) and will be reassessing their market position before making another move witch likely won’t be until Q1 of 2017 at best if at all.

Anyways my point is that with the new gear 360 and teaming up with Casey means that they are keeping their finger on the market pulse while they reassess their market position.

A simple script/hack (if possible) would be a script that runs when you boot the NX1/500 that would check to see if there is an external USB storage device(e.g. portable hard drive) and if there is one plugged in it would back-up all the files from the SD card onto the hard drive. I travel and climb alot and would like the ability to back-up my videos for redundancy on the go without needing to bring a laptop.

The stumbling block with this is from what I have read you need a USB OTG port witch I cannot find anywhere saying that the USB port on the NX1/500 is an OTG port.

But you got to admit if it were possible this would be an easy script to write(relatively) and would be quite useful.

P.S. I have been following this progress quite closely and applaud everyone's hard work. It is only a matter of time before more people get wind of how great these cameras are and how easy they are to hack and the fact you can get an NX500 kit for $799 USD new without any discounts.... oh man

Otto K, you mentioned over on dpreview that the st app had the ability to take commands for sensor frame rates upto 240fps. Have you tried this yet?

13 hours ago, Syme said:

Has anyone taken a look at what exactly is in that SDK? I was under the impression it was just for developing remote apps.

I was under the same impression.

@SMGJohn et al, where can I download the SKD and 91 page PDF? I would be interested in giving it a look over. USB 3.0 has a transfer rate of 5Gb/sec witch is more than enough for a 4K RAW stream. I am imagining being able to plug in a laptop(with an SSD) via USB and using it like an external recorder except you would have pretty much complete control of the camera(except zoom and aperture depending on the lens) as well.

Does any one think this would even be possible? I am not a CS expect.

13 hours ago, Syme said:

For the NX1/500 getting root on the physical camera and running a debugger there would probably be easier and more fruitful. Nikon, Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and most other camera manufacturers use custom (or semi-custom) operating systems, which make standard debuggers incompatible. Since Samsung uses a Linux kernel it should be possible to run a standard debugger if you have root, and use that to see the instructions executing on the real hardware.

Did you read the dpreview posts I linked yesterday above? otto K said he thinks its possible to run scripts from the SD Card witch would allow for the use of debuggers.

Also because the NX1/NX500 are Tizen based it sounds like it could be quite easy(relatively speaking) to create an emulator https://developer.tizen.org/development/tools/common-tools/emulator . Again I am far from a CS expect and I am way out of my depth and really have no idea. Anyone who knows better please correct me.

@Syme

Have you seen otto K's two posts on dpreview regarding his investigation into the NX500 software (linked below).

http://***URL removed***/forums/post/57133589

It seams to me that if the two of you shared notes we could have something.

EDIT: Fixed link

2 hours ago, undecided said:

It's all about the codec parameters. They chose file size over detail. They could have made it so that the user could choose.

They do, Its in the video quality setting. The question is are they sandbagging with the HQ video setting and by how much.

Honestly for me the 4K/UHD quality of the NX1 if good enough for my purposes. I would really just like to see things like the 29 min limit removed or 4k 60p or 1080 240p