iPhone Much better low-light performance & wider field-of-view for iPhone 4/4S/5/5s, iPad3/4

[Menneisyys2]

1. Found the reason for the bitrate setting not to work: in pre-iOS6 times, the name of this key was “AverageDataRate”. Now it's AverageBitRate. I've fixed this in the new version (The URL's of the directly deployable DEB file and the sources are the same as before.)

NOTE: if you change the bitrate, the changed bitrate will ONLY be used when shooting with my settings, not those of CameraTweak! That is, if you set the bitrate to, say, default (that is, 17 Mbps)/512, the new bitrate will only be used if you don't enable any of the default resolutions in CameraTweak using the third list. If you stick with the Wide mode, the new bitrate will be used; if you enable any of the “stock” modes in CameraTweak, the default one (at 1080p, 17 Mbps).

This means you will need to explicitly choose the “Narrow (default)” mode in my DEB tweak if you want to shoot with decreased bitrate BUT using the default 1080p mode. It's in this case that you shouldn't enable 1080p in CameraTweak. If you do plan to shoot with changed bitrates (to, say, save some storage space), you'll need to stick with my tweaker app. (But, again, not if you don't want to change the bitrate!)

2. I've added another SBSettings script, “com.menneisyys.ip5camenhancer.killcamera”, to the bundle to kill the camera process from inside the tweaker. It currently doesn't work with “killall com.apple.camera”. I'll look into the problem.

 

[cookiesnfooty]

I used your deb then cydia wanted to update with IP4 VCam+ (never installed this on cydia) now I have the I5 is this the same thing as the altered debs you are making? I went in and set it to full.

 

[Menneisyys2]

I used your deb then cydia wanted to update with IP4 VCam+ (never installed this on cydia) now I have the I5 is this the same thing as the altered debs you are making? I went in and set it to full.

1. DEB files are tracked by Cydia; this is why they're listed under Manage > Packages too. It's also there that you can uninstall them as they were full Cydia apps.

2. Let me know if it works.

 

[cookiesnfooty]

1. DEB files are tracked by Cydia; this is why they're listed under Manage > Packages too. It's also there that you can uninstall them as they were full Cydia apps.

2. Let me know if it works.

It seems to work but taking a video of my macbook screen the video was a white light on the screen for a bit took longer to focus.

 

[Menneisyys2]

It seems to work but taking a video of my macbook screen the video was a white light on the screen for a bit took longer to focus.

Yup, oversampling the entire sensor area also results in longer focusing times (in addition to the frame rate drop).

It seems the temporal noise reduction switch has absolutely no effect on all this, unlike in non-oversampled (default) modes where it should always be on to reduce noise (and disabling it doesn't allow for 60 fps recording).

BTW, are you using it together with CameraTweak, as is recommended?

 

[Hitrate]

Are you sure about the average 19.5fps? Seems much slower on my iph5 (with CameraTweak installed as well) maybe either or both the pixels and bitrate could be lowered so we achieve sufficient fps (24p or 25p would be ideal)

 

[lsadjan]

Hi, I have an iPad 3 with iOS 6.1, your tweak is compatible for me ?

 

[Cointreau]

Good evening,
I am trying to install this on my iPhone 5, OS 6.1. The deb file does not seem to do anything, I get a code 256 trying to install.
Then I tried manually and noticed I have no N42 folder in the location specified. I do have an N41 folder, however.
I created an N42 folder and copied the file into that folder (not a programmer at all), hoping that would work. Re-ran the install and returned a code 0 this time. Hoping for the best, I rebooted my phone to see what would happen. The results- nothing. Regular old camera.
The app folder shows up in Applications, but no tweaks exist.
Can you please provide some guidance?
Thank you!

 

[Menneisyys2]

Are you sure about the average 19.5fps? Seems much slower on my iph5 (with CameraTweak installed as well)

Sometimes it decreases - dunno why. The demo video I posted was 19.5 fps; some other videos I've shot after that turned out to be around 12 fps.

maybe either or both the pixels and bitrate could be lowered so we achieve sufficient fps (24p or 25p would be ideal)

It won't really work, it seems. I'm sampling the entire sensor area, which is a very bandwidth-hungry operation and requires specialized hardware with the throughput of 576 Mbytes/second (assuming a 8 Mpixel sensor - 24 fps * 8 Mpixels * 3 bytes (for RGB) = 576 MByte/s). This is why very-very few even dedicated cameras (e.g., the Panasonic GH3) do the same - all the other cameras use line skipping resulting in major aliasiation issues (an example of this is at http://s3.amazonaws.com/movies.dpreview.com/canon_g1x/MVI_0578.MOV , linked from http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong1x/9 ), significantly worse low-light performance, resolution loss and the like.

If it is possible to implement line skipping, the results, at least based on my past iPhone 4 hacks, would be absolutely useless - the net resolution would be around VGA. In this case, it's the best to record in stock VGA mode (use CameraTweak's quick resolution setting) in the first place as it uses a much wider FoV than the stock 1080p mode.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Good evening,
I am trying to install this on my iPhone 5, OS 6.1. The deb file does not seem to do anything, I get a code 256 trying to install.
Then I tried manually and noticed I have no N42 folder in the location specified. I do have an N41 folder, however.
I created an N42 folder and copied the file into that folder (not a programmer at all), hoping that would work. Re-ran the install and returned a code 0 this time. Hoping for the best, I rebooted my phone to see what would happen. The results- nothing. Regular old camera.
The app folder shows up in Applications, but no tweaks exist.
Can you please provide some guidance?
Thank you!

Strange you have an N41 directory. Where are you located and what's your wireless provider (if not confidential)?

I'll update the app to check for the N41 directory as well. Up until then, manually creating the N42 directory (as you've did) won't have any effect.

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Hi, I have an iPad 3 with iOS 6.1, your tweak is compatible for me ?

Nope. May create an iPad 3 version some time.

 

[Menneisyys2]

A quick note: today, I shot several videos on a conference, some videos taking over one hour (and 2 GBytes). As I didn't need high frame per second (stuttering wasn't that big a problem) but as wide FoV (the iPhone 5 was placed quite close to the speakers on a tripod; the narrow FoV of the stock 1080p mode would have been plain useless) and as good resolution as possible (ruling out the stock VGA mode, which, while having a wide FoV, has bad resolution), I used the tweak.

I used the half-bitrate option (resulting in a video bitrate of 8.5 MBps) to save a lot of storage space.

The results are great - no audio synching problems, crashes, overheating or even pixelization (again, I used reduced recording bitrate). BTW, they're all between 14 and 15 fps - that is, in no way 19 fps. The lighting was good - that is, the frame rate didn't drop because of the low light levels and the iPhone's consequential slowing down the framerate to gather more light for better low-light performance.

BTW, the N41-compliant (I bet it's the Verizon version of the iPhone 5), more generic version will be released tomorrow. I'll have a 10-hour-long travel, during which I will have a lot of time for coding.

 

[Cointreau]

Actually, I am on AT&T, in the Midwest. Missouri, to be specific.
Thank you for looking into this!

 

[samalamading]

[Edit 8:00 am]

Nevermind..... It helps when one is not tweaking till late at night. Using the camera in low light obviously doesn't work as it is trying hard to "see" everything by upping the exposure. Hence the slow frame rate.
Great job on this tweak and thank you very much!!!

I have installed the tweak, respringed and set the ipv cam to:
Wide, full Sensor at half.

When I use the camera app WITHOUT camera tweak enabled the field of view is very wide but very stuttery. Like it is shooting at 5 fps or so. No matter what setting I use in the IP4 VCam it still is exhibiting slow frame rate.
Once I enable Camera Tweak, then the Camera catches up to full frame rate BUT, the FoV is definitely cropped back to what I assume if 1080 p.
Exactly in what order are the recommended settings for this app to make it work at a field of view and full frame rates?

Thanks


iphone5
evasi0n
IOS 6.1

 

[TehFalcon]

I as a video and photo enthusiast don't see how this is improving the quality, it seems to tear it apart.

Until it has a higher Framerate (at least 24 fps), and the resolution is 16:9 I can't understand it at all.

I Recorded a video while in class to test it, and I just can't get the feel for it, it feels like it was recorded on a 3GS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYmD7bGtVQ

OP, is there anyway you can make one that is at least a 16:9 resolution, because 4:3 is not optimal at all for Video Editing or viewing on the web or Modern TV's/Displays.

 

[TehFalcon]

16:9 60fps Plist WIP

After thinking about my last post I thought I would give my own shot at this, and So far I have 60 FPS working, along with it capturing with the whole sensor but saving it at 1080p, thus giving a better image, and maintaining the 16:9 Resolution.

Unfortunately it will record the video, but when it is finished recording the video is a blank .mov, I highly suspect the Bitrate to be the issue here. But its a step in the right direction.

You can play around with my .plist here, I am going to work on the Bitrates as soon as I get home, but the preview definitely looks quite amazing even though I can't save the video ATM.

I would not mind helping you out with this project, as its a fantastic idea, I use only my iPhone for all my video recording as I got rid of all my cameras and my DSLR is impractical for most things I record.

Here is my .plist:
http://www.mediafire.com/?7wjx9qsduccudr7

 

[Menneisyys2]

Actually, I am on AT&T, in the Midwest. Missouri, to be specific.
Thank you for looking into this!

Strange - I would have thought it's the Verizon (non-GSM) model that is different.

Will release the more generic version very soon. (Not today though - my today's travelling has turned out to be shooting videos and stills all the time as I've visited several towns and seen a lot of sights.)

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When I use the camera app WITHOUT camera tweak enabled the field of view is very wide but very stuttery. Like it is shooting at 5 fps or so. No matter what setting I use in the IP4 VCam it still is exhibiting slow frame rate.

Yup, because of the hardware limitations, it's impossible to get more than 14-19 fps (more would require some damn fast signal processing hardware).

However, 4-5 fps should only be under very bad lighting. With good lighting, 14-19 fps should be the framerate.

Once I enable Camera Tweak, then the Camera catches up to full frame rate BUT, the FoV is definitely cropped back to what I assume if 1080 p.
Exactly in what order are the recommended settings for this app to make it work at a field of view and full frame rates?

CT switches between the stock, narrow-FoV 1080p mode (for generic video recording) and my mode (for a much wider FoV and better low-light performance but with severely reduced framerate, strictly for shooting almost-static scenes (like a presentation / speech) from a tripod), this is why I recommend it over my tool to do the same. (With the latter, you must always kill the Camera process by hand, start my GUI and change the setting. With CameraTweak, you can do the same much easier and faster.)

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OP, is there anyway you can make one that is at least a 16:9 resolution, because 4:3 is not optimal at all for Video Editing or viewing on the web or Modern TV's/Displays.

By simply cropping the output video. Of course, this requires a complete reencode: IIRC, the MP4 container doesn't support cropping. (I should check it some time. It's possible there is such a flag in the container itself. Then, you could just flip the flag and it crops in runtime, during playback, without any pre-reencoding.)

Back in the iOS 4 + iPhone 4 times, I played quite a bit with the plist settings and found out that if you use full sensor oversampling to get as wide FoV as possible, you could only use 4:3 aspect ratio for output to get the best (apart from the reduced framerate) possible results. All 16:9 configurations exhibited major issues (severely dropped true resolution etc.) I think the case is the same with the iPhone 5.

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Unfortunately it will record the video, but when it is finished recording the video is a blank .mov, I highly suspect the Bitrate to be the issue here. But its a step in the right direction.

I don't think it's the bitrate. I too got a lot of blank videos when hacking around the plist file - for example, when going over the maximal possible h.264 encoding resolution using the 4:3 aspect ratio. Fully independent of the bitrate.

Let us know if you find out something! (BTW, a very good test video to test the true FPS of a video is at https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13100693/html/0921012ATV360fps/1080p60-counter.mp4 - also created by me.)

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I as a video and photo enthusiast don't see how this is improving the quality, it seems to tear it apart.

The biggest advantage is widening the FoV from around 41mm to around 32mm, which is GREAT help when you just can't make use of the stock 1080p video recording mode to record something (you can't move the camera backwards etc.).

Also, because of oversampling, it has significantly better low-light performance. (Nevertheless, remember that during really low light, oversampling slows down resulting int 2...5 true fps output.)

Finally, as it doesn't crop the natively 4:3 sensor in any way but records into 4:3, it adds a lot of vertical pixels to record. In some cases when 16:9 is just too short this can work. (As would, say, the VGA mode easily accessible via CameraTweak or most third-party AppStore video camera apps. Of course, the stock VGA mode has waaaay worse resolution than that of my hack - almost 3 times less pixels in each direction.)

Of course, its usage is severely restricted because of the low framerate: preferably no handheld shooting (but from a tripod), absolutely no sports shooting etc. For recording presentations, however, I've found it much better than the stock 1080p mode, at least in my practice, where I couldn't put my camera more far away from the speaker to cover both him and the projected screen.

 

[TehFalcon]

Well having tested around with a lot of settings, I've hit a good spot here.

I have the Camera now using the usual 1920x1080 on the Sensor, and capturing at 1600x900 thus still giving a 16:9 Resolution, but downsizing the video while still being above 720p giving a better quality video.

I also have the FPS running around 59-60 now.

Here is my plist: http://www.mediafire.com/?f5q6gcoq8ncaqzd

Here is my test video: http://youtu.be/vCywdRSpFOc

 

[Menneisyys2]

Well having tested around with a lot of settings, I've hit a good spot here.

I have the Camera now using the usual 1920x1080 on the Sensor, and capturing at 1600x900 thus still giving a 16:9 Resolution, but downsizing the video while still being above 720p giving a better quality video.

I also have the FPS running around 59-60 now.

Here is my plist: http://www.mediafire.com/?f5q6gcoq8ncaqzd

Here is my test video: http://youtu.be/vCywdRSpFOc

wowz! Will be testing it ASAP.

 

[SFC Archer]

What is the app name???

Is it in Cydia yet???

I see a bunch of great stuff here but do not see a name or info related to just installation. Not going to ssh/ifile in and change things when I can just uninstall if it fails to work to expectation.

I love taking pics/video and post a bunch to FB so this does interest me greatly.

Thanks in advance for your reply/hard work!!!

 

[Menneisyys2]

What is the app name???

Is it in Cydia yet???

I see a bunch of great stuff here but do not see a name or info related to just installation. Not going to ssh/ifile in and change things when I can just uninstall if it fails to work to expectation.

1. no Cydia release as it's still being worked on and it's far harder for me to always properly sign each release. Sometimes I release versions 10 minutes apart.

2. DEB installation is REALLY easy and you don't need to have SSH installed at all. You can transfer the DEB file to any (with iExplorer, visible - e.g., Media) directory with the just-mentioned iExplorer (or, of course, iFile).

3. You can unsinstall the package already - from inside the Cydia app, as if it was installed from Cydia itself.

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wowz! Will be testing it ASAP.

Tested your plist. 29.97 videos as before. Are you sure you uploaded the right version? "AVCaptureSessionPresetHigh" does record into 1600*900 so it's definitely have been modded.

However, AVCaptureSessionPresetHigh > formats > Item 5 > MaxFrameRate is still 30.

 

[TehFalcon]

1. no Cydia release as it's still being worked on and it's far harder for me to always properly sign each release. Sometimes I release versions 10 minutes apart.

2. DEB installation is REALLY easy and you don't need to have SSH installed at all. You can transfer the DEB file to any (with iExplorer, visible - e.g., Media) directory with the just-mentioned iExplorer (or, of course, iFile).

3. You can unsinstall the package already - from inside the Cydia app, as if it was installed from Cydia itself.

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Tested your plist. 29.97 videos as before. Are you sure you uploaded the right version? "AVCaptureSessionPresetHigh" does record into 1600*900 so it's definitely have been modded.

However, AVCaptureSessionPresetHigh > formats > Item 5 > MaxFrameRate is still 30.

Gaw yes I uploaded the wrong one.


Edit: if you could please try this one, i have 4 different ones, I am still at school so these are just preliminal edits, but so far on my end It is DEFINITELY in 60 fps, I can feel it (I know the feeling from gaming on the PC, and with your test) and the quality is definitely better.
http://www.mediafire.com/?tz87jj8u1z18zs3

 

[Menneisyys2]

Gaw yes I uploaded the wrong one.


Edit: if you could please try this one, i have 4 different ones, I am still at school so these are just preliminal edits, but so far on my end It is DEFINITELY in 60 fps, I can feel it (I know the feeling from gaming on the PC, and with your test) and the quality is definitely better.
http://www.mediafire.com/?tz87jj8u1z18zs3

Strange it's working for you. On my iPhone 5, this version produces video-less and, tehrefore, useless output - as did my experimens when I upped AVCaptureSessionPresetHigh > formats > Item 5 > Min/MaxFrameRate to 60.

Are you sure you restart the Camera app after every plist edit (so that the configuration changes are seen) and use e.g. QuickTime to properly iterate over every single recorded frame so that you can check evey number is shown?

 

[tateu]

but so far on my end It is DEFINITELY in 60 fps, I can feel it (I know the feeling from gaming on the PC, and with your test) and the quality is definitely better.

You can "feel" it? Have you copied a recorded file to your computer and opened it in Quicktime to check it's file properties to be absolutely sure it is 60fps? I have done a bunch of testing and never gotten it above 30 fps on my 4s.

 

[Menneisyys2]

You can "feel" it? Have you copied a recorded file to your computer and opened it in Quicktime to check it's file properties to be absolutely sure it is 60fps? I have done a bunch of testing and never gotten it above 30 fps on my 4s.

Hope he has followed my advice when testing the true frame rate of his recordings - by, say, using QuickTime Player's left/right cursor keys while paused to advance (back) with one frame.

 

[Hitrate]

"I can feel it" lol, best developer comment ever hehe