ITB-100HD - 12 Mbps bitrate mod

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dashingthrusnow

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Hey everyone,

After a few evenings of working on this for a couple hours a night, I present to you the ITB-100HD bitrate mod.

It takes the bitrate from 7 Mbps to 12 Mbps. The average bitrate goes from 5.5 Mbps to 9.5 Mbps (average because it is recording in Variable BitRate mode - VBR). A 1 minute file is now about 70 MB.

See screenshots below. I don't have any in-car video yet as my ITB-100HD is still sitting on my work desk (aren't I brave -- or dumb -- to experiment on my only dashcam?!).

No hexediting of source files were done for this mod. So, everything works like it should... except the bitrate is now almost twice as much. The mod basically creates a "wrapper" for the original programs allowing me to set the bitrate manually. Based off the latest 2.1 firmware. Does NOT have the MPH mod.

Anyway, enjoy and let me know if you notice any improvements!

PS - The background video is of my kitchen and it's blurry because the film is still on the lens!

To install, copy the ITB100HDFW.BIN file to a blank sd card and insert in device. Turn ON device and you'll hear some slow steady beeps. After a minute or so, it will power down (3 descending beeps) and then after another 30 sec (give it time! don't freak) it'll power up again.





http://rapidshare.com/files/1130570424/itb100hdfw.bin
 

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jokiin said:
interested to know how you go with this once you've had a chance to test it out in the car
Click to expand...

A lot of hard work and problem solving. I bought my ITB-100HD since it's small and discrete with great video. It just needed a few more Mbps to have awesome video like the Blackvue!

Anyway, just some scripting and some Google searches.

Will post some videos this weekend after I install it. I did order another unit so I hope to have some 7 Mbps vs 12 Mbps videos up shortly.
 
Will this work with the -SP model?

Very good work!
 
No. SP model is different and unfortunately I don't have one of those. The patching method should be similar though.

I plan to order an SP, so hopefully I can get a similar mod out soon. Late next week?
 
Nice !

I don't understand why Itronics did not came out with this firmware on the first place or even later with new updates ?. They would multiply they sales and would hold market positions for much longer time. "We" ( guys like: dashingthrusnow ) always have to teach them :)
This reminds me when one Russian guy hacked BlackVue bitrate and after that they sales in Russia raised.
Why most manufacturers do not listen to what people need ? This would be win-win situation for everybody if "they" start listening.

Great job !
 
Firmware definitely works recording 12 Mbps VBR with GPS working. I just tried it in my car. Unfortunately, since I loosely taped the mount on to my windshield, the video is all shakey.

Will post real videos over the weekend after fully installing camera.
 
If there is anything I can do on my end to help you get the mod working on the SP, hit me up!!
I would love to replace my Lukas with the Itronics as I much prefer it's form factor..
 
jamesbcd said:
If there is anything I can do on my end to help you get the mod working on the SP, hit me up!!
Click to expand...

All the itronics devices run off variants of the Texas Instruments DaVinci processor, so modding it should be straight forward.

I can modify the SP firmware for you... You can flash it and see if it works. If it doesn't work, just reflash with the stock firmware. There's no chance of bricking the device as the alterations I'm making happen after the firmware check. If the alteration fails, the software to check for a firmware upgrade are still in place. I've had to do this a few times on my ITB100HD. If you're interested, PM me and I'll work on it tonight.

Of note, the DaVinci processor is capable of 1080P, 4MBps bitrate. There's also different bitrate modes of which CVBR is the most interesting. Constant-Variable Bit Rate. It will record at a fixed rate, but ramp up the bitrate in high complexity scenes. May experiment with that later.
 
Great work here! Flashed your modified firmware on my ITB-100HD last night and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Quick comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rD_KajsOr4

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

Not exactly scientific, but I think you get the idea.

Now for fun, I'm trying to learn how to combine this with the MPH hack. I think I can isolate the files that need to be changed, but I believe I'm having trouble with repackaging the nested archives. My recombobulated itb100hdfw.bin file is always a different size than the originals. Any tips on tools/techniques for successfully repackaging the firmware? I've tried with 7zip on Windows and PeaZip on Ubuntu, and with command line gzip and tar on both. Thanks again for your great work here :)
 
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codesplice said:
I think I can isolate the files that need to be changed, but I believe I'm having trouble with repackaging the nested archives. My recombobulated itb100hdfw.bin file is always a different size than the originals. Any tips on tools/techniques for successfully repackaging the firmware? I've tried with 7zip on Windows and PeaZip on Ubuntu, and with command line gzip and tar on both. Thanks again for your great work here :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for testing it out! My camera isn't installed yet. I can always bump the bitrate too. I think BlackVue uses 1.5 to 2.0 Mbps.

I did all the editing in the Linux environment. That includes decompressing and recompressing all the .bin's.

tar xzvf for decompressing
tar czvf for compressing

I can look into doing the MPH hack as well... Do you have the MPH hack firmware? It'd be easy to just add the bitrate mod. Send it to me by rapidshare.
 
dashingthrusnow said:
codesplice said:
I think I can isolate the files that need to be changed, but I believe I'm having trouble with repackaging the nested archives. My recombobulated itb100hdfw.bin file is always a different size than the originals. Any tips on tools/techniques for successfully repackaging the firmware? I've tried with 7zip on Windows and PeaZip on Ubuntu, and with command line gzip and tar on both. Thanks again for your great work here :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for testing it out! My camera isn't installed yet. I can always bump the bitrate too. I think BlackVue uses 1.5 to 2.0 Mbps.

I did all the editing in the Linux environment. That includes decompressing and recompressing all the .bin's.

tar xzvf for decompressing
tar czvf for compressing

I can look into doing the MPH hack as well... Do you have the MPH hack firmware? It'd be easy to just add the bitrate mod. Send it to me by rapidshare.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, I'll give it another run-through using just tar (my last attempt used tar and gzip separately - seemed to flash, power off, but didn't power back up. whoopsie! loading yours off a secondary SD card brought it back to life though).

As for the MPH hack, I'm just using yak's from http://yakhack.com/downloads/itb100hdfw.bin. I'd like to get this sorted on my own (as a learning experience if nothing else), but I'm sure the less patient folks would love for you to go on and work your magic ;)
 
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Go for it. I'll mod the MPH hack version and upload it later tonight.

My mod isn't that crazy. It just took a lot of time to reverse engineer, having to flash my ITB-100HD like 10-20 times to get the appropriate file structure, scripts, etc.
 
dashingthrusnow said:
Go for it. I'll mod the MPH hack version and upload it later tonight.

My mod isn't that crazy. It just took a lot of time to reverse engineer, having to flash my ITB-100HD like 10-20 times to get the appropriate file structure, scripts, etc.
Click to expand...

Well my repacked firmware booted this time, and even recorded at the higher bitrate... but the MPH hack didn't take. Still seeing the speed in km/h. I wonder what I'm missing. I'll keep trying :-D

Doh, I think I'm on it... one of the files that was just renamed looks like it's also where the speed calculation happens. Lemme clean that up and it should work. maybe. I hope.
 
dashingthrusnow said:
Does the MPH hack mess up the speed in the ITB Windows software?
Click to expand...

Nope. As I recall, it still displays km/h in the ITB software. I'll check once I get it working again ;)

Edit: confirmed. Opened up one of my older videos in the ITB software. Video shows 064 MPH, software shows 103 km/hour.
 
codesplice said:
Edit: confirmed. Opened up one of my older videos in the ITB software. Video shows 064 MPH, software shows 103 km/hour.
Click to expand...

That's actually perfect. I thought the software would show 64 km/hour.

Thanks!
 
Success!

20130607_131256_8.4.png


At least I think so. I haven't driven with the sucker yet, but it flashed and booted, and shows up with MPH instead of km/h. And the 19-second video of sitting still in my parking space at work is 22.7MB (which works out to around 70MB/min, if I mathed that right).

Anyhoo, here's the MPH-enabled (courtesy of yakpimp) 12 Mbps bitrate mod (courtesy of dashingthrusnow). I take absolutely no credit for this, as all I did was combine the work that those two have already done; I spliced the code if you will. Any brave souls want to give it a go? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108 ... 00hdfw.bin

Super-extra-special thanks to dashingthrusnow for getting me pointed in the right direction :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Great work! Take credit... It's still effort :)

Should we go higher bitrate? I thought 12 Mbps was good...
 
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