0806firmware-150323-DCT (custom bitrate version)

[Nigel]

But do you see improvement compared with the "standard" firmware and how is it performing when in motion?

And are you willing to share your custom firmware?

For those that want modified bitrates but don't want to create their own firmware:

Download (install at your own risk making sure the camera has external power during installation, and report your findings...)

This has been tested on my mini 0806 using a Samsung Pro memory card. If you live somewhere hot or use slow speed memory cards then either do some testing yourself or stick to the standard firmware.

Modifications from 0806firmware-150323:

1. Startup and shutdown screens. (so you don't forget which version you are using)
   
   
2. 2560x1080 30fps Superfine 24Mb/s, 5 hours/64GB
3. 2560x1080 30fps Fine 12Mb/s, 11 hours/64GB
4. 2560x1080 30fps Normal 2Mb/s, 60 hours/64GB (2.5 days) (1 weekend)
   
   
5. 1920x1080 45fps Superfine 24Mb/s, 5 hours/64GB
6. 1920x1080 45fps Fine 12Mb/s, 11 hours/64GB
7. 1920x1080 45fps Normal 6Mb/s, 22 hours/64GB
   
   
8. 1280x720 60fps Superfine 24Mb/s, 5 hours/64GB
9. 1280x720 60fps Fine 12Mb/s, 11 hours/64GB
10. 1280x720 60fps Normal 6Mb/s, 22 hours/64GB
    
    
11. 1280x720 30fps Superfine 16Mb/s, 8 hours/64GB
12. 1280x720 30fps Fine 4Mb/s, 31 hours/64GB
13. 1280x720 30fps Normal 1Mb/s, 125 hours/64GB (5.2 days)

The most interesting of those are:

2560x1080 30fps Superfine
This is the best quality and highest resolution mode.

It is limited to 24mb/s because I don't want my 64GB card to last less than 5 hours! Going higher isn't going to make much noticeable improvement to the image anyway and may decrease battery life due to extra heat.

Although it does get warmer than the lowest bitrate mode (720 Normal), my IR thermometer says it is only 2 degrees C warmer so not really worth worrying about! The processor and sensor are processing the full size image anyway, it's just the amount written to the memory card that changes.

Image Quality is a little better than standard, the biggest difference is that it doesn't loose quality in poor conditions when the standard version would significantly drop the bitrate and sometimes turn the vegetation mushy.

It also always updates the image background at a decent rate where the standard version can reduce the effective frame rate on parts of the image which are not changing much to maybe only 3fps under some conditions.

2560x1080 30fps Fine
This is my hot weather mode. The IR thermometer suggests that it runs only about 1 degree C cooler so maybe not worth using, but maybe it makes more difference in mid summer sunshine?

Alternatively it can be used for long trips as it will record for 11 hours instead of just 5 hours before looping.

2560x1080 30fps Normal
This is my parking mode, it will record all weekend at full resolution, or several hours without overwriting much of what you already have on your card. Obviously at reduced quality compared to superfine.

1920x1080 45fps Superfine
This is for the racetrack, high frame rate and high quality.

1280x720 60fps Superfine
Not sure why 60fps is needed, but if you are going to use it for quality then it might as well have a high bitrate mode.

1280x720 30fps Normal
This is the lowest bitrate mode, the quality is very poor but if you want to set the camera up for surveillance of a room to record unattended for 5 days/64GB then it will allow people to be recognised and see what they are doing even if license plates would be completely unreadable.

2560x1080 30fps Superfine:

2560x1080 30fps Normal (Parking mode):

Recorded in 2560x1080 Normal (Parking Mode) 2.5 days/64GB and reduced in quality by YouTube.

 

[richcam]

Nigel, the improvements in video quality look quite substantial and I can almost read the numberplate of the black Land Rover in the background. Will be very interesting to see if any improvements are made to reading number-plates of approaching vehicles whilst at speeds of around 50mph because this is what I have been most disappointed with compared to the 0801 which is far cheaper. Have also noticed that since the most recent 0806 firmware update, that the low-light and night-time footage has been very poor with blurred number-plates, etc.

Will give this custom bitrate version a try over the next few days and let you know how I get on. Am using a Kingston 64GB class 10 card in my 0806 which ought to be up to the task. Only downside I can see is the reduced video time between overwrites.

 

[kwolf]

Nigel,

I can't get your download URL to work.

 

[curat0r]

Can't open link too ...

 

[PedroN]

Thanks Nigel, I will also give it a try but for me the link also isn't working

 

[Nigel]

Thanks Nigel, I will also give it a try but for me the link also isn't working

Sorry, I put it on Microsoft's OneDrive same as all my images, but it seems that for zip files they change the file path every time it is downloaded so a link only ever works once!

I've moved it to Mega.co.nz instead, see if that is any better?... (Original link updated)

 

[PedroN]

Yep, downloaded it and I will install it this morning to try it.
Thanks.

 

[Nigel]

One thing that surprised me during testing this was that even the very best quality 1280x720 mode at 5 hours/64GB has far less readable car number plates than my 2560x1080 Normal at 2.5 days/64GB and my worst 1280x720 is considerably worse than the 2560x1080 Normal even though it is half the data rate - not impressed by the 720, except that it will do 60Hz.

Nigel, the improvements in video quality look quite substantial and I can almost read the numberplate of the black Land Rover in the background. Will be very interesting to see if any improvements are made to reading number-plates of approaching vehicles whilst at speeds of around 50mph because this is what I have been most disappointed with compared to the 0801 which is far cheaper. Have also noticed that since the most recent 0806 firmware update, that the low-light and night-time footage has been very poor with blurred number-plates, etc.

Will give this custom bitrate version a try over the next few days and let you know how I get on. Am using a Kingston 64GB class 10 card in my 0806 which ought to be up to the task. Only downside I can see is the reduced video time between overwrites.

Just in case you are comparing my image above with my previous images, I have refocused the lens. It did focus very close, ideal for friendly peahens, and I suspected that when it got warm it became unfocused on distant objects, it's now focused a little further away, not yet come to a conclusion on distant objects in the warm, but maybe it was just heat haze causing it.

It's the low light footage which probably will benefit most, the standard firmware did seem to be dropping the bitrate in low light and the effect was most noticeable in the darker areas becoming blocky and updating slowly.

I'm sure your Kingston card will be OK, I was just pointing out that it hasn't been tested with a class 4 card and while the standard firmware is probably extensively tested to work reliably with almost anything in all conditions, this was only properly tested on a card which actually gives me over 60MB/s for both read and write on an h2testw.exe test - I'm not expecting problems with any decent cards but if there are problems or if the camera gets hot then let us know and don't complain.

Reading the plate on that black Landrover is never going to be possible as the characters are only about 4x3 pixels which simply isn't enough to be readable, although it is good that it hasn't sharpened it at all which does give you a chance of working it out, a lot of cameras would have half destroyed what is there by over sharpening it.

 

[Nigel]

Where is the engine in a Porsche?

Recorded in 2560x1080 Normal (Parking Mode) 2.5 days/64GB and reduced in quality by YouTube.

And it could do with some decent sized reversing lights, didn't realise that is what they were when I first saw them!

 

[kwolf]

Gonna install this now, thanks! I'm curious to see how the 1080p@45fps stacks up. Stock "superfine" was not very great at that setting IMO.

What was the factory bitrate of the 2560 superfine setting?

 

[Nigel]

Gonna install this now, thanks! I'm curious to see how the 1080p@45fps stacks up. Stock "superfine" was not very great at that setting IMO.

What was the factory bitrate of the 2560 superfine setting?

18Mb/s, but it's not quite that simple since it allowed a drop down to around 13.5 and an increase to around 22.5, this version is always fairly close to 24 so in poor conditions it could be nearly twice the bitrate and in good conditions just a small increase.

In reality I normally got a little over 8 hours from my 64GB card with the factory firmware as opposed to 5 hours from this firmware, might be overdoing it a bit but it's often quite hard to spot a lot of the quality reductions it implements until you try to make lighting adjustments or use zoom in a video editor, and people where talking about 30Mb/s on other threads!

I'm happy to consider some realistic adjustments if people have good suggestions after testing...

45 fps superfine was only 12Mb/s with potential drop to 9Mb/s which might explain your poor experience, seems a bit low considering the 50% extra frames over 30fps! In this firmware it is 24Mb/s so maybe more than twice the detail... of course you can't store what isn't there, but potentially.

If you don't use the 2560x1080 modes then the processor rescales the entire sensor image to fit the resolution instead of storing the native resolution, the result is that you are effectively zoomed out a bit and thus have lower resolution making license plates more difficult to read, there is also a bit of distortion from the rescaling since there is not a whole number of source pixels per target pixel. Let us know your experience of 45fps, I haven't really checked it out due to the above issues and not being impressed with the factory version.

 

[kwolf]

So far I've tried it on the 2560 resolution. The quality difference is not huge for me, but very noticeable in the vegetation. Before the trees and stuff would become ugly compressed blocks of various shades of green. Now you can see the detail. As far as plate readability, it seems about the same as it did before. I hate our tiny American license plates. Gonna try 1080@45 tomorrow.

 

[Nigel]

I hate our tiny American license plates. Gonna try 1080@45 tomorrow.

You need 4K resolution for those, or a narrow angle lens which doesn't show what is going on out the sides!

 

[kwolf]

Here is a video sample at 1080@45fps:

Much improved from stock settings.

Since youtube kills the quality, here are a few snapshots: https://goo.gl/GTV2DT

 

[scritchoune]

Nice work Nigel,

I'll be curious to see the night results ! for those, do you have also touch to the white balance setup in your fw ?

I mean in digital photography it's a common rule to set the WB to avoid as musch as posible any white pixel (=allow 1 pixel) in the raw picture (= the sensor output before processing)...

I know that most of the classical customers would certainely complaints for dark pictures but this would ensure the best licenceplate readability as it would avoid the washed (=burned) out result we can see in some videos and preserve as much details as the sensor can see.

To simplify a bit : white area cannot be darkened (= no data) black area are bunch of nuance of dark colors which can always be brightened (= data)

imho that should of course be a specific WB option for techie customers wich will not complains for dark pictures

 

[Nigel]

Here is a video sample at 1080@45fps:

Much improved from stock settings.

Since youtube kills the quality, here are a few snapshots: https://goo.gl/GTV2DT

That looks very usable, the first picture certainly looks a lot better than when you had the same image from an out of focus 0806! There is even a lot of detail in the darkness of the trees where an expensive DSLR without WDR would probably give close to blackness in those lighting conditions:

That truck, which given the name is presumably a USA model, has the space for a full size plate yet it is fitted with a half width one! Have to wonder how the USA came to have a different plate size to the rest of the world. Half the width = quarter the pixels which makes it really hard to capture!

Nice work Nigel,

I'll be curious to see the night results ! for those, do you have also touch to the white balance setup in your fw ?

I mean in digital photography it's a common rule to set the WB to avoid as musch as posible any white pixel (=allow 1 pixel) in the raw picture (= the sensor output before processing)...

I know that most of the classical customers would certainely complaints for dark pictures but this would ensure the best licenceplate readability as it would avoid the washed (=burned) out result we can see in some videos and preserve as much details as the sensor can see.

To simplify a bit : white area cannot be darkened (= no data) black area are bunch of nuance of dark colors which can always be brightened (= data)

imho that should of course be a specific WB option for techie customers wich will not complains for dark pictures

I haven't actually used mine at night since the modification so I will be curious too...

I'm not sure your WB rule works with the WDR processing that the 0806 does, it tends to collect detail whatever the light level from the merged exposures, the main limitation is that the darker areas will get destroyed by motion blur if you are moving and there isn't anything that can be done about that. I actually keep my white balance set to cloudy most of the time as I like colourful images but that does mean it doesn't correct for orange street lights at night.

 

[richcam]

Hi Nigel, I installed your firmware last night onto the 0806 and testing today though it is rather overcast, I forgot to look at what the default settings are, so it will be interesting to see what improvements there are when I take a look later this evening.

Have fitted a Kingston 64GB class 10 micro SD card into the 0806 so it will be interesting to see how it performs and what size the video files are.

Will post an update in the next few days.

 

[Nigel]

Hi Nigel, I installed your firmware last night onto the 0806 and testing today though it is rather overcast, I forgot to look at what the default settings are, so it will be interesting to see what improvements there are when I take a look later this evening.

Have fitted a Kingston 64GB class 10 micro SD card into the 0806 so it will be interesting to see how it performs and what size the video files are.

Will post an update in the next few days.

It's been very dark here today, not good conditions for a dashcam although you might be able to compare it with the Mobius while using headlights, should be some more sunshine on the way over the next few days. Default settings use the best resolution/quality, but have no GPS info overlaid.

 

[richcam]

It's been very dark here today, not good conditions for a dashcam although you might be able to compare it with the Mobius while using headlights, should be some more sunshine on the way over the next few days. Default settings use the best resolution/quality, but have no GPS info overlaid.

The weather was pretty poor yesterday with very little sunshine, however I did notice that the 0806 did retain far more detail in the trees and bushes alongside the road when I was driving, even though the number-plates of approaching cars were blurred out to some degree, is definitely an improvement on the Mobius which looked far darker.

Nigel, you mentioned that GPS data was set to OFF with your default firmware settings yet my 0806 was still displaying speed information on a kind of random basis! - have definitely updated the firmware to your version because the splash screen shows a car with dashcamtalk at the bottom.

It's certainly brighter in Nottingham today so I will see how both cameras compare in decent sunlight and post a few comparison pics later if they are any good.

 

[Nigel]

Updating the firmware doesn't reset all the settings, only some of them! I guess using the menu to reset them probably does.

The WDR on the 0806 does seem quite good, the Mobius reminds me of my 0803 where things hidden in the shadows like bicycles and people tend to disappear yet the 0806 will show them as though there wasn't any issue, however at the expense of some extra motion blur at times on license plates.

have definitely updated the firmware to your version because the splash screen shows a car with dashcamtalk at the bottom.

It says "Dashcamtalk" at the top, the bottom is just a reflection - no CPL filter used.