A129 Pro firmware

[reverend]

I've been running mine here at -1 but haven't put the new firmware on yet to compare, doing it in a bit.

I've got to admit I prefer faster exposures to capture more close details and you can always boost brightness if needed. Even at -1 it hasn't seemed too dark, but I haven't done a night trip at -1 yet, just at standard.

The weather is due to change next week so it will be interesting to see how the camera copes with -1 in poor weather.

It's still early days for this combination of sensor and SoC so it will take time to get the most out of it all.

I need to have a word with our local forces to see if they can process 4k dashcam footage.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

 

[evad]

I've been running mine here at -1 but haven't put the new firmware on yet to compare, doing it in a bit.

If you're still running initial firmware in your A129P, could you check and provide its exact version / build number? Thanks.

 

[Nigel]

I need to have a word with our local forces to see if they can process 4k dashcam footage.

It can always be converted to 1080 H264 for our Police, courts, insurance, and zoomed in if necessary. In fact for the initial video it is probably sensible to do so and make it easy for them, keep the original in case it is questioned in court or the police need to run their number plate enhancement tools on it.
The thing that makes it admissible as evidence is your witness statement, not the format of the video.

I'm sure our new national system for processing dashcam video can cope with any resolution, even if individual police officers have difficulty!

 

[Nigel]

With EV set to -2/3, the exposure was still bright enough to see this matt-black Lamborghini Huracan in the shadows on a bright sunny morning

At least your Lambo had lights on. I passed this black TVR today, no lights, all back and under trees, could hardly see it myself but the A129 Pro has recorded it with good exposure. Unfortunately that means a lot of motion blur, but then any dashcam would have had a lot of motion blur and I don't think many others would have got a good exposure.

(Time was GMT, I had my lights on, as did everyone else except the TVR.)

 

[FishyChips]

Honestly the best videos I saw from this cam were from the first week of testing.

Not a fan of the blown-out skies in this newer firmware. Which are not even limited to tree cover. Shame because it looked great before.

IMO only the rear cam needed EV adjusting to make it brighter!

 

[TonyM]

Beta testing can involve trying something to see if it's better. Viofo have already said they will adjust the exposure down in the next version. Not every step is an improvement, but you can learn from it.

 

[reverend]

It can always be converted to 1080 H264 for our Police, courts, insurance, and zoomed in if necessary. In fact for the initial video it is probably sensible to do so and make it easy for them, keep the original in case it is questioned in court or the police need to run their number plate enhancement tools on it.
The thing that makes it admissible as evidence is your witness statement, not the format of the video.

I'm sure our new national system for processing dashcam video can cope with any resolution, even if individual police officers have difficulty!

I don't know if you've had many dealings with the courts but I've had to resubmit footage quite frequently for use in court cases over the last 18 months which was a pain for me and the officers involved and bizarrely each one usually had a different requirement. For example one wanted the footage on a USB stick they'd provide, another on DVD-R (had to be write once media and not RW so it couldn't be tampered with once in their hands) and another just asked for a Youtube link. And then each time a new witness statement and the evidence to be sealed. The CPS / solicitors will use any trick they can to get stuff thrown out.

I've dropped an email to our local police force who deal with dashcam clips to see what they say around whether they're set up for handling 4k clips in our area as they're not linked up with the Nextbase portal.

The Nextbase portal I think is a privately run commercial site that creates witness statements and then in their terms and conditions have it hidden away that they can use any submitted footage for their advertising. Crafty

On the A129 Pro front I've had a problem with this firmware already where video has gone missing and there is a 10 minute or so gap between the car coming out of parking mode and having any full time videos - have any of you seen similar? At first I wondered if maybe a card or clock issue so going to do some more testing this weekend with another card (I've been using a Sandisk Ultra A1 400GB card and it's already full and looping). I need to check the power on delay but not sure why video would kick in 10 minutes after the car starting up if there was an issue there (it would be dead the entire journey).

I've dusted my Macbook Pro off and it also has an issue playing back the A129 Pro 4k videos at maximum bitrate via Quicktime player. There must be something strange in the codec because it handles 4k 100Mb/s video from my Mavic 2 Pro with no issues, but it's as though it's only playing keyframes from the A129 Pro video.

I've downloaded VLC and that plays them with no frame drops, but again a potential issue for users if the video has an issue with the default media player - are there any other Mac users who can report how things look please in Quicktime?

..::: Edit ::..
I did read that some Macbook Pros from 2016 only have hardware acceleration for 4k 8bit videos but not 10bit colourspaces. Saying that a check of the A129 Pro file indicates it's 8 bit video anyway and further testing shows the same problem with the rear 1080p video playing around 2fps in Quicktime.

General
Complete name                            : /Desktop/20190903_154350F.MP4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                                 : mp42 (isom/avc1/mp42)
File size                                : 431 MiB
Duration                                 : 1 min 0 s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 60.3 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-09-03 15:44:50
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-09-03 15:44:50

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L5.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes

Format settings, Reference frames        : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=15
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1 min 0 s
Bit rate                                 : 59.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 30.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.237
Stream size                              : 422 MiB (98%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-09-03 15:44:5
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-09-03 15:44:50
Color range                              : Full
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

 

[reverend]

If you're still running initial firmware in your A129P, could you check and provide its exact version / build number? Thanks.

Sure, shipping firmware was v1.0 20190801 and then this one took it up to v1.0 20190916

I don't have a copy of the original firmware to roll back to unfortunately though, not sure if there are other versions available from testing?

 

[Nigel]

I've dropped an email to our local police force who deal with dashcam clips to see what they say around whether they're set up for handling 4k clips in our area as they're not linked up with the Nextbase portal.

There are not many police forces left who haven't taken up "Operation Snap", I guess yours will very soon since there is now a national centre for processing/analysing/enhancing dashcam video, built with special government funding as a result of the success of Operation Snap in supposedly saving lives, and the police forces get some funding for joining up. Yes, the Nextbase portal is an advertising gimmick, can be useful for Police forces who haven't implemented Operation Snap, but for most the map now just links to the relevant Police submission page on the relevant Police web site.

The courts are totally separate, and yes there will be no consistency, but all valid evidence should be accepted in some format, and re-encoding into DVD standard or anything else should not invalidate the evidence, as long as there is a witness statement to say that the re-encoded video is valid. That means that if you need a 1080 resolution DVD, you can zoom in on the interesting bits and even do slow-mo video, it is the witness statement that makes the video valid evidence.

I'm not a legal expert, that is just what I have observed.

 

[Nigel]

I've dusted my Macbook Pro off and it also has an issue playing back the A129 Pro 4k videos at maximum bitrate via Quicktime player. There must be something strange in the codec because it handles 4k 100Mb/s video from my Mavic 2 Pro with no issues, but it's as though it's only playing keyframes from the A129 Pro video.

I guess the Mavic is Amberella like the rest of DJI, big differences to Novatek. There was a post the other day about an Apple product
pausing every 0.5 second for low bitrate Blueskysea B1W video, as though it was having issues with keyframes ... except the B1W doesn't have keyframes every 0.5 seconds, so that was obviously not the issue. I've never liked Quicktime!

 

[Nigel]

Honestly the best videos I saw from this cam were from the first week of testing.

...

Not a fan of the blown-out skies in this newer firmware. Which are not even limited to tree cover. Shame because it looked great before.

IMO only the rear cam needed EV adjusting to make it brighter!

Yes, that early version had really nice exposure in bright sunlight, much better than some of the even earlier versions. Sometimes too many testers can push things in the wrong direction!

I think the current issue with "blown-out skies" and white buildings and white cars, must be that they are now using too much ISO in bright sunlight in an attempt to reduce motion blur and the sensor is saturating. More ISO in the dark is good to keep the motion blur down, but it wasn't necessary in full sunshine.

 

[CaptureYourAction]

Does the Pro support cards larger than 256GB?

 

[Tractor]

Some more samples taken with the latest firmware at the "MAXIMUM" bitrate.
YouTube bitrate for uoloading is max 45000 Mbps were the "MAXIMUM" bitrate setting is near to 60000 Mbps.

 

[reverend]

Does the Pro support cards larger than 256GB?

I've been using a Sandisk Ultra A1 400GB as a test, and it was fine until it filled the card and I've since had issues with missing video - unfortunately it was the same time as the new firmware so I don't know which caused it. I'm reverting back to a 256GB card for now to troubleshoot further but as you can imagine it takes a while to fill a 400GB card

 

[Tractor]

Sandisk are known to have problems with dashcams. The cam is only guaranteed for 256GB.

 

[Nigel]

YouTube bitrate for uoloading is max 45000 Mbps

I think that is only the recommended max bitrate isn't it? If you send more then Youtube will throw away the extra detail.
I would think that 45 Gbps would be enough for anyone

 

[Nigel]

Some more samples taken with the latest firmware at the "MAXIMUM" bitrate.

A few over exposed, pure white buildings there, also seems to be lacking colour saturation, not sure if you adjusted the colour or if it is just the over exposure damaging the colour? Mine seems to be OK on colour when not over exposed, although I think I prefered the rather strong saturation of the previous version!

 

[reverend]

Sandisk are known to have problems with dashcams. The cam is only guaranteed for 256GB.

That's why I'm testing bigger as the big cards will only get more popular as time goes on It wrote 400GB with no issues until I did the latest firmware so more testing is required which I'll do over the next week.

Technically Novatek should be capped at 32GB due to no exFAT support anyway - FAT32 on larger cards is always a bodge, but as they tend to have the same cluster sizes etc normally the platform should work with the FAT32 cards up to sizes years away

 

[reverend]

I've done some more testing on the Macbook today with the preview in Finder and Quicktime.

There are no issues with 1080p video from a few Street Guardian cams, no issues with 2560x1080 video from a Street Storm camera, no issues with 2560x1600 video from the Viofo A119v3 either - but it has issues with both the 4k and rear 1080p A129 Pro video. The resolution looks great in comparison to the lower resolution cameras just need to work out what causes the frame rate issues.

Something weird is going on with the files produced by the A129 Pro and hopefully an easy fix as otherwise people who don't use forums like this will be sending cameras back thinking something is up when in reality there's no fault. I've mailed Bill some sample video of the issue so hopefully it's a simple enough fix.

If anyone knows of any other cameras using this chipset and can point me to demo video I'm happy to test to see if it's an SDK issue

 

[Nigel]

If anyone knows of any other cameras using this chipset and can point me to demo video I'm happy to test to see if it's an SDK issue

It is a brand new chipset, you won't find anything else using it yet!