Mobius 2 Action/Dash Cam support thread

[Nigel]

h265 will probably be 5-15% more efficient for dashcam use, that is not much. And all of this is based on how h265 works
in order to save space, if you are interested you can read about it and watch videos online. But the short version is that
h265 has a dynamic grid pattern it can use to compress parts of a video even more, so if you have a static scenery or
the right conditions you can save lots of space. h265 is not something new, it is just a improvement on the h264.

Can someone try this and give us a real figure instead of a guess?

If the camera uses fixed bitrate it wont save any space unless you choose a lower bitrate so the 5-15% saving is not possible, the best that can be done is to record some dashcam footage in H264 and then see how much bitrate H265 can save without noticeably loosing quality at high speed under trees.... My guess is that the next lower bitrate will loose some quality at times and so the real answer is 0% saving... Of course for archiving your dashcam footage, you can convert to variable rate H265 and that can probably save a huge amount of disk space so it does have it's uses, but maybe not for real time recording in a dashcam...

 

[jokiin]

so the real answer is 0% saving...

I suspect you could be right

I don't see it being of any great benefit for 1080p, perhaps for 4k, Tom seems to have based a lot of his perceived benefits on what happens when he re-encodes files

 

[Pimpy1]

I only get about 10-15% better compression with h265 over 264 from moving footage (driving around). I you use it in a fixed position, say on a tripod filming birds in the yard, I get more like a 25% reduction in file size.

 

[thancam]

I use this player:
http://player.gomlab.com/download.gom?language=eng
and i can easy read video of H.265 on my laptop.
My laptop is: i5 - 2540m cpu@2,60 Ghz, 4Gb ram
That's weird. I can read h265 video on my laptop with MCP - HC64 too. Why do you compain about not to open h265 video ?

 

[Yooshaw]

some statements from Tom Frank on this

TF You have the option to record at the same bit rate with either codec, or chose a lower one when using HEVC to get smaller files while not giving up any video quality.

TF But with H.265 codec, the bit rate can be about 1/2 of what the H.264 sample uses and still get the same quality! But you have to manually pick a lower setting in the configuration to do that, and it's not clear from the settings right now what bit rates they produce until you shoot some clips. I'm developing a table with these values, but it's not complete. At any rate, you won't improve on the original using H.265 vs H.264, so you might as well save yourself some time.

some replies to the comments

Me so H.265 at 20mbit will deliver the same sort of results as H.264 at 40mbit, I think that's what you're saying

TF The quality of the two clips (all other things being equal, e.g. cameras, settings, scene, resolution, frame rate, etc.) will be virtually identical, BUT the H.265 file will be approximately 1/2 as large!

Me so H.265 at 40mbit won't look any better than it did at 20mbit
TF NO, it has the potential to look better (as does H.264), as the bit rate increases, but it depends on how much detail and motion are in a scene.

Me and won't look any better than H.264 at 40mbit either?
TF H.265 has the potential to look better than H.264 at any given bit rate, but again it depends on many things (e.g. cameras, settings, scene, resolution, frame rate, etc.). For 1080p-60fps video, you may or may not see a visual improvement. I suggest doing a google search on "H.265" or "HEVC" for MANY hits that go into this a lot deeper than I can do here, some have image samples.

to say that the contradictions are confusing is an understatement, still can't make sense of Tom's logic on this

I think I understand what Tom Frank is trying to say. All things being equal (hardware, scenery), H.265 at 20mbit is the same quality as H.264 at 40mbit. H.265 at 40mbit is double the quality of H.264 at 40 mbit.

The Wikipedia article on it seems to corroborate this as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding "HEVC offers about double the data compression ratio at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate."

We need someone with two M2s to test it out how it plays out in the real word with the M2. Of course the "quality" part will be subjective when reviewing.

 

[jokiin]

I think I understand what Tom Frank is trying to say. .

glad you understood because he kept contradicting himself and didn't seem to make much sense at all to me

We need someone with two M2s to test it out how it plays out in the real word with the M2. Of course the "quality" part will be subjective when reviewing.

based on current performance I think that would be quite hard, firmware still needs a lot of improvement

 

[kamkar]

Today i found out a M2 can take a little water for a few milliseconds, and to dry it out just let it run for a few more hours and it will bake what ever water inside the lens out.

So ! i am lucky my M2 is still working @ fate

After all it is a action camera and i put the A in action

 

[Dashmellow]

based on current performance I think that would be quite hard, firmware still needs a lot of improvement

New betas for M2 are coming along, but still a long way to go.

 

[jokiin]

New betas for M2 are coming along, but still a long way to go.

yeah I'd like to think it gets some serious attention, the hardware is capable but the firmware needs a lot of work, they're now perhaps busy with Mobius Mini as well which is going to have its own set of challenges, don't understand their hardware choice on that one

 

[Dashmellow]

yeah I'd like to think it gets some serious attention, the hardware is capable but the firmware needs a lot of work, they're now perhaps busy with Mobius Mini as well which is going to have its own set of challenges, don't understand their hardware choice on that one

I've been thinking about the market for the new mini as well and my guess is that there is a demand for a very tiny and lightweight FPV camera suitable for smaller drones. The fact that it comes with the AV cable seems to suggest that. The original key chain #16 still sells fairly well, apparently.

 

[jokiin]

I've been thinking about the market for the new mini as well and my guess is that there is a demand for a very tiny and lightweight FPV camera suitable for smaller drones. The fact that it comes with the AV cable seems to suggest that. The original key chain #16 still sells fairly well, apparently.

yeah it's definitely an RC product, very short use cycle, I suspect a lot about the 30 minute battery run time has to do with the hardware choice, it would cook if run for longer times so it needs some limits imposed one way or another

 

[kamkar]

Drone races are pretty short, how short i don't know but i suspect its 10 minutes tops.

But i know the action is fast, from a drone perspective its just one big rush, so a camera have to be on its toes to keep up with that.

 

[jokiin]

Drone races are pretty short, how short i don't know but i suspect its 10 minutes tops.

But i know the action is fast, from a drone perspective its just one big rush, so a camera have to be on its toes to keep up with that.

it probably has the potential to be the go to product for that kind of use, not sure how big a market that is but I guess the RC Group forum is going to cater to that crowd better than anywhere else

 

[kamkar]

Drone race is still getting bigger and bigger i think, and i assume the FPV equipment get better and better too.
And as FPV grows i think we might start to see more of that on other things but drones and planes.

 

[richcam]

I recently purchased a shiny new Mobius 2 camera which looks very nice indeed, however I have a problem with regard to the fact that after formatting the new SD card in-camera as per the instructions and transferring the config file to the SD card for manually editing, I now find my MacBook Pro can't read the card so it doesn't appear on the desktop for editing in notepad, has anyone else encountered this issue? is there a workaround?

For info the SD card is a new Kingston 128 GB UHS Class 1/Class10 Flash Memory Card (microSDXC to SD Adapter Included) dispatched and sold by Amazon.

Screenshot enclosed:

 

[kamkar]

Nothing similar here, but im a PC user so no wonder.

 

[richcam]

It's just odd that it doesn't work because I purchased an original Mobius action cam quite some time ago and it worked absolutely fine and could edit the config file in notepad without any problems!

 

[kamkar]

Do the card work fine otherwise ?
Myself i have had a couple of cards go into read only mode almost the instant i put them in use.

 

[richcam]

I recently purchased a shiny new Mobius 2 camera which looks very nice indeed, however I have a problem with regard to the fact that after formatting the new SD card in-camera as per the instructions and transferring the config file to the SD card for manually editing, I now find my MacBook Pro can't read the card so it doesn't appear on the desktop for editing in notepad, has anyone else encountered this issue? is there a workaround?

For info the SD card is a new Kingston 128 GB UHS Class 1/Class10 Flash Memory Card (microSDXC to SD Adapter Included) dispatched and sold by Amazon.

Screenshot enclosed:

A quick update because I've solved the issue by formatting the SD card MS-DOS (FAT) in the MacBook Pro by using the 'Disk Utility' app which is included in all Macs. I can also confirm that it works, though I also tried exFAT to see what happened and that doesn't work!

I then downloaded the latest firmware from http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=34846438&postcount=3
NOTE: scroll to the bottom of the page for the download link!

I then copied the three files (not the folders) onto the SD card, then ejected the SD card from the Mac and reinserted into the Mobius 2, then briefly held down the power button as advised in the rcgroups post in order for firmware in the camera to be updated.

Having recorded a few test videos and then viewed the files using VLC I noticed that the video playback was awful, so transferred the config file from the Mobius back onto the SD card, back into the Mac and edited the txt file using notepad and changed a few of the settings, most notably going back to .h264 instead of h265 which I guessed would be causing the grief. Much to my relief the Mobuis 2 now seems to be recording decent quality video in h264.

The next step will be fitting the Mobius 2 in my car alongside the Mobius 1 and recording video simultaneously in order to compare the results.

Will keep you updated with progress....

 

[jokiin]

I then downloaded the latest firmware from http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=34846438&postcount=3
NOTE: scroll to the bottom of the page for the download link!

it should have had that same version on it already when you got it