Pittasoft Blackvue DR500GW-HD

[jokiin]

Hi Des,

That picture quality appears below average for this camera. Note that I have read Russian users are experiencing some pixelation (not as bad as your video) and are hacking the firmware to increase the bit rate. This has helped improve the picture quality.

One other thing I wanted to point out. This video, like many others with pixelation, has a lot of trees. It seems that these dash cams struggle when driving on streets with a lot of trees. How is the video on city streets?

Here is another video...this will show that when slowing or at a complete stop the quality is good, but when driving, its really poor. What's with the light/dark flickering????...I cannot really do anything about the trees where I live.

A camera that is allergic to trees...AWESOME! :lol: :lol:

Video Footage

wow, that is truly terrible, I hope that you just have a faulty camera and that's not representative of how it is meant to perform

 

[Mtz]

How are you uploading the videos on Youtube?
Just directly uploading them to Youtube from the card? Without cut or splitting the video?

Also I think is possible to be some humidity inside your camera because of unclear recording. And this is not about the artifacts.

If there is still a problem with the trees maybe the processor and compression algorithm is bad, so if we have many cameras with this behavior is better to know the chipset are using the koreans.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[jokiin]

How are you uploading the videos on Youtube?

enjoy,
Mtz

I don't think it's the case with this one but always keep in mind that YouTube re-encodes the video and the quality is never as good as straight off the camera, they might offer 1080p resolution but they sure mess with everything else, results they offer are ok but not great

 

[Des]

How are you uploading the videos on Youtube?
Just directly uploading them to Youtube from the card? Without cut or splitting the video?

Also I think is possible to be some humidity inside your camera because of unclear recording. And this is not about the artifacts.

If there is still a problem with the trees maybe the processor and compression algorithm is bad, so if we have many cameras with this behavior is better to know the chipset are using the koreans.

enjoy,
Mtz

It has nothing to do with the uploading, as the quality is good when slowing or stationary...anyhow I transfer to my PC before uploading to YT but we are grabbing at straws now IMO... The company where I purchased the camera are aware of the problem and they are working to find a solution.

I will update you when I know more!

 

[Mtz]

I don't think it's the case with this one but always keep in mind that YouTube re-encodes the video and the quality is never as good as straight off the camera, they might offer 1080p resolution but they sure mess with everything else, results they offer are ok but not great

About Youtube we must to be fair: on his old times almost everybody complained about the quality of reencoding and they were right. But after the youtube used the free X264 encoder and listened the X264 developers regarding the settings used for the codec. the quality is much, much better. And the only thing which can stop their quality I think is only the bandwidth. Of course is not the same quality as the original but very possible than the average Joe which is downloading a software from internet and starting encoding it. Many of them don't know are reencoding the video when they expect just to cut it, so the most lost details are in their hands. Just look on youtube and see how many russian videos have some big letters about some videoconverter-ru or about some movavi printed on the video.

For me is simple: if I want a simple cut I am loading the video into MKV merge and set the desired seconds. Than uploading the MKV to youtube.

And if many cameras are recording 1 minute length I think this is better for the user because he can upload just a small video without cutting it.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[jokiin]

I agree the results YouTube offer now are far better than what they used to offer and I do understand that they need to compress to save space, what they offer is free and no cause to complain, if we're just watching some idiot fall of his bike or whatever the results are great, when we're trying to look subjectively at sample videos and critique the results it's not so good but that's the nature of the beast I guess

 

[DashCamMan]

As for being "allergic to trees", every time we see a badly pixelated video the trees are there. Usually with cameras using a low bit rate. When I ask the owner to post a video in another scenario they rarely do.

Your camera seems worse than most but the combination of low bit rate and trees are likely a contributing factor.

 

[Des]

As for being "allergic to trees", every time we see a badly pixelated video the trees are there. Usually with cameras using a low bit rate. When I ask the owner to post a video in another scenario they rarely do.

Your camera seems worse than most but the combination of low bit rate and trees are likely a contributing factor.

I don't have a video of town driving unfortunately, but hope the last video shows that when slowing down, the quality gets much better. I will update the thread when I hear back from the seller who has admitted the quality is v.poor.

D

 

[horsepower]

I posted a video earlier in this thread of driving in town. It's better lit than this video, but you can still see pixelation, especially in the lower part if the screen.

 

[Audime]

ok, here/at Youtube shows my cam in action with, without tress and stuff.

Lets remember though, it is a 2 megapixel camera right!? Not to be compared with a 1080p HD Iphone 5 which is 8 mega pixys.
If I shrink the window in media player to tiny, it looks very, uh, small but quality is better, ish, but still pixy.

These uploaded as raw mp4.

It does the job, and well I want to believe, so im still happy though.

 

[horsepower]

Those videos are pretty much on par with what I am experiencing as well. Here is a sample:

Sample Video 1

Sample Video 2

I am finding a lot of pixelation in the videos... You can notice it most towards the bottom, right in front of the nose of the car... Still not that bad, but should be a lot better for a camera touting 1080p. Just as stated before, the pixelation seems to be worse when in motion... The quality when stopped is vastly better.

I find the night time videos very dark compared to what I have seen from any finevu product, or even my DOD 550gse for that matter.

 

[Des]

ok, here/at Youtube shows my cam in action with, without tress and stuff.

Lets remember though, it is a 2 megapixel camera right!? Not to be compared with a 1080p HD Iphone 5 which is 8 mega pixys.
If I shrink the window in media player to tiny, it looks very, uh, small but quality is better, ish, but still pixy.

These uploaded as raw mp4.

It does the job, and well I want to believe, so im still happy though.

Wow the quality of your videos are far better than mine...and you have trees beginning to think that my unit is faulty.

 

[DashCamMan]

The videos from Audime and horsepower appear to be the standard BlackVue quality even though there is a bit of pixelation. As mentioned before, increasing the bit rate will reduce the pixelation (Russians have hacked it to increase it).

Here is a video comparing the DR400G-HD II vs DR500GW-HD. The DR400G-HD II has slightly better picture quality but notice the wider angle of the DR500GW-HD. Since they both have a 2MP sensor, the wider angle of the DR500GW-HD means slightly worse picture quality.

 

[DashCamMan]

Here are some videos from Russia with the bitrate set at 12Mbps.

 

[jokiin]

Here is a video comparing the DR400G-HD II vs DR500GW-HD. The DR400G-HD II has slightly better picture quality but notice the wider angle of the DR500GW-HD. Since they both have a 2MP sensor, the wider angle of the DR500GW-HD means slightly worse picture quality.

you normally need to up the bitrate to compensate when doing wide view like that, as I understand it Pittasoft halved their bitrate in an attempt to address overheating issues from earlier models, I think it was a bandaid solution though as they ineviteably traded off some quality as a result

 

[Mtz]

Please read here about my idea about resolution and bitrate. I don't want to post here just because that information is general and I don't want to write only for a specific camera.

In the Android application is a setting which sound strange for my english:
Video Compression Setting
I think if this is enabled, you will have the different codec bitrate (smaller)?



You can reply here not necessary in that topic if you want to discuss about compression settings of this camera.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[DashCamMan]

The DR500GW-HD has 2 bitrate settings available. If the Video Compression Setting is not enabled it records with a bit rate of 7.5Mbps. If you enable the Video Compression Setting it records at 5Mbps. In comparison, the original Blackvue DR400G-HD's default bit rate was 10Mbps.

Unfortunately, pixelation is appearing at both those settings. Hence the Russians have hacked the firmware to increase the bit rate. 12Mbps appears to be the most popular, but like you posted some have set it as high as 17Mbps. This has made a noticeable improvement in video quality.

The negatives of a higher bit rate are larger file sizes and and harder working processor (i.e. hotter!). Really, Pittasoft should make the bitrate user adjustable and deal with the camera's heat in different ways.

 

[jokiin]

enabling compression I suspect would involve using a smaller bitrate to save space

my cam has adjustable bitrate (from 6mb/sec through to 15mb/sec in 1mb increments) and there is a noticeable difference in file size and quality between the different settings

 

[Mtz]

[spoil]Your A5 cam with a girl name? :mrgreen:[/spoil]
If your settings for achieve the best quantizer then some bitrate can be recommended to keep a reasonable file size and good quality.
But having a restriction to not become hot is not OK because like on our discussion here, is possible Pitasoft can't go more than 7500kbps for 1080p because of heat, even if I expected something about 10000kbps and 7000kbps for 720p.
If the BlackVue offer only 7500 and 5000kbps bitrates no matter if 720p or 1080p, again, I can say people must stay at 720p and 7500kbps ("Video Compression Setting unchecked").
On DCT page there is still no a clear information about the used chipset.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[Audime]

Can you please get more details on the Russian hack Dashcam?