SG9665GC firmware updates and pre release access

Yeah the 9665GC is wound up allright to make the best possible low light performance, i think this is what make it have a fjew problems when there is plenty of light around.
Throw in a little shade / darkness in the frame and the GC immediately start to compensate for that, though it's not really needed.

Reacting like that to me it seem like the WDR dont come into its own handeling the shaded areas along the road.

I would love to see a side by side in similar surroundings with WDR off on one of the cameras, to see if the WDR work get washed out by the camera reacting to "low light"

At lest thats how it seem to me.
 
Yes, it does seem like the Sony sensor has inherent problems under these conditions that are apparently difficult to address. Unless this can be fixed adequately, this is a problem for someone like me who regularly drives in such conditions, such as under tree canopies a large percentage of the time.
 
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Dashmellow said:
I've mentioned several times that I've been very pleased to finally see the excellent progress and improvement regarding the serious exposure and contrast issues with the SG9665GC I first tried to bring to everyone's attention in the "High Contrast/Dynamic Range Flaw" thread I started last March. The new AE tables have made a major difference in the performance and usability of the camera for anyone who regularly must deal with high dynamic range scenarios. I've been testing out my new number 5 replacement unit that arrived last week and things have been looking pretty good with Beta 19 and the camera has been performing well overall.

Yesterday, I decided to experiment with tilting the camera down slightly to more closely match the standard and oft recommended 60/40 ratio of road/vehicle hood vs sky/horizon.

As many here know, I use a four camera set-up which includes the SG9665GC up front and three Mobius cameras facing the sides and rear. Tilting the camera down to match what has always been normal practice for me with other brands of cameras provides better coverage on either side of the front of my vehicle and achieves the desired overlap of coverage from the two side facing and rear cameras as to more fully capture 360 degree coverage around my vehicle.

Unfortunately, tilting the camera down apparently causes the entire new AE table improvements to completely fall apart. Depending on the conditions, things are as bad as they were as demonstrated in my other thread. Rather than having brief blow-outs of bright glare in the upper end of the tonal range that quickly recover, the camera now manifests fairly sustained blooms and glare which render the video capture highly problamatic. With the new AE tables it seems that the angle of aim is much more sensitive than it was previously, since before the new firmware update changing the tilt of the lens made only a minor difference with the contrast/exposure problems.

The camera is running Beta 19 in the following video clip with no CPL but with a black dash mat. Camera is set to "Average" exposure. (Will flash Beta 20 shortly, but for AE testing it should make no difference with v.19 from my understanding.)


For a frame of reference comparison of camera tilt, here is a screen shot of the previous camera aim. Obviously, unless or until we see further AE table improvements I will be going back to the previous camera aiming scheme with slightly less hood in the FOV which generally seems to work much better. The question for me is, why does the SG9665GC struggle with this when other cameras apparently do not as demonstrated in my other thread on this issue?

View attachment 24019

Please note: The rattling noise you hear in the video has nothing to do with the camera. Yesterday, as an experiment, I installed an indoor/outdoor digital thermometer to monitor the ambient temperatures inside my vehicle as well as directly at the camera itself. I have the wired outdoor temperature probe positioned directly on top of the camera near the plug ports and the indoor LCD module mounted on my dashboard. After reviewing yesterday's footage I can see that I will need to do a better job of securing the probe near the camera at the top of my windshield to prevent it from making any noise.

Also, you may notice an unusual amount of macro blocking in the YouTube video. While it may be difficult to see in the video but as the rattling temperature probe will attest to, the road I am traveling on is in quite bad condition and is rather bumpy and this is one of the reasons the video is not quite as sharp as it may be capable of on smooth pavement. Interestingly, towards the end of the clip I pass into a different, more wealthy township where the road is kept in better condition.
Click to expand...
Sky is: 4 and the street is: 6.
 
and if you can install one mobius or dr32 side by side will be great. To be fair.
 
Dash, Maybe you can share 50/50 vs 40/60 raw .mov test results so we can tweak AE further. I'd go back to aiming how ever you liked it previously for now.
 
Pier28 said:
Dash, Maybe you can share 50/50 vs 40/60 raw .mov test results so we can tweak AE further. I'd go back to aiming how ever you liked it previously for now.
Click to expand...

I've just added a Dropbox download link to the post.

Living as I do out in the middle of nowhere in a rural area I have miserable 3 Mbps/768 Kbps DSL bandwidth as my only connectivity option. Often, it doesn't even approach those speeds, especially for uploads. Accordingly, I rarely upload much video. Between the above YouTube clip and the DropBox upload link I've spent well over six hours uploading those two files at the expense of other online activities. So, forgive me, I've had enough uploading for just now. Maybe another time, perhaps in a day or two for what you are asking. This was also why I only posted a screen shot of the different lens angle from the other day.
 
I'm going to add in that the more and more I watch my videos, I can see what dashmellow is talking about. The SG does have a problem with brightness blowout that needs adjusting. Areas that aren't that bright when I see them are blown out on my videos. So yes, it is something that does need adjusting. An example of what I am talking about would be the thread he just linked to - the 2 images right above each other - Mobius vs. the SG. You can see the SG blows out the brightness where it really isn't that bright.
 
Thats the problem living out there where it is nice to live, can be hard to get good internet.

Here thats not so much a problem tho there is many places where the fiber havent reached the back bleechers yet, but looking out for that when buying a house you can get a okay location and fiber.
But offcourse this beeing Denmark you are not really "out there" after all, but i can make do with a 1/4 mile to the next house.
 
normm said:
...I'd say with the CPL the GC is still better at night than my old A118C was.
Click to expand...
I can confirm that. GC with CPL is better at night than A118C (and G1W-H) without.
 
Dashmellow said:
I've mentioned several times that I've been very pleased to finally see the excellent progress and improvement regarding the serious exposure and contrast issues with the SG9665GC I first tried to bring to everyone's attention in the "High Contrast/Dynamic Range Flaw" thread I started last March. The new AE tables have made a major difference in the performance and usability of the camera for anyone who regularly must deal with high dynamic range scenarios. I've been testing out my new number 5 replacement unit that arrived last week and things have been looking pretty good with Beta 19 and the camera has been performing well overall.

Yesterday, I decided to experiment with tilting the camera down slightly to more closely match the standard and oft recommended 60/40 ratio of road/vehicle hood vs sky/horizon.

As many here know, I use a four camera set-up which includes the SG9665GC up front and three Mobius cameras facing the sides and rear. Tilting the camera down to match what has always been normal practice for me with other brands of cameras provides better coverage on either side of the front of my vehicle and achieves the desired overlap of coverage from the two side facing and rear cameras as to more fully capture 360 degree coverage around my vehicle.

Unfortunately, tilting the camera down apparently causes the entire new AE table improvement efforts to completely fall apart. Depending on the conditions, things are almost as bad as they were as demonstrated in my other thread on this subject. Rather than having brief blow-outs of bright glare in the upper end of the tonal range that quickly recover, the camera now manifests fairly sustained blooms and glare which render the video capture highly problematic. With the new AE tables it seems that the angle of aim over a dark vehicle hood is much more sensitive than it was previously. Before the new firmware update changing the tilt of the lens made a relatively a minor difference with the contrast/exposure problems.

The camera is running Beta 19 in the following video clip with no CPL but with a black dash mat. Camera is set to "Average" exposure. (Will flash Beta 20 shortly, but for AE testing it should make no difference with v.19 from my understanding.)


Download

For a frame of reference comparison of camera tilt, here is a screen shot of the previous camera aim. Obviously, unless or until we see further AE table improvements I will be going back to the previous camera aiming scheme with slightly less hood in the FOV which generally seems to work much better. Still, I'm happy for the current AE improvements which make the camera much more viable considering my usual driving conditions. The question for me is, why does the SG9665GC struggle with this when other cameras apparently do not as demonstrated in my other thread on this issue? Seems to be a Sony sensor thing.

View attachment 24019

Please note: The rattling noise you hear in the video has nothing to do with the camera. Yesterday, as an experiment, I installed an indoor/outdoor digital thermometer to monitor the ambient temperatures inside my vehicle as well as directly at the camera itself. I have the wired outdoor temperature probe positioned directly on top of the camera near the plug ports and the indoor LCD module mounted on my dashboard. After reviewing yesterday's footage I can see that I will need to do a better job of securing the probe near the camera at the top of my windshield to prevent it from making any noise.

Also, you may notice an unusual amount of macro blocking in the YouTube video. While it may be difficult to see in the video but as the rattling temperature probe will attest to, the road I am traveling on is in quite bad condition and is rather bumpy and this is one of the reasons the video is not quite as sharp as it may be capable of being on smoother pavement. Interestingly, towards the end of the clip I start to pass into a different, more wealthy township where the road is kept in better condition. Shortly after the clip ends the road becomes much smoother and more recently paved.
Click to expand...
The raw file is better than youtube's video.
I have another ideal. Nextime, Would you try this again and turn wdr off ? In my city, I can't find anywhere like this. It's all the street with a lot of vehicles.
after see again these screenshoots, I don't think it's a AE table issue. The whole picture is overexpode.
 
I think WDR on/off only made a difference in last years firmware. (For daytime)
I was told WDR on/off makes no difference in 2016 for daytime.
 
So why ? It have to has some reason. Everything has its reason.
Have you SG guys ever analyzed firmware from DOD LS470 ? It has the same configuation and the image quality seems better at night. Maybe you can try to sent the firmware of DOD LS470 to your engineer. Let's he study it. Maybe he will find something useful.
 
thancam said:
The raw file is better than youtube's video.
I have another ideal. Nextime, Would you try this again and turn wdr off ? In my city, I can't find anywhere like this. It's all the street with a lot of vehicles.
after see again these screenshoots, I don't think it's a AE table issue. The whole picture is overexpode.
Click to expand...

Yes, the RAW video is way better than what we see after YouTube mangles them. That's why I added the DropBox download.

I've tried turning off WDR one time and any difference was so subtle as to be virtually unnoticeable, so I think @Pier28 is right. It also depends somewhat on the particular scene and lighting in view of the camera at any given moment. Let me see what I can do. Uploading video is a pain for me as I've explained. Another thing is that even with my crappy bandwidth being bad enough as it is my ISP may be throttling me if I upload very big files. Today's uploads got even slower the longer it took to transmit them.
 
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I doubt other dashcams has the same configuation have the same problem ? ex: DOD LS460, DOD LS470 ? anytek A3 ? even mini 0903 ?
 
thancam said:
I doubt other dashcams has the same configuation have the same problem ? ex: DOD LS460, DOD LS470 ? anytek A3 ? even mini 0903 ?
Click to expand...

I guess I have to agree. There have been a number of questions for me about the SG9665GC development compared with certain other cameras in the same class. I've actually been thinking about bringing them up for discussion in my "SG9665GC discouragements" thread. I've held off commenting for the time being in part because I've felt like various recent developments as evidenced in this thread demonstrate a concerted, albeit somewhat overdue effort to address what at least for me have been significant shortcomings with this camera. It's not only firmware, it's hardware as well. I mean, I'm on my fifth replacement camera at this point and while that may not be common, it has turned out that things like focus problems are far more prevalent than I was told when I first reported it.

On the other hand, as @jokiin has often stated, he invites people to report issues so they can be corrected (eventually :)) and unlike almost any other manufacturer or developer he is right here to discuss the issues as well as to provide an unprecedented level of product/warranty support. If I had had the same experiences with any other brand, I'm quite sure I would have cut my losses and bought something else by now.
 
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Hi Jokiin (a.o.),

You mentioned the cold start GPS. But why don't you save the GPS info when the dashcam will be turned off? And when you startup the device you initially use the hot start GPS method.
 
frankvdb said:
Hi Jokiin (a.o.),

You mentioned the cold start GPS. But why don't you save the GPS info when the dashcam will be turned off? And when you startup the device you initially use the hot start GPS method.
Click to expand...

GPS doesn't work like that
 
Pier28 said:
Dash, Maybe you can share 50/50 vs 40/60 raw .mov test results so we can tweak AE further. I'd go back to aiming how ever you liked it previously for now.
Click to expand...

the other two tables are not find tuned yet, one will be adjusted to something that is going to suit @Dashmellow and @Feitelijk better than the current one size fits all table as we'll be taking emphasis off that bottom section of the video which will allow the camera to be tilted further down without having a heavy impact on the AE results, it's still a work in progress
 
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