Nov 27, 2012, 03:39 PM
|
|
|
United States, MA, Walpole
Joined Dec 2003
14,622 Posts
|
New v0.58 FW Now Available
After many manipulations of programming and testing, I'm pleased to announce a new MOV FW with the following changes:
Video Out- now has toggles for mode (NTSC or PAL) and aspect ratio (16:9 and 4:3)
- 16:9 will be letter-boxed (black bars top and bottom in the taller 4:3 aspect ratio frame as before)
- 4:3 will be an image stretched vertically to fill the blank letter-boxed bars
- Auto-shutoff will be automatically set to OFF when this function is turned on (prevents losing FPV video if the user forgets to turn it off!
- If HD recording is being done concurrently with video out, a 30 sec. countdown timer will appear briefly in the upper right corner of the video out display when the memory card space will only hold approximately that much additional recording. When the timer times out, it will disappear when the camera stops recording, and a small "card full" alert will appear for about 5 sec. in the center of the video out display. Video out will not be interrupted by any of this and will continue after the recording stops until the camera loses power or is manually turned off. The purpose of this is to give anyone shooting aerial video a "heads-up" to get any special video they may want to capture in the remaining time.
- If battery power starts to get dangerously low, a low battery alert will be displayed in the video out stream.
- Approximately 90 secs. of video out will remain with the internal camera battery before it can cease to function
- Larger batteries with lesser voltage drop off will give proportionally longer time before video out is lost, and weak batteries may decay faster with proportionally earlier video out cut-off. The purpose is to give FPV fliers a "heads up" to get the aircraft on the ground ASAP or risk losing video while still flying.
Motion Detection- Now has new settings for Sensitivity and Timeout delay
- Sensitivity can be toggled to either High or Low values for greater or lesser, respectively, sensitivity of the motion detection trigger.
- Timeout delay before the video shuts down with no motion detected can be toggled to 5, 15, 30 or 60 secs.
Time Lapse- Photo delay settings now include 0.50 and 0.25 secs.
- These low settings, especially .25 sec., were not possible with the CMOS imager in it's stock form. The #16 developer, working with the CMOS manufacturer, made this work with a couple of minor tradeoffs. I.E., the frame size must by 1280x720 and no date stamp can be displayed.
- The 0.25 sec. delay between images, when joined into a movie at 30 fps, will equate to a 7.5x time lapse speed up.
NOTE: The Auto-shutdown setting can remain active with Time lapse turned on because it will only function when the camera is toggled out of photo mode back into standby mode.
Video Frame Rate- this is a new function that allows recording video with frames rates of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 fps. These can give additional time lapse video modes:
- The 5 fps mode is special, and will automatically play back at 30 fps. This means the NATIVE video stream in this mode will give a 6X speed-up with NO editing, though the audio stream will still play back at an un-accelerated rate and will be continue playing long after the video stops! The audio stream can be stripped off the video with most editors.
- The other frame rates play back at the same frame rate as the capture rate (e.g., 15 fps capture will play back at 15 fps with no speed up and jerky motion)
- Editing the special frame rates to play back faster can produce slower "timelapse" motion than the time lapse still image function method, e.g.:
- 5 fps video at 30 fps = 6x speed up
- 25 fps video at 30 fps = 1.2x speed up
- 10 fps video at 30 fps = 3x speed up
- 15 fps video at 30 fps = 2x speed up
- 20 fps video at 30 fps = 1.5x speed up
- 25 fps video at 30 fps = 1.2x speed up
- The 25 fps video will also be play back consistent with the PAL video standard
Power-on Delay- This is a new function that gives the user the choice of the existing 2 sec. delayed power-up, or a fast mode power-up with no delay.
Before some one asks... YES an AVI version will be produced shortly, but the developer would like to get some user feedback on the changes before compiling it. So, the faster meaningful feedback is received, the soon the AVI FW will be released.
As before, new GUI versions are required to manipulate the new capabilities unless you manually edit the config file. Isoprop's compatible new v3.0.5.3 Windows GUI is linked for download in post #4 (and 10). I see Therau2000 just released his new GUI version, but I have not yet tried it to see if it works with all the new functions. Perhaps someone can do this and report back? I need a break from testing!
|
|
|
Last edited by Tom Frank; Nov 29, 2012 at 09:10 AM.
Reason: added audio comments in 5fps recording mode.
|
|