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Z-CAM E1 Camera 100 Mbps hack for 4K DCI (fw v0.31)
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  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    @CFreak Are you in the upper midwest in the US? It sounds like my family and friends at home in MN are getting dumped on too.

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @CFreak, just noticed, is it possible to enable 23.976 fps for 4K from menu? If not, we have to unlock it...

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    One thing that can be also useful is transfer some patches to Yi M1 (that uses similar config).

    We had some reference to decoding/encoding firmware (it had some small bugs) in Yi M1 topic.

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @CFreak, "I don't see any patches running UHD 3840x2160 at 23.976 fps... Would that be possible?" - sure, I'll make bitrate and GOP patches for you

  • CFreakCFreak

    @storyboardcreativity yes I can provide some, next time I am near my studio computer, today we are getting snow & iced in, and my current daily work is for a client at another location, so it may take a few days to get to the footage. I shot a MacBeth color chart of every camera for that job under a tungsten light and utilizing the in camera 3200 degree kelvin settings, so that test footage would be the most informative for you. In post (Premiere Pro cc2017) I used an eyedropper tool to white balance each camera to the white patch on the MacBeth chart and the E1 was the farthest out of them all (Sony FS5, 2x AX100, GH4, E1).

  • CFreakCFreak

    @storyboardcreativity I don't see any patches running UHD 3840x2160 at 23.976 fps... Would that be possible? That's what a lot of "4k at 24p" is really shot at. An example is those are the settings in the GH4, as long as you are not shooting in DCI 4k (true 4k). Thank you in advance...!

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @CFreak, can you provide comparison between GH4 and E1 footages? It will be very interesting to watch.

  • CFreakCFreak

    @storyboardcreativity THANK YOU for your efforts, I look forward to testing the E1 again as I too was thinking to sell mine. Compared to my GH4 the footage looked bad, a lot of what @eatstoomuchjam said. I did a 5 camera project of a show in a theater with the GH4 and E1 for 2 extra unmanned angles and used the auto ISO feature on the E1 to allow for lighting changes, and at times the footage was unusable, while the GH4 I was able to get to occasionally and the footage was much better. But, since the E1 was unmanned, I can't blame the camera alone. However, despite similar settings the color of the E1 was not close to matching the Sony cameras and GH4 all using a standard picture profile. I am sure more bitrate would help the issue.

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    Greenidge, yes, Ambarella allows 240 Mb/s. But I don't know, how to overclock SD-card UHS bus. Did anybody see any other Ambarella firmware with same SD-card hack?

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev, is it better to disable noise reduction? Seems like high sensor temperatures cause noises.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Another part is adjustment of noise reduction.

  • GreenidgeGreenidge

    The Ambarella A9 chipset can do a max bitrate of 240mbps, but not sure if the Micro SD card could handle that. However if it could that would be awesome. The footage from the E1 still looks very mushy.

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    @storyboardcreativity I'm in South America for another 6 weeks and it's all on my computer at home. From what I remember, it usually just looked pretty bad in comparison to the other cameras I was using as A/B cameras (Sony/Panasonic) and even in log mode, it was not very forgiving to even slight over/under exposure issues. I would expect that at 150% of the shipping bitrate, it would look a lot better. 60 megabits just isn't great for 4k footage.

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @pureaxis, I'll try to find, how to read all sensor data - datasheet says that only 22.5 fps from full sensor is allowed (but maybe it can be overclocked? :D)

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @eatstoomuchjam, can you give me an example of your footage, that you did not like? I'm just interested, what can be solved in firmware to make it better.

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    @storyboardcreativity It sat around my house unused for years until a firmware update was released that made it less awful, but it never was very good and on the few occasions that I used it as a c camera for shoots, I never ended up using the footage because it looked pretty bad to me.

  • pureaxispureaxis

    4:3 aspect ratio allow for the use of 2x anamorphics, also uses the entire sensor since the GH4 has a 4:3 sensor.

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @eatstoomuchjam, why did you sell E1?

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @pureaxis, well, why don't you want to use other resolutions? Or you need 60 fps?

    Here is MN34230 (GH4 and E1 sensor) datasheet: https://industrial.panasonic.com/content/data/SC/ds/ds4/MN34230PL_E.pdf

    I can try to find hardware access to sensor and change constants, but... I'm not sure 2.7K 60 fps is possible.

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    Do you have any samples up of quality before and after the hack? This almost makes me regret selling my E1 for almost nothing... almost. :)

  • pureaxispureaxis

    GoPro Hero 5 can shoot in native 2.7k 2704x2028 in 4:3 aspect ratio so I was wondering if the E1 can support that too

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @Greenidge, unfortunatelly, 4:2:2 subsampling is not possible. According to Ambarella A9 datasheet, SoC DSP allows only "H.264 codec BP/MP/HP Level 5.1 and MJPEG". Only Baseline, Main and High (not High 10) are allowed - no one of them allows 4:2:2 or 10 bit.

    Ambarella A9 datasheet: https://www.ambarella.com/uploads/docs/A9-product-brief.pdf

    I still hope that 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 MJPEG can be possible - researching that.

  • GreenidgeGreenidge

    Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 4096x2160 24fps 101036kbps [V: IMAGINE VISION .AVC [eng] (h264 high L5.1, yuv420p, 4096x2160, 101036 kb/s)] Audio: AAC 48000Hz stereo 128kbps [A: IMAGINE VISION AAC [eng] (aac lc, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s)]

    These are stats from a test I just did in DCI 4k 24p with the patch applied. 101036kbps = 101Mbps (so the bit rate is definitely better than the default 60Mbps) The colour space is yuv420p which is a 4:2:0 colour space, if that can be bumped up to a yuv422p (4:2:2) colour space, it would make this a killer camera.

    I used this patch (4096x2160 mode 100 Mbps bitrate patch), can't tell if it's All-Intra or Long GOP

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @pureaxis

    Please, explain, what do you mean? Does GoPro 5 have a hack?

  • storyboardcreativitystoryboardcreativity

    @LPowell

    Made patches for 3840x2160 29.97 fps. Check github: https://github.com/storyboardcreativity/Z-Camera-E1-Reverse-Engineering

    Try to use it, seems stable. Screenshot with 100 Mb/s bitrate is attached below.

    new_bitrate_4K_100mbps.png
    581 x 307 - 27K
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