Occasional Video Pixelation and Audio/Video Sync Issues

[nyijedi]

Post credit card numbers used to buy phones too. You first.

Care to explain why posting serial numbers from our droids would be in any way equivalent to giving out credit card numbers?

No, not really. I was just making a joke based on the idea of you telling us to share information but not giving us your info first. It's a bad joke.

Don't be so hard on yourself - I chuckled.

 

[Peepeehead]

I did some more testing. I limited the testing to just one app, the stock camera app.

Doing a dummy video did nothing. The same sync problem occurred at the pixelation error at about the ten second point each time. (I earlier said that the issue occurred at the one minute point. I don't know what I was thinking. It appears always to occur at ten seconds.) I think that maybe the phone is having trouble moving video and/or audio data to memory fast enough and whatever it can't move it drops. And this dropping of data is causing the sync problem.

I killed all unnecessary applications using Advanced Task Killer and the sync problem disappeared. And when I say all unnecessary apps, that's what I mean: nothing except camera and Advanced Task Killer. Maybe I can narrow it down to one app that's causing a problem, one app that would be common to all stock Droids, like Voice Recorder or whatever.

I suspect that if I overclock the phone to maybe 750MHz the problem will completely disappear. So I'm going to try another ROM and overclock it and see what happens.

But anyway: success with killing all unnecessary applications.

 

[Jmchnaway]

I used to get a lot of pixelation and out of sync audio within the first 15 seconds of all videos too (running stock 2.1 with a 16gb sandisk class 2 card).

I ordered a 4gb Ridata class 6 to test first, then a 16gb Transcend class 6 card based on some of the read/write theories here, and that seems to have mostly cleared up the issue. I may get a slight pop/click in the audio track in the first few seconds once in awhile, but audio stays synced for the entire video and there is no pixelation. Still running stock 2.1 without running any task killers.

 

[brochaos]

when you do the dummy video, are you exiting all the way back out of the app? don't just stop it and then start the new one. it's definitely a free memory issue, which you can check in the applications page. the dummy video or killing everything both accomplish the same thing, increase the free memory from ~10-12mb to ~30mb. as long as my phone has ~30mb to work with when recording, i don't have any issues.

apparently android isn't as perfect at handling ram as we thought.

I did some more testing. I limited the testing to just one app, the stock camera app.

Doing a dummy video did nothing. The same sync problem occurred at the pixelation error at about the ten second point each time. (I earlier said that the issue occurred at the one minute point. I don't know what I was thinking. It appears always to occur at ten seconds.) I think that maybe the phone is having trouble moving video and/or audio data to memory fast enough and whatever it can't move it drops. And this dropping of data is causing the sync problem.

I killed all unnecessary applications using Advanced Task Killer and the sync problem disappeared. And when I say all unnecessary apps, that's what I mean: nothing except camera and Advanced Task Killer. Maybe I can narrow it down to one app that's causing a problem, one app that would be common to all stock Droids, like Voice Recorder or whatever.

I suspect that if I overclock the phone to maybe 750MHz the problem will completely disappear. So I'm going to try another ROM and overclock it and see what happens.

But anyway: success with killing all unnecessary applications.

 

[Peepeehead]

No, I neglected to exit all the way out of the application. Maybe that would have worked.

I installed the Smoked Glass 6.0.1 ROM and set the overclocking to bump the speed up to 800MHz when the phone is actively in use. That solved the problem. (By ignoring the underlying problem, whatever it was.)

Should anyone install Smoked Glass, you will be given the option to increase the video camera throughput from the stock 3 mbps up to the customized 9 mbps. I tried that for fun and found that the issue returned with the higher resolution. I recommend staying at 3.

There is a free app in the Marketplace called Auto Memory Manager that automatically manages your memory and kills low-priority processes. You can specify which processes (like the video camera) get higher priority. If you set the preset at "aggressive," it should work well. I have not tested this method --as the higher clock speed works well-- but it should be worth a try.

 

[BrianDiddy]

I have had this same issue and been working on fixing it for several weeks. I've done the "dummy" video and found that it only works for about 2 mins and the rest of my video is screwed up. How long exactly are your dummy videos? are they the length of the actual video itself or just like 30 seconds. I've been making about 5 minute videos and found the dummy video to be useless, as well as killing all applications. Also in the running services section I noticed that the free MB is usually about 60-65 mb, but I still suffer the sync problems. I just wish Motorola would focus on its screwed up phones before moving on to Droid X

 

[nyijedi]

I have had this same issue and been working on fixing it for several weeks. I've done the "dummy" video and found that it only works for about 2 mins and the rest of my video is screwed up. How long exactly are your dummy videos? are they the length of the actual video itself or just like 30 seconds. I've been making about 5 minute videos and found the dummy video to be useless, as well as killing all applications. Also in the running services section I noticed that the free MB is usually about 60-65 mb, but I still suffer the sync problems. I just wish Motorola would focus on its screwed up phones before moving on to Droid X

Don't worry about it. I've been on a Froyo rom for about a month now (CM6), and the pixelation problem appears to be completely gone. Non-rooted users should be getting Froyo starting next week.