S21 Ultra video recording quality exynos

[hammer]

Sorry if this has already been posted but anyone else notice grain/noise when shooting 4k30 & 4k60 video in average lighting conditions? I think this may be due to the fact that the bitrate is a bit lower than it should be. I have noticed that the average bitrate is higher when using pro video compared to the normal video recording mode therefore quality is a bit better, only problem is you can't use the telephoto modes in pro video. If samsung could increase the bitrate by 25% that would make a great difference. 

[Babishko]

At 4K 30 with HDR 10+ engaged the bit rate can really pick up I have found also.. And the quality..

[K Dimov]

That 54 Mbit is quite nice to be honest

[K Dimov]

FHD@60 that I took yesterday got 21.7Mbits, however, I have disabled the HEVC for my videos

[hammer]

We, the users of Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra smartphones and/or Samsung fans would like to propose a few needed changes to the camera software which would make the experience and photo quality even better!

1) Use the native 3x telephoto lens for portrait shots instead of digitally cropping from the main 1x sensor. Many other brands with 3x 70mm lenses use them for portraits without issue (for exaple OnePlus). Also, when using the main 24mm lenses and then just digitally cropping, you don't get the less distorted image due to the real focal lenght being still the same (instead of 50-70mm which is ideal for taking photos of people)

2) When zooming between the 1x-3x range (e.g. 2x zoom), use the full 108Mpx image instead of digitally cropping from the already binned-down 12Mpx image, or use the image information from the 3x lens to fill the middle of the shot. Right now the S21 Ultra uses a digital crop of a downsampled 12mpx image when taking a photo at 2x zoom. It would be better to use the full potential of the 108Mpx sensor and have effectively losless digital zoom at 2x. 

3) Consider stopping up-scaling the telephoto images to 12MPx as it might hurt the image quality when their native resoltuion is 10MPx.

4) Allow usage of the telephoto cameras in Pro mode

5) Enance the low-light video processing quality of the Exynos model to match the Snapdragon model.

https://www.change.org/p/samsung-dear-samsung-please-make-some-needed-improvements-to-galaxy-s21-ult...

[hammer]

here is a crop from a 4k30 video recording as you can see there is a lot of noise in decent lighting conditions

[MasterNetwork]

Well said. All extremely valid points brought to attention.

I will just add my thoughts on that.

1) At the time of this response, Samsung has already integrated the 3x telephoto lens for Portrait shots (Snapdragon variant).

2) I'm not sure how the isolated pixels would handle lower light scenarios, but there should at least be an option to crop from a scaled down binning; say a quad binning option (27 Mpx total).

3&4) It's just a shame that there are some great hardware yet no proper software to utilize them. Simple and to the point.

5) You're just stepping on raw wounds here...

Great job!

[K Dimov]

The issues with digital vs optical zoom for 3x and 10x still remain till this day. I am waiting for the last big update for May and hoping those will be fixed with it. Otherwise.. its such huge miss mostly if you try to take a 3x or  a 10x shot

[DanteIce]

What do you mean bro.. my mom's S7 Edge records 4K30 fps which looks 2x better than my S21 Plus... my old iPhone 8 Plus is miles ahead of the S21 Plus sadly, wasted money, I was hoping for a huge upgrade from my iPhone which is 3 YEARS OLD NOW!!!!!! Yeah.. also got the 256GB model because I was soo amazed with the pics i saw online and videos looking crips but in reality it's trash trash trash 😞 Bitrate is MEGA LOW ... for 4k60 Fps you need at least 50 mbps to look good .. or at least 40 mbps with HEVC but yeah... samsung went with at least 2x less bitrate idk why.. and it's not the ISP/SOC that can't hold that bitrat it's just trash software.

You can't even use Open Camera to use whatever bitrate you want since the phone LOCKS the phone to max 25 or whatever the max bitrate is... if i could record in 4K 60 fps 50mbps at least the content would look super mega high quality.

[DanteIce]

Sorry man. I have had my S21 Plus since the release i got the 256GB model thought it would be a huuge upgrade from my iPhone 8 Plus.. it has 10x worse video quality than my iPhone 8 Plus and also the 4k 60Fps looks very grainy and lacks detail, even in your video in 4K 60 Fps it looks garbage, my mom's S7 Edge takes better 4K30 fps video and my dad's Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 which is a lot of years old and not even a flagship records 1080P 30fps that looks similar to this 4K 60 fps footage... I'm honestly very very dissapointed in SAMSUNG, wanted to get S22 when it came out but 6-7 OS updates the phone is still trashy, battery is not as great as i would expect it, i turned off a lot of ai features and anything that eats battery like location,bluetooth and everything i could and ... it's garbage still.. the iPhone 8 Plus has like 1 hour less battery and it's like 3 years old now .... and my phone is new and also i use dark mode always and have a solid black background, every app is on dark mode to use no battery ... but the battery is garbage, i also do not have enchanced performance i use optimised mode and somethimes the phone stutters and it heats up like it's an oven, i was playing a basic 2D game and the phone got alarmingly hot me and my GF were concerned and put the phone away to cool donw... like seriously now...

[DanteIce]

That's 1080p level recording quality from a mid range device ... not FLAGSHIP ... honestly whenever i need to record something i use my GF's iphone 8 plus to take better videos.

Aaaand to take some decent video i really have to use 4K 30fps bcs if i use 4K 60fps it looks like i'm recording with a Galaxy S5-S6 and i know that bcs my mom's S7 Edge 4K30 fps looks very crisp 😞