Hello everyone,
I wanted to share that I figured out how to modify the Kodak Reels (Reelz) firmware to increase the video bitrate and produce a higher quality image. This increases the average video bitrate significantly. The default video bitrate value of the stock firmware is 6,400 (~8 Mbit), I've been able to push this to 16,420 (~23 Mbit).
At times the difference can appear subtle when zoomed out, but the extra video information helps to cut down on compression artifacts and pixelation. This is especially visible if you will be cropping or zooming the image in a video editor program later on. Overall this helps to reduce blocky artifacts if you use the Kodak Reels built-in sharpening feature above the "-1.5" setting.
I've made a video showing the different video results with the firmware and how the sharpen setting may introduce more compression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ33d4vDPbY
I'll be exploring more to determine what other software fixes can be accomplished. So far I've only been able to increase the video bitrate. I haven't had success increasing the image resolution or modify the FPS, but I'll keep tinkering with it.
If you are interested in trying out the modified firmware (or want a backup file of the original firmware) you can learn the the technical details of this process here. Generally speaking tinkering around with firmware can be risky. However, in my testing I've flashed the device nearly 100 times and even when it got cranky, I was able to feed it the default firmware and it was back to normal.
Happy tinkering! 😁
-Steve
I wanted to share that I figured out how to modify the Kodak Reels (Reelz) firmware to increase the video bitrate and produce a higher quality image. This increases the average video bitrate significantly. The default video bitrate value of the stock firmware is 6,400 (~8 Mbit), I've been able to push this to 16,420 (~23 Mbit).
At times the difference can appear subtle when zoomed out, but the extra video information helps to cut down on compression artifacts and pixelation. This is especially visible if you will be cropping or zooming the image in a video editor program later on. Overall this helps to reduce blocky artifacts if you use the Kodak Reels built-in sharpening feature above the "-1.5" setting.
I've made a video showing the different video results with the firmware and how the sharpen setting may introduce more compression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ33d4vDPbY
I'll be exploring more to determine what other software fixes can be accomplished. So far I've only been able to increase the video bitrate. I haven't had success increasing the image resolution or modify the FPS, but I'll keep tinkering with it.
If you are interested in trying out the modified firmware (or want a backup file of the original firmware) you can learn the the technical details of this process here. Generally speaking tinkering around with firmware can be risky. However, in my testing I've flashed the device nearly 100 times and even when it got cranky, I was able to feed it the default firmware and it was back to normal.
Happy tinkering! 😁
-Steve
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