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Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

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Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#151

Post by ajays »

Andrenid wrote: post #41
jpap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I do both on dual core devices. One core is dedicated to host the capture/buffer, the other will encode shots in the background. When you see the big circle percent animation, both cores are dedicated to compression to clear the encoder queue so you can take back to back living photos quickly.

I've just gotta say: This is one of the main reasons I keep coming back to HN. A story gets posted about some cool new tech, and the creator is in the comments answering questions. Simply awesome.

I read the TC article, bought the app, and came here in the hope that the developer would be here. I was not disappointed!

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#152

Post by prawn »

jpap wrote: post #104
pdog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that niche social/mobile networks for short videos are so hot right now (ie. Vine, Instagram Video), it might be more fruitful for you to plan on creating a new one.

The Cinemagram guys started off down that path, an Instagram clone for animated GIF cinemagraphs, then quickly pivoted toward short videos to compete with Vine and Instagram on similar territory. I'm still not convinced. :-)

Get convinced. These could be a lot of fun. You just need some help with the design/interface, but the tech is great.

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#153

Post by jpap »

prawn wrote: post #148
jpap wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Aussie, so I did my schooling in Melbourne, Australia. I don't recommend the same path for everyone, but my ugrad at RMIT University, dual bachelors of EE and CS. I then went on to do a Ph.D at the University of Melbourne in EE. My dissertation was on mathematical optimization of wireless and wireline DSL. (Prof Jamie Evans is an awesome guy if you're on the lookout for an advisor!) I've been in SFO for just over…

Congrats fellow Australian. Two of us here in an office in Adelaide just bought the app. Guy behind me said "Hey, this is pretty cool. Have you seen... oh, you're looking at it already."

Onya mate! That's bloody awesome. :D

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#154

Post by jpap »

epaga wrote: post #150

Love the "we'll iMessage you a download link" feature on the web page. Are you using a service for this? Note it doesn't seem to work for me in Germany, it doesn't change the country code, it leaves it at +1 (instead of +49)...

It's a webservice I hacked together that sends iMessages from my old MacBook Pro. :-)

It was my understanding that German mobile numbers are written locally starting with 01? [1]

e.g. in Australia, my mobile number would be 040x-xxx-xxx. The international version is +61 40x-xxx-xxx. When you select Australia, it will show 04.

(OK, I now see how this could be confusing; my apologies.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Germany#No...

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#155

Post by Marat_Dukhan »

Wow, amazing performance tuning, so rare these days!

However, you should be careful with this online ARM simulator. It simulates Cortex-A8 while iPhone 5 runs on Apple Swift, two generations ahead. It very likely has different instruction timings compared to Cortex-A8. I didn't have a chance to test Swift, but here is a list of what might be different, judging by Qualcomm Krait and ARM Cortex-A15, which are in the same generation:

- Instead of 2-cycle latency on Cortex-A8 simple ALU instructions might have 3-cycle latency on Krait (this is the case on Krait and Cortex-A15).

- Cortex-A8 can issue only 64-bit SIMD multiplication per cycle, Swift probably can do 128-bit VMUL.Ix each cycle (Krait does).

- Cortex-A8 can issue only one SIMD ALU instruction per cycle, Swift probably can do more (Cortex-A15 can issue 3 128-bit VADD/VAND/etc in 2 cycles).

- Cortex-A8 could issue one SIMD ALU + one SIMD LOAD/SHUFFLE per cycle, Swift could be less restrictive (and probably even can issue 3 NEON instructions per cycle, like Cortex-A15).

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#156

Post by sytelus »

Looks like the most interesting part here is "living photo" that instantly responds to interactions. Can this be standardize as new video format? It would be very cool to have all cameras be able to save video in this format. @jpap should consider formalizing this format, produce viewers on different platforms and license this tech to manufacturers of point-and-shoot cameras, GoPro, WebCams, camcorders etc. This feature could make camera an instant hit. It is a real value add for customers. I can also envision movies getting recorded in this format and available on Blue Ray so people can instantly interact with the cool fast action videos in HD. I think the great insight here is the awesome coolness of instantly interactive video that is ready to be unlocked inside current camera hardware.

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#157

Post by venomsnake »

lvs wrote: post #74
jpap wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the app was pretty cool, just super slow to save out the JPEGs. That's one of the reasons I spent a lot of time to make sure SnappyCam could compress these images, thumbnails and Exif metadata included, at a ridiculous speed.

I might point out that, depending on the device, you could have many more cores to work with in Android-land.

We should create a "marketing core" term the same way we have marketing HDD size. I have seen big.little advertised as 8 cores.

I think the main advantage of the androids will be the fact that high end devices have generally more RAM than iOS counterparts. So even if the codec cannot be pushed as far as on the iOS the bigger possible buffers can help.

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#158

Post by bobbles »

jpap wrote: post #86
axman6 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have purchased the app, and initial testing on a 4S seems to show it works exactly as advertised. This is a really great app, and an astoundingly low price. You should be very proud I think, I'll definitely be using the app as my goto in the future. (Hmm, after writing that, I somehow feel it sounds like it should have a reference to my rural, folksy, respected job that clearly makes me qualified to discuss suc…

That's abs awesome to hear! Thanks for the wonderful complement. I played with price. Until now, most of my sales were word of mouth, and the $1.99 price hindered "growth". It's been an interesting game. Many people whom I demo the app to in person love it, then when they reach into their pocket to download it, realize it's a paid app, they place their phone back into the pocket. Still have lessons to learn in sales…

Well as a point of reference, I will never pay more than $0.99 for a camera app unless a friend has specifically shown me how it works. I have been burnt on too many photography style apps that end up either not doing what I expected from the pics and description, or just sucking in general.

For me $0.99 just breaks that psychological barrier into 'who cares if it sucks'.

I gotta say though, after playing with snappycam it's definitely worth it. I bet being cheaper will end up with easily more than twice the sales

Re: Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second

#160

Post by andrewf »

I think it's fantastic that you've managed to turn a long, hard optimisation slog into a real product win. Add me to the list of Australians willing to buy you a beer - but not back home, I live in SF at the moment :)

I'm curious about the low-quality preview you get when scrolling through all the shots. Are you storing low-quality data separately or do you also have a fast, low-qual JPEG decoder? (Is the Huffman encoding between blocks independent?)

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