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Topics - skronstein

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1
Software Dev / Chronos V0.3.2 full release
« on: November 04, 2019, 05:02:04 PM »
    +----------------------------------+
   ++                                  ++
   |     Chronos V0.3.2 Changelog       |
   ++                                  ++
    +----------------------------------+


Notable Changes:
 - Automatic ADC calibration during black calibration, which should reduce column banding across a wider temperature range.
 - Add a storage tab to the util menu to view, eject and format the attached storage devices.
 - Speed boost at most resolutions, with a top speed of 1069fps at 1280x1024, and 40420fps at 320x96.
 - Configurable automated power-on and off depending on the AC adaptor status.
 - Option to disable the ring buffer when in segmented recording mode.

Minutae:
 - Factory black calibration is now user accessible from the Factory tab of the util window.
 - The software update button has been moved to the storage tab of the util window.
 - Shipping mode to disable power-on by battery until an AC adaptor is attached.
 - Add a watchdog to reboot the camera in case of a power-on boot failure.
 - Display descriptive error strings instead of number on failure.
 - End of recording from lack of free space generates a warning dialog.
 - Revert to a valid resolution when focus is lost while editing the H/V resolution widgets.

Fixed Bugs:
 - Gated burst record mode may lock up after several trigger edges.
 - Gated burst record mode unreliable when trigger debounce is enabled
 - Memory leak in the M3 video coprocessors which could lead to a crash after lots of H.264 encoding.
 - Ignore video which was recorded during zero-time black calibration (which happens after changing resolution).
 - Stuttering issue on the playback window on new production LCD modules.
 - Fixed deadlock in camera when restoring user settings from external media.
 - Corrupted overlay text at narrow resolutions.
 - Video stream would remain in playback when starting recording via auto-record.
 - Opening and closing the white balance menu can lead to an unexpected change of the custom preset.
 - Bug in calculating the trigger delay on boot (segmented mode only).
 - Ensure a minimum of 0.25 bits/pixel when encoding h.264 video.
 - Crash can occur when saving extremely short videos.
 - After rebooting a camera, focus aid and zebras are sometimes not restored even if they were enabled before the reboot.
 - Restore white balance correctly after reboot

Fixed since V0.3.2-RC2:
 - monochrome cameras being detected as color
 - zombie process when restarting app after reverting settings to defaults.
 - Util window - Auto Power Mode was always shown as Disabled after reentering the Util window, even if it is set to something else

Fixed since V0.3.2-beta-6:
 - Changes to focus aid or exposure aid (zebra stripes) would have no effect until resolution is changed.
 - Changes to exposure may be overwritten during black calibration.
 - Bad image quality at 336x120 resolution
 - Util window, storage tab - bottom of text cut off if device has multiple partitions
 - Factory black cal (black cal all resolutions) would get overridden by old user black cal, if a user had done their own black cal, even before.
 - Fix frame stuttering when focus peaking is enabled.

Known Bugs:
 - The second frame of videos saved in all formats is not from the correct location in the selected region.
 - The first frame of videos saved in formats other than H.264 format is corrupted.
 - Very rare crashes of the video system, causing the camera to lock up on the playback/save window; MTBF seems to be somewhere in the 2-5k recordings at present.
 - Gated Burst record mode only: Live display does not appear to be buffered correctly when the trigger signal is inactive.
 - Speckles in image when recording below 60fps
 - Black cal makes the image look very dark at low framerates when recording below about 45fps
 - Saved videos will have a date modified of 7 or 8 hours earlier than what is set on the clock in the Util menu.

Download:
https://github.com/krontech/chronos-updates/releases/download/v0.3.2-patch2/camUpdate-v0.3.2-patch2.zip

2
Software Dev / Chronos V0.3.2-RC1 and RC2
« on: July 25, 2019, 09:42:07 PM »
Here is Chronos 1.4 Software V0.3.2-RC2. Do not use this software version if you are capturing something that is not easily replicated.

    +----------------------------------+
   ++                                  ++
   |   Chronos V0.3.2-RC2 Changelog     |
   ++                                  ++
    +----------------------------------+


Notable Changes:
 - Automatic ADC calibration during black calibration, which should reduce column banding across a wider temperature range.
 - Add a storage tab to the util menu to view, eject and format the attached storage devices.
 - Speed boost at most resolutions, with a top speed of 1069fps at 1280x1024, and 40420fps at 320x96.
 - Configurable automated power-on and off depending on the AC adaptor status.
 - Option to disable the ring buffer when in segmented recording mode.

Minutiae:
 - Factory black calibration is now user accessible from the Factory tab of the util window.
 - The software update button has been moved to the storage tab of the util window.
 - Shipping mode to disable power-on by battery until an AC adaptor is attached.
 - Add a watchdog to reboot the camera in case of a power-on boot failure.
 - Display descriptive error strings instead of number on failure.
 
Minutiae (relative to RC1):
 - End of recording from lack of free space generates a warning dialog.
 - Revert to a valid resolution when focus is lost while editing the H/V resolution widgets.

Fixed Bugs:
 - Gated burst record mode may lock up after several trigger edges.
 - Gated burst record mode unreliable when trigger debounce is enabled
 - Memory leak in the M3 video coprocessors which could lead to a crash after lots of H.264 encoding.
 - Ignore video which was recorded during zero-time black calibration (which happens after changing resolution).
 - Stuttering issue on the playback window on new production LCD modules.
 - Fixed deadlock in camera when restoring user settings from external media.

Fixed Bugs (relative to RC1):
 - Corrupted overlay text at narrow resolutions.
 - Video stream would remain in playback when starting recording via auto-record.
 - Opening and closing the white balance menu can lead to an unexpected change of the custom preset.
 - Bug in calculating the trigger delay on boot (segmented mode only).
 - Ensure a minimum of 0.25 bits/pixel when encoding h.264 video.
 - Crash can occur when saving extremely short videos.
 - Lag when focus peaking or zebra stripes (focus and exposure aids) are enabled
 - On the save file settings window, the bitrate as listed above the resolution may be lower than the actual bitrate, if Saved File Framerate is lower than 60fps

Fixed since V0.3.2-beta-6:
 - Changes to focus aid or exposure aid (zebra stripes) would have no effect until resolution is changed.
 - Changes to exposure may be overwritten during black calibration.
 - Bad image quality at 336x120 resolution
 - Util window, storage tab - bottom of text cut off if device has multiple partitions
 - Factory black cal (black cal all resolutions) would get overridden by old user black cal, if a user had done their own black cal, even before.

Known bugs still in V0.3.2-RC2:
 - Video system may crash after about 200-300 saves, on average. (bug present in RC1 and RC2)

Updating Your Camera
====================
 - Extract the `.zip` file into the root directory of a FAT32 formatted USB drive.
 - Turn on your camera and insert the USB drive into the USB/eSATA combo port, not the one labeled 'OTG'.
 - From the main window, tap the `Util` button to open the utility window.
 - As a precaution, tap the `Backup Calibration Data` button on the utility window before starting the update.
    - When the backup is completed, a pop-up window will be displayed.
    - Tap the `Done` button to close the pop-up window.
 - From the utility window, tap the `Apply Software Update` button to begin the software update.
    - A warning message will be displayed, tap the `Yes` button to confirm and begin the update.
    - If a pop-up that says 'No software update found' is displayed, even when a USB stick containing the update in the correct location is connected, reboot the camera and try again.
 - During the update, the screen will go blank and an `Applying Update` message will be displayed.
 - After approximately 60 seconds, the update will be complete and the camera will restart.

3
Software Dev / Software V0.3.1 full release
« on: March 31, 2019, 01:31:57 PM »
Software V0.3.1 is now available!

    +----------------------------------+
   ++                                  ++
   |     Chronos V0.3.1 Changelog       |
   ++                                  ++
    +----------------------------------+


Notable Changes:
 - New Demosaic algorithm based on AHD, which should improve color reproduction and reduce edge noise.
 - Standalone daemon to operate the video system, with DBus API.
 - External HDMI displays are supported at 1080p and 720p resolutions.
 - Recording speed improvements.
 - Add CinemaDNG and TIFF as save file formats.
 - Deprecate Raw 16-bit right-justified save format in favor of CinemaDNG.
 - Add a demo mode to replay a section of recorded video in a loop.
 - Add option to overlay frame statistics onto processed video formats (H.264 and TIFF).
 - Jog wheel can be used to adjust the exposure, and navigate the settings menus.
 - New window to edit the color correction matrix.
 - New video memory recovery tool to download video (slowly) in the event of a software crash.

Minutiae:
 - Add whitebalance preset for 3200K/Tungsten lighting.
 - Adjust highlighting of text when selecting text boxes.
 - Auto-record and auto-save modes independant of one another.
 - Improved algorithm to estimate framerate during file save.
 - Date format in the Utility window changed to shorten the Month string.
 - Display separate version strings for both the Application and Filesystem/Release.
 - Add crosshairs to the white balance window.
 - Add Qt stylesheet to improve UI focus visibility.
 - Main window displays exposure time in microseconds and shutter angle.
 - The 'close' button on the soft keyboard now also applies the entered text.
 - Reorganization of the numeric soft keyboard to include a negative key.
 - Animate the status window text while a file save is in progress.
 - When updating from v0.3.1-RC1 or later, camera can now be updated from an SD card in the top slot. Previously, it only supported updates on USB.

Fixed Bugs:
 - Crash causing the video to freeze after approximately 45 recording attempts.
 - Trigger delays would scale incorrectly when using segmented recording mode.
 - Abort recordings when the free space drops below 20MB to avoid crashing when the disk is full.
 - UI bug causing the selected save location to always select the first mounted disk.
 - First frame of a raw recording would contain corrupted NV12 image data.
 - First pixel of a Raw 12-bit packed frame was sometimes being dropped.
 - Corrupted pixels at the end of a Raw 12-bit packed frame.
 - Black areas of the UI become transparent after HDMI hotplug.
 - HDMI hotplug while on the playback window would revert to live display.
 - Add missing ColorMatrix1 and CalibrationIlluminant1 tags to CinemaDNG encoding.
 - Fix a possible crash of the video system when aborting a file save.
 - Fix a possible crash of the UI when rapidly aborting and re-starting a file save.
 - Fix a possible deadlock of the video system when switching resolutions.
 - Fix color correction math so that saturating the image sensor tends towards white.
 - Fix bug causing crash when opening both the full and numeric keyboards at once.
 - Camapp crashes or fails to save if directory not writable
 - Exposure drops every time user cancels on record settings
 - Minimum exposure was around 1.2us instead of 1.0us.
 - Maximum exposure wasn't quite attainable with the shutter slider on the main screen.
 - Focus peaking color resets after rebooting camera, or pressing OK on Record Settings.
 - Segmented record mode only: Invalid data would sometimes appear at the end of the recording.
 - Gated burst record mode only: recordings would be corrupted and/or incorrect length.
 - White balance doesn't work so well when framerate and gain are high
 - White balance having the opposite effect as intended, the FPGA mixed up red and blue
 - Focus peaking color would get reset after reboot or changing resolution
 - "Restore Settings from backup" not working
 - Prerecord box not showing on Record Modes if gated burst is enabled before that screen was opened.
 - Minor UI issues

Compatibility Issues:
 - The pixel packing order in Raw 12-bit mode has been changed for the v0.3.1 release.
   Given a pair of two 12-bit pixels in hexidecmal as (0x123, 0xabc), the bytes produced
   by the Raw 12-bit packing mode changes as follows:
     v0.3.0 and earlier: (0xab, 0xc1, 0x23)
     v0.3.1 and later: (0x23, 0x1c, 0xab)

Known Bugs:
 - The first frame of an H.264 recording is erroneously copied from the display buffer before the recording starts.
 - After saving hundreds or thousands (usually thousands) of videos, the camera may lock up on the playback/save window.
 - After rebooting a camera, focus aid and zebras are sometimes not restored even if they were enabled before the reboot.
 - Gated Burst record mode only: Live display does not appear to be buffered correctly when the trigger signal is inactive.
 - Gated burst record mode only: Trigger stops responding after multiple triggers until the recording is stopped and restarted.


Bugs fixed in V0.3.1 relative to V0.3.1-RC1:
 - Camapp crashes or fails to save if directory not writable
 - Overlay not showing on first save if either autosave was enabled, or if save tapped quickly after opening playback window
 - Stability issues after large numbers of saves. The camera can now save at least 2000 saves on average before the video pipeline has issues.
 - Overlay not showing on first save if either autosave was enabled, or if save tapped quickly after opening playback window
 - Segmented record mode only: Invalid data would sometimes appear at the end of the recording.
 - Gated burst record mode only: recordings would be corrupted and/or incorrect length.
 - White balance having the opposite effect as intended, the FPGA mixed up red and blue
 - White balance doesn't work so well when framerate and gain are high
 - Maximum exposure wasn't quite attainable with the shutter slider on the main screen.
 - Exposure drops by a degree after reboot, or pressing OK or cancel on record settings
 - "Restore Settings from backup" not working correctly
 - Prerecord box not showing on Record Modes if gated burst is enabled before that screen was opened.
 - Focus peaking color resets after rebooting camera, or pressing OK on Record Settings.
 - Minor UI fixes


    +----------------------------------+
   ++                                  ++
   |      Chronos V0.3 Changelog        |
   ++                                  ++
    +----------------------------------+


Features added and bugs fixed since 0.2:

Notable Changes:
- White balance can be selected from 5 common presets in addition to taking your own as you could previously.
- Custom White Balance calibration (via Set White Balance) now works as expected, and produces vastly more realistic colours.
- Colour reproduction is greatly improved, especially reds.
- Set White Balance now calculates against 80% brightness white instead of 100% brightness white.
- File size warning when saving are generally more reliable now. (eg., 4+GB file warning now FAT32-only, since only FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit.)
- Changes to video saving settings are now applied as they are made, not just when the popup is closed.
- Keyboard behavior improved; text is now selected when you tap an edit box.
- UI can be flipped upside-down, or set to display the main screen menu on the left side.
- You can configure the "Unsaved video in RAM" popup that appears when you hit the record button with an unsaved video in memory. It can be set to "Always", "If not reviewed" (default), or "Never". The previous behavior was always "If not reviewed".
- The sliders on main screen the play screen have been made larger for ease of grabbing.
- Trigger I/O's Trigger delay input was moved to the Trigger Delay screen. A slider has been added as a visual aid and an alternate way to adjust the trigger delay. The ratio between post-trigger frames and record length in frames is kept constant between resolution and framerate changes.
- Added Trigger Delay screen and Record Modes screen, accessible from Record Settings. Selectable modes are Normal, Segmented, and Gated Burst.
- Black cal duration reduced by 10s to 15s or so at max resolution.
- Use any SD card. Previously, a class 10 SD card was required. You can now use slower cards. Of course, using a slower SD card means that videos save slower too.
- You can now auto-record after saving and/or auto-save after recording. This can loop if both are used at the same time.

Minutiae:
- Playback screen has 'region to be saved' marked. Each region saved is marked in a different color.
- There is now a Settings tab in the Util pages. This can be used to backup, restore, or reset settings, which does not include black calibration.
- Play -> Settings: bitsPerPixel, maxBitrate, saved file framerate, format, filename and save location are now saved as soon as they are changed instead of when the Close button is pressed.
- Mark In and Mark Out have been renamed to Mark Start and Mark End, probably just until the video seek bar is made horizontal.
- The Enter key has been changed to say Apply, since you have to press it to apply your changes on the record settings window.

Known bugs:
-The first few frames in saved videos are from the end of the recording.
-The camera will freeze after saving approximately 45 videos.  Make sure to reboot before saving approximately 40 videos to ensure the camera does not freeze.
-The camera will freeze when saving a video that is over 4GB onto a FAT32 partition, or when storage is full.
-If auto-record is enabled, but auto-save is not, a new recording will not be started.  However, the camera will still auto-record after booting the camera.
-Warnings about filesize (over fat32 limit, or insufficient free space) can still be shown even if autosave is enabled (if autosave is enabled, the user is unlikely to be there to press Yes for the camera to continue saving)





    +----------------------------------+
   ++                                  ++
   |     Installation Instructions      |
   ++                                  ++
    +----------------------------------+


 - Extract the `.zip` file into the root directory of a FAT32 formatted USB drive.
    - This should result in a camUpdate folder in the root directory of the stick.
 - Turn on your camera and insert the USB drive into the USB/eSATA combo port.
 - From the main window, tap the `Util` button to open the utility window.
 - As a precaution, tap the `Backup Calibration Data` button on the utility window before starting the update.
    - This should take about 5 seconds. When the backup is completed, a pop-up window will be displayed.
    - Tap the `Done` button to close the pop-up window.
 - From the utility window, tap the `Apply Software Update` button to begin the software update.
    - A warning message will be displayed, tap the `Yes` button to confirm and begin the update.
    - If a pop-up that says 'No software update found' is displayed, even when a USB stick containing the update in the correct location is connected, reboot the camera and try again.
 - During the update, the screen will go blank and an `Applying Update` message may be displayed.
- After approximately 30 to 60 seconds, the update will be complete and the camera will restart.



    +----------------------------------+
   ++                                  ++
   |       Downgrade Instructions       |
   ++                                  ++
    +----------------------------------+


To downgrade from software v0.3.2 down to v0.3.1, please use the newly attached package named camUpdate-v0.3.1-downgrade-from-v0.3.2.zip.

Before applying the downgrade, disable Auto Power Mode and Shipping Mode in the Util menu.
After applying the downgrade, you may want to restore your calibration data from before the upgrade to 0.3.2.

4
Software Dev / Chronos V0.3.1-RC1
« on: November 19, 2018, 07:15:50 PM »
Update: Software V0.3.1 full release is now available: http://forum.krontech.ca/index.php?topic=460

Here is Chronos 1.4 Software V0.3.1-RC1. Do not use this software version if you are capturing something that is not easily replicated.

    +----------------------------------+
   ++                                  ++
   |   Chronos V0.3.1 RC1 Changelog     |
   ++                                  ++
    +----------------------------------+


Changes from beta-9 to RC1

Notable Changes:
 - Recording speed boost! Save up to about 90fps on h264 saves at full resolution.
 - Revert to 8-bit gamma for monochrome TIFF to improve software compatibility.
 - Split the TIFF encoding into two use cases: "TIFF" for easy editing and software compatibility and the option to display the overlay in the saved images, and "TIFF Raw" for getting at the full 12-bit encoding (linear raw data) for scientific uses.

Minutiae:
 - Future updates can be applied from the SD card, and there should no longer be problems with the camera not finding updates that are present on USB sticks after this update is applied.
 - Save settings window: enlarge buttons for easier use, and save location dropdown for longer names
 - Animated dots during saving and aborting to indicate that progress is being made.
 - When autosave is enabled, always use autoname (name by date and time) to avoid naming conflicts

Fixed bugs:
 - Trigger/IO settings window: If exposure trigger or shutter Gating were selected on IO2, it would revert from IO 2 back to to IO 1, though the choice between Exposure Trigger and Shutter Gating would remain.
 - Bad white balance when factory cal is absent.
 - "File already exists" warning not showing up when autosave is disabled

Also, some bugs that were introduced in beta-9 but now fixed:
 - Improve compatibility of CinemaDNG sets of images saved from monochrome cameras.
 - corrupted video with low resolutions are used
 - Trigger/IO settings window had a bug preventing exposure and shutter inputs on IO2 and 3.




More changes (from beta-4 to beta-9)

    +----------------------------------+
  ++                                          ++
    |   Chronos V0.3.1.9 Changelog   |
  ++                                          ++
    +----------------------------------+

Notable Changes:
 - New Demosaic algorithm based on AHD, which should improve color reproduction and reduce edge noise.
 - Standalone daemon to operate the video system, with DBus API.
 - External HDMI displays are supported at 1080p and 720p resolutions.
 - Recording speed improvements.
 - Add CinemaDNG and TIFF as save file formats.
 - Deprecate Raw 16-bit right-justified save format in favor of CinemaDNG.
 - Add a demo mode to replay a section of recorded video in a loop.
 - Add option to overlay frame statistics onto processed video formats (H.264 and TIFF).
 - Jog wheel can be used to adjust the exposure, and navigate the settings menus.
 - New video memory recovery tool to download video (slowly) in the event of a software crash.
- Redesign of the white balance window, including a new dialog to edit the color matrix.

Minutiae:
 - Add whitebalance preset for 3200K/Tungsten lighting.
 - Adjust highlighting of text when selecting text boxes.
 - Auto-record and auto-save modes independant of one another.
 - Improved algorithm to estimate framerate during file save.
 - Date format in the Utility window changed to shorten the Month string.
 - Display separate version strings for both the Application and Filesystem/Release.

Fixed Bugs:
 - Crash causing the video to freeze after approximately 45 recording attempts.
 - Trigger delays would scale incorrectly when using segmented recording mode.
 - Abort recordings when the free space drops below 20MB to avoid crashing when the disk is full.
 - UI bug causing the selected save location to always select the first mounted disk.
 - First frame of a raw recording would contain corrupted NV12 image data.
 - First pixel of a Raw 12-bit packed frame was sometimes being dropped.
 - Corrupted pixels at the end of a Raw 12-bit packed frame.
  - Add crosshairs to the white balance window.
  - Add Qt stylesheet to improve focus visibility.
  - Main window exposure now shown in microseconds and shutter angle.
  - Jog wheel now adjusts exposure logarithmically, or by degrees when pressed.
  - The 'close' button on the soft keyboard now applies the entered text.
  - Reorganization of the soft keyboard to include a negative key.
 - Black ares of the UI become transparent after an HDMI hotplug.
  - HDMI hotplug while on the playback window would revert to live display.
  - Add missing ColorMatrix1 and CalibrationIlluminant1 tags to CinemaDNG files.
  - Fix possible crash of the video system when aborting a file save.
  - Fix possible carsh of the UI when rapidly aborting and re-starting a file save.
  - Fix color correction math so that saturating the image sensor tends towards white.
Also, some bugs that were introduced in beta-4 but now fixed:
  - Monochrome TIFF now pads the pixel values with least-significant zeroes.
  - H.264 bitrate setting was being ignored and defaulting to 0.25 bpp.



Compatibility Issues:
 - The pixel packing order in Raw 12-bit mode has been changed for the v0.3.1 release.
   Given a pair of two 12-bit pixels in hexidecmal as (0x123, 0xabc), the bytes produced
   by the Raw 12-bit packing mode changes as follows:
     v0.3.0 and earlier: (0xab, 0xc1, 0x23)
     v0.3.1 and later: (0x23, 0x1c, 0xab)

Known Bugs:
 - The first frame of an H.264 recording is erroneously copied from the display buffer before the recording starts.
 - Cal and settings data sometimes don't want to be backed up.

Please let us know what you think of the updates. And most importantly, let us know the bugs and things you do not like about the update. If there are any serious issues, please email [email protected].

Updating Your Camera
====================
 - Extract the `.zip` file into the root directory of a FAT32 formatted USB drive.
 - Turn on your camera and insert the USB drive into the USB/eSATA combo port, not the one labeled 'OTG'.
 - From the main window, tap the `Util` button to open the utility window.
 - As a precaution, tap the `Backup Calibration Data` button on the utility window before starting the update.
    - When the backup is completed, a pop-up window will be displayed.
    - Tap the `Done` button to close the pop-up window.
 - From the utility window, tap the `Apply Software Update` button to begin the software update.
    - A warning message will be displayed, tap the `Yes` button to confirm and begin the update.
    - If a pop-up that says 'No software update found' is displayed, even when a USB stick containing the update in the correct location is connected, reboot the camera and try again.
 - During the update, the screen will go blank and an `Applying Update` message will be displayed.
 - After approximately 60 seconds, the update will be complete and the camera will restart.

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