[Droid X General] rquellet:
This should be posted in the development section, but I don't have enough posts to do so... Either way, I found this mod so useful that I wanted to share it with the rest of the community that has helped me out so many times in the past.

I have found a way to increase the Droid X's video recording capabilities by modifying system/etc/media_profiles.xml. Note, this is for the 2.2 AOSP camera app only(as far as I know). The AOSP camera comes as the default in the Liberty 1.0 ROM.

Modifying a couple of points in the media_profiles.xml file, one can increase the maximum bitrate from 10000000 bits/second to 17000000 bits/second(or more, this is the value I settled on).

I've noticed better fast motion video capture as well as better low light capture. I've also seen an increase in FPS. The maximum FPS for the Blur camera(stock) is 24 FPS, I've been able to capture at an average of 29 FPS(in 720p mode!).

See the attached picture witch shows an average of 19501 kbps and 29 FPS for one of my recorded videos. Normally, one would only see ~100000 kbps and under 24 FPS.

I modified the following lines of code in the XML file:

<EncoderProfile quality="high" fileFormat="mp4" duration="60">
<Video codec="m4v"
bitRate="17000000"
width="1280"
height="720"
frameRate="30" />

I modified the "low" setting to be the "high" bitrate's old value:

<EncoderProfile quality="low" fileFormat="mp4" duration="60">
<Video codec="m4v"
bitRate="10000000"
width="1280"
height="720"
frameRate="30" />

<VideoEncoderCap name="m4v" enabled="true"
minBitRate="64000" maxBitRate="17000000"
minFrameWidth="176" maxFrameWidth="1280"
minFrameHeight="144" maxFrameHeight="720"
minFrameRate="1" maxFrameRate="30" />

I have uploaded a sample of a recording that I made to youtube, but I can't post the link because of the forum rules.

If you don't want to do the modification yourself, I have attached a copy of my media_profiles.xml file. .xml files are not legal uploads here, so I've changed it to .txt. Simply change the extension to .xml and place it in place of your current media_profiles.xml file using Root Explorer or ADB.

Enjoy your new enhanced video recording functionality on your Droid X!

Edit: High quality image capture

It turns out that modifying this block of code increases the quality of pictures:

<ImageEncoding quality="100" />
<ImageEncoding quality="90" />
<ImageEncoding quality="70" />
<ImageDecoding memCap="20000000" />

The three ImgageEncoding quality tags correspond to "Super Fine", "Fine", and "Normal" when in the preferences of the AOSP Camera App. The original values where: "90", "80", and "70".

A picture at "Super Fine" resulted in a file size of 3333 KB.

The same picture at "Fine" resulted in a file size of 2054 KB.

In all honesty, I could not discern the difference in quality, even when I placed the pictures side-by-side on my 24 inch monitor. Perhaps the "Super Fine" picture looked sharper. This should at least give the user the ability to get the absolute best quality pictures from their Droid X. I would post the comparison pictures, but I am not allowed to(file size restrictions and no outside links). If you would like to see this evidence, please petition an XDA Moderator.

Lastly, the values of the ImageEncoding quality tags in the media_profiles.xml file that is attached to this post are: "100", "80", and "70".

Edit: One last tip, if you recently used Pandora or Slacker radio there appears to be a bug that causes the AOSP camcorder to crash if you use the camcorder soon after using one of these music services. The solution is to go to Settings->Applications->Running Services and kill the services that each of these music apps has created. My hunch is that these apps are not handing the media service to the camcorder app when it requests it because these music apps are holding onto it even when you have left the app by not closing their service. I made a Tasker profile to handle the process automatically when the camera button is pressed.