Hello,

So in a previous discussion about tracking errors, you guys mentioned it was "better to try to stay with one main camera while tracking". Just to confirm, we just need to select the camera and then hit "track", correct?

My request is the opposite... Could we disable a camera while tracking, if we know it is causing problems? Sometimes the angle on just one camera adds a lot of ambiguity when there's a color match between actor clothes with the background (especially black), and to a lesser extent, self-shadows, at a particular angle. If there was a way to discard (or assign a % weight, or priority) to a camera's data for some specific segments, that would be awesome.

Thanks.

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Although all the cameras work as a group during tracking, the colors are mostly set per camera, meaning if you change the camera view and the video looks greatly different than the previous camera, you should re-evaluate the colors for that camera, but yes when you switch to another camera if needed to, the same thing would have to occur if actor colors are causing tracking errors, (it may make no difference, just do this when needed), it seems that is just how the program functions and even if all environment lighting was perfect, the camera signal may not be, so kind of a catch 22.

Actor colors per camera does make a difference, especially if one camera is shaded and one facing more lighting, why it is better to have the environment conditions as uniform as possible with PS Eyes before recording, but sometimes if the entire recording is too dark, you can try turning up just the Gamma of the monitor in the graphics control panel to increase the global lighting, that could help also.

If you do ever have a very bad camera recording, say it is just too dark or light, or it happened to get knocked out of calibration without knowledge, you can remove just that camera in XML file and cut it out with the video editing feature of the Recorder, you must do both though or it will throw an error on opening the video, but then that camera will no longer be used during the tracking process. (Remember to rename it as a different file name to keep the original as a backup).

It is a longer process, but it will save a session if any issues occur that you didn't catch during recording, or if you forgot to do a second calibration recording after the session, which should always be done.

I am not sure there is a way to remove, or weight any camera during the tracking session, well I know there isn't, but iPi would have to answer that if any nuts and bolts can be turned to make that happen.

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I will basically repeat what Snapz has said.

The tracking process does not depend on camera selection. But the Auto Detection Actor Colors does - it computes colors using image from the selected camera only. And tracking quality depends on how well actor colors match images from all cameras.
Thus, if colors in your video vary considerably from camera to camera, you may try to use different cameras for detection of actor colors to improve tracking quality. Or even edit color manually to find appropriate "average" colors. If color difference is caused by uneven lighting then it is crucial to set the lighting source in the scene properly. Find controls for adjusting the scene's light position and intensity on the Scene tab.

There is no way to discard a camera in specific segment. As Snapz noted, you can remove data of a given camera from the video file completely using editing capabilities of iPi Recorder. And manually edit .iPiScene file obtained from the calibration accordingly.