Just in case it helps anyone, i've just done several hours of capture with 6 PS3 cameras @ 640x480 and at 60fps with zero dropped frames.

The hardware for this is an i7 processor running at 2.6GHz, the motherboard has plenty of USB ports although I found some that weren't very useful but I did find 4 that were find and then 2 more on a USB3 card. The video card is an Nvidia GTX460 which takes about 2 seconds per frame on this doing foot and shoulder tracking at High resolution.

The magic ingredient though is the SSD that I bought just for recording mocap data to before moving it to a different drive for storage. The data rate was 60MB/s and when I tried saving to a single SATA drive, after a couple of seconds it chocked with an IO buffer full. No doubt you'd also find other arrangements of RAID and fast drives an option but for sheer simplicity, it seems that SSD was just worth going down that route. Now all I have to do is process this lot.

This isn't posted for bragging rights, just as a guide as to what hardware might help if you're suffering.

That's awesome! Is your computer a quad or six core system? If it's a quad, your hardware sounds similar to mine except for the SSD. Which model SSD did you get?

I'm using a SATA 6.0 drive and controller, which works very well for four cameras at highest quality. I recently added two more cameras but I suspect a SATA 6.0 (non-RAID) drive will be inadequate for six cameras. I'll post my findings when I get around to doing my next shoot.

Anyway, thanks for posting this information.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Specifically:-

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, 2668 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Corsair 60GB Force SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s

The drive looked good on paper but when I benchmarked it the results weren't as good as the SSD on which my OS is but in the end it did exactly what I bought it for which was mocap and I know after setting up 6 cameras, moving the PC around and all the other related bits, I would have been pretty frustrated to have then had to drop all the settings for capture down just because a hard disk was choking so that's the way to go I think. My needs are pretty simple so I can then copy across to big, cheap drives for processing.

Watching system monitor, the processor just wasn't stressed at all.

That's great news! I was a little concerned because I also have an i7 quad core, and the official requirement for six PS3 Eye cameras is a six core system. The price of the drive is good too, especially since I would only get it for mocap.

I'll see how well my SATA 6.0 handles six cameras first, and then switch to an SSD if that fails. Thanks again for the info.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Hey thanks for the info, was pondering SSd drive..

I have been getting some great results with 4 cams and was wondering what your camera arrangement is, are they all in front or are some behind?

Cheers..

Alex

I had 6 put out in roughly 3/4 of a circle with cameras between 2 and 10 on a clockface with 6 being the front (if that makes sense?). This was an outdoor capture (overcast day) and the background was cluttered but DMC did a great job of ignoring all that, particularly noticeable when viewing "pose mismatch", the background being all dark.

The other thing which I did which I did based on past experience was to do another calibration at the end so that I had two calibrations to pick from, just in case any of the cameras moved a bit somewhere along the way. I didn't have the luxury of wonderfully made stands for all 6 so bits of wood knocked into the ground and tape to hold the cameras was the order of the day but as long as it works. :)

I've got some challenging movements to process but right now can't get DMC to run but that's a different matter altogether.

Hey thanks for the info, sounds like a sensible setup, will it try when i get more power/cams/space to play with..;)

Happy new year mate! :))

Alex