Hello,

I have just bought six "Playstation Eye" in order to use them with your software. I have checked your wiki but I still have a few unanswered questions :).

The hardware I use for the video capture cannot record more than three videos @640*480/60i but can record perfectly with with a six cameras setup @320*240/60i. I suppose that the more cameras the better it is, but does the loss in resolution means a significant degradation of the final motion capture?
You mention in the wiki that to record with six cameras at maximum resolution you need a six core CPU, would a Phenom X6 be enough ?

There are no indications or scene schemes for a six cameras system, what would be the best setup for such a system (I will have to capture complex moves, including martial art moves)?

Concerning clothes, is it better to use tight fitting clothes (like tights or panty hose) ?

Thanks :),

Jean

First, make sure that your usb is not the problem of getting higher recoding. Having 6 or 8 usb ports on a computer is not having 6 or 8 controllers. One of my newer computers only had one until I added a usb card.

http://www.ipisoft.com/en/wiki/index.ph ... ontrollers

A second internal hard drive can help. Recording to it speed things up because the Operating System is not fighting to get seek time on the second hard drive.

I would try full circle with 6 cameras if your space allows.

Good fitting clothing works fine. The software uses contrast, not color. So dark color pants, dark blue, dark brown or black pants I would use white shoes. Light colored pants, light blue, light brown or white pants, I would use Black shoes. And the same for each segment of the body. A tee shirt over a sweatshirt works the best for the upper body and some people have been using gloves just to increase the contrast of their hands to their body.

Well I do have a PCI extension card that gives me two additional usb controllers, so with the motherboard it makes four controlers, I thought it was enough? The machine I use for the video capture runs on a Core 2 Duo E6300 (O/C @ 2,3Ghz) with 3go of ram and a 8800GTS 512mo ; I suspect that this is the CPU that is not fast enough for such intense video capture, but I might be wrong. As for the datas, this PC runs on a Samsung Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive, which is fast and has a lot of buffer, so I doubt this might be the issue, but again, I'm a newbie here.

What do you think are the best settings (compression level, system optimizations,...) to get the best performances @640*480/60p ?

I will try to capture video on my main PC (I5 760, 4Go Ram, HD4870 and the OS is on a SSD), but I'd rather stick to the PC I first mentionned, since it's way more compact and I wouldn't fear transporting it to capture in different areas.

Thanks for the clothings tips, I will try several combinations when I will have the time and see what gives the best results :).
As for the placement of the cameras, trying a full circle might be the best to avoid occlusion, but I will have to find a lot of space.

My first capture was with four cameras 320*240 at 30 fps and I bought the software. Having 640*480 helps but the 60 fps is more important. If your clothing has the contrast and your lighting is bright but with low shadows 320*240 works fine. If your doing any fast movement go for the highest frame rate you can get. If your having trouble tracking even slow movement stay with 640*480. Then change the lighting, clothing, cameras until thing are working good, then go with the higher frame rate.

Faster computers with more cores, usb3, usb2 cards, will resolve the slow recordings. Unless you need a ton of mocap now, wait and the next generation of computers with usb3 will give you the recording you will need. Also remember that if your getting a few drop frames on one or two cameras it might go away when recording.

Standard Licence purchased. Now the six-cameras rampage shall begin!

Again, no feedback or tips from 6 cameras rig users?

I almost forgot, the current rig I use for capture can't handle the load @640*480/60ips, I have to record @320*240. Will I see a drastic difference in the motion capture if I upgrade the rig to run @640*480/60ips?

Higher resolution should allow you to have bigger capture volume. Going from 320x240 to 640x480 doubles the radius of your capture area.



Phenom x6 should be good for a six-camera setup (provided you have an USB controller in addition to two built-in controllers).



For best results, put the cameras in a full-circle (if you have enough space). It helps to have one or two cameras installed high (like 3 meters high).



The software is optimized for casual clothes like jeans and long-sleeve short. Tights is actually not a good choice.

http://www.ipisoft.com/en/wiki/index.ph ... r_Clothing



Usually one extension card carries one USB controller. You can check Device Manager to get accurate information on controllers.

http://www.ipisoft.com/en/wiki/index.ph ... ontrollers

But you should have two controllers integrated in chipset, that makes three controllers in total - good for running six PSEye cameras at 640x480 at 60 frames per second.



A dual-core CPU is not fast enough to be able to compress the video from six PSEye cameras at 640x480 at 60 frames per second. You need a six-core CPU (or an overclocked quad-core CPU) for that. You may also need an additional hard drive for video recording because the system drive (C:) is used by operating system for swapping and this usually interferes with video recording.

http://www.ipisoft.com/en/wiki/index.ph ... _recording

One interesting option is to get a fast SSD and record an uncompressed video. But such an SSD can be very expensive because it should be very fast. Uncompressed data rate from six PSEye cameras at 640x480 at 60 frames per second is around 100 MBytes per second.



Not exactly. The software uses all color information available on video. Saturated colors for clothes help the software to tell actor from background. Darker shades are preferable for torso because they minimize the effect of shadows. Alternatively, if you have near-perfect ambient lighting then you can use brighter colors.

So I tried my luck on my main PC and I get the same performances than with my other rig (e6300, much older and slower) despite the fact that I have an additional controller on both rigs. Could it be caused by the CPU ? I mean, it is way more powerful but if the code is optimized for multi-cores it might be the problem. If that is the case, is that worth upgrading to a i7-870 (quad-core, 8 threads), would I get flawless performances with six cameras ?

I will try the circular setup new week-end and will give you feedbacks.

A quad-core Intel i7-870 (especially when overclocked) should be able to compress video from six cameras at high framerate. Just make sure you record the video to a non-system hard drive.

Here is a quick guide on how to detect the bottleneck for recording:

1) Connect the cameras and start iPiRecorder, but do click the "record" button. Can your computer run the cameras at desired frame rate and resolution? If not, then obviously you lack USB bandwidth, and you may need to disconnect some devices from your USB ports (like printers, bluetooth dongles etc.) and/or install additional USB controller.

2) Click "Record" button. If recording stops with "I/O buffer overflow" error message, your hard drive is a bottleneck.

3) If recording stops with "compression buffer overflow" error, then your CPU is not fast enough.

Please be aware that USB 2.0 add-in boards based on NEC USB 2.0 chip are defective and can only run at half of speed defined by USB 2.0 spec (this is a NEC chip bug). Controllers based on other USB 2.0 chips or NEC USB 3.0 chips do not have this problem.

Ok, so if the framerate drops heavily without recording anything this is not a CPU issue but simply a USB bandwith issue?