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Hardware for 6 PS3 Cam Setup
https://forum.ipisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6874		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  sharad.inc [ Mon Mar 04, 2013 3:42 am ]
Post subject:  Hardware for 6 PS3 Cam Setup
This question is very specific to the setup needed for using 6PS3 eye cameras and be able to record at 60fps. Also, apologies in advance, if the queries below sound 'dumb' - but I am not a hardware person.

I understand that the hardware-parameters below are important for good quality capture

1) Processsing Speed - all posts on forum refer to core i7 - but I have not found specific mention about quad-core or hexa-core. Would a quad-core with say 2.5 Ghz suffice? Or does one need to have a hexa-core?

2) Hard disc - this is clear and SSD is recommended, the second best option would be a disc @ 7200rpm.

3) Graphics Card - GTX 560 or better would be ideal, but 460 and above is good? I understand for recording the processor/ram/hdd are important and the graphics card is important for processing - is this correct??

4) USB controllers - If a machine has 3 USB 3.0 ports, it does not mean that it has 3 USB controllers. For my purpose, I would need 3 USB controllers, so if my laptop/desktop had two, I would need to add one USB controller. And there is a provision to insert a USB card in a laptop as well as a desktop??

5) Laptop vs Desktop - if for example quad core 2.5 ghz + SSD + 8gb ram suffices - then should I be indifferent between a laptop and a desktop? I cannot find a laptop with hexa-core option, and IF i intend to do the recording only using this laptop (and the processing on a different machine with better graphics card) - then can I buy a laptop? I am asking because am not sure how the motherboard will impact the quality?

Any other parameter that I should take into consideration??

Best regards
S
Author:  andrew [ Tue Mar 05, 2013 12:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Hardware for 6 PS3 Cam Setup
Hello!

There are two different phases:
1. video recording by iPi Recorder (input: cameras, output: iPiVideo file on disk)
2. processing of recorder video by iPi Mocap Studio (input: iPiVideo file on disk, output: animation)

For each of which you can use different computers. Or one and the same - as you wish. Please note that iPi Recorder is free and can be used on any number of computers.

Common bottlenecks for phase #1 (recording):
  • USB controllers. To record from 6 cameras at 50 or 60 frames per second and VGA resolution (640x480) it's required to have at least three USB 2.0 or 3.0 controllers. For details please visit http://wiki.ipisoft.com/USB_controllers
  • Disk or/and CPU speed. Why "or/and"? The thing is that there are the following video compression options:
    • No compression. In this case Disk is bottleneck. It must have write speed at least 110 MByte/sec (640 * 480 * 6 * 60 = 110592000 bytes per second from 6 cameras at 60 fps). Thus SSD or RAID is required.
    • Background subtraction. This is rather simple compression algorithm. The effectiveness of this compression method depends on lightning conditions. The better lightning - the better compression factor. In average, compression rate is about 2-3 times. That is Disk write speed could start from about 55 MBytes/sec. That is general 7200rpm HDD becomes suitable. But there is additional computational cost thus CPU should be powerful enough. As a rule any modern CPU is ok.
    • JPEG compression. Here Disk is not bottleneck (even 5400rpm). But CPU should be six core at least.

As to phase #2 (processing):
Author:  vmaslov [ Sun Mar 10, 2013 7:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Hardware for 6 PS3 Cam Setup
An addition about laptops and USB: modern laptops usually have USB ports connected to 1-2 USB controllers. Third USB controller can be added with an ExpressCard, if a laptop has such slot.
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