hi,

I'm up to create a charakter animation pipeline in our company. For that we use the ipiStudio with 4 PS Eyes.
Above that we want to capture 3 Eyes for Face-Tracking. So, easy Question:
The ipi-Recorder can capture the seven Cams with the bayer-raw data, but is there a Way to convert the .avi to get a 4 Cam file for ipi-studio an get also the files for Face-Tracking?

Thanks for your answers
kristian

We had not tested configuration with 7 PS Eyes. Have you managed to record video from 7 cameras?


Not with our software. Possibly there is some video editing software capable of cropping AVI video to specified frame area. But still you'll need to merge 4 grayscale images into 1 colorful using Bayer pattern.
We'll consider including such feature in future releases if you provide us with details about required output format.

Just curious, what software are you planning to use for face tracking?

I'm not shure i really managed it. get the data with recorder. it writes the raw data in 4 rows then takes a new column. get it with 50 fps so it worked fine.
unfortunately ipi-studio can't interpret the data.
is there a different interpretation of the file between basic and standard? cause i think the recorder will allways take the data that way.

however. i also think about to cut the data later, but i'm not shure about the codec and i'm not that much a programmer to write the used bayer-converter.
if you have any information about how to write that i'm very happy.


For facetracking we have made some horrible tests with Match Mover. Didn't work and Autodesk tell us, that there will be no further development. so actually we want to give Zign Track a try.

iPi Studio limits number of supported RGB cameras: 4 for Basic, and 6 for Standard. So it cannot handle video recorded with 7 cameras.

You can get conventional colorful video from PS Eyes, unchecking "Capture RAW video when available" under "Advanced Options" in Camera Selector. This vanishes de-Bayering problem. However, this format requires higher USB bandwidth, so you may experince frame drops or other issues when connecting multiple cameras to single USB controller. Also, output files will have larger sizes.
Next, you should divide recorded video into several other ones:

* Single video with combined image from cameras used for body tracking. This one will be processed in iPi Studio

* Separate video for each of the cameras used for face tracking.

To accomplish this, you'll need some video editing software capable of cropping. For example, this one http://www.easy-video-converter.com/crop_video.html. When cropping, make sure you select best available quality settings for output video in order to reduce tracking errors.

Hope this helps.

sorry, was a little out of order.

thanks for your answer even if it didn't help that much. tried that allready. to capture in without the bayermode gives a to slow fps, even with 3 usb-controllers. so i still have the de-bayer-problem. cropping and converting is possible, but without the debayer it doesn't help.

think we have to capture that seperatly. not really a problem just have to reactivate the good old clapperboard ;)

thanks for your advice.

Glad if you can make separate shots for body and face capture. I was thinking you must have them in sync.
Nevertheless, after introducing proprietary record file format in v2, it would be a nice feature to export video from selected camera(s) to AVI or other popular video format. I think we may place it on our todo list.

nice to hear that. Cool that you maybe integrate these export features.

except for that ... is the release of v2 predictable? will there be a release this month ... maybe tomorrow ;)

The release of v2 is more predictable than it was in April :) There is still something to do, but main technical diffculties have been overcome. So we have a strong hope the release will take place in May, as we are currently planning.
But this export feature definitely will not be included in the initial v2 release. Maybe in updates later this year.

Hi, for my thesis project i needed some facial mocap. I used the free iPi Recorder for capturing and a little script i wrote to debayer and save an image sequences for the tracking software. Not the fastes conversion, but it worked in my case.

If you want to give it a try, here it is, just drag and drop the captured avi files on the icon.
http://www.staschi.com/uploads/2012/06/debayer.zip

Best regards.

Whow, really cool. Thanks a lot.