I run a setup with 6 PS Eye cameras. Most of the time everything works as planned, but sometimes when I push 'Start' to record I get the following error:
'Recording has stopped abnormally due to the following error: Hang detected! At least one camera stopped video streaming.'

While this dialog is on the screen I can tell that all of the cameras, are in fact still streaming video. After the error occurs the only solution that I have been able to find is to restart the program, redo the setup / background subtraction and try to record again.

Has anyone else seen this issue or know how to deal with it?

6 PS Eye
iPi Recorder v2.2.0.24
Windows 8

Do you experience low frame rate/frame drops problems during recording? Hang-ups may be temporary, but they usually indicate that there are USB bandwidth issues. Maybe you should test other USB ports combinations to connect the cameras.

I record 640x480 at 30fps and don't have low frame rate or any issue with frame drops. As soon as the program actually starts recording everything seems to be fine. Just sometimes when I push record I get the error. I haven't been able to track down what causes the error because most of the time it seems to work correctly.

I use a laptop with three usb hubs (two cameras plugged into each hub) so I don't have any more available port configurations to try out unless you are suggesting just moving around cameras to different ports.

Oh, such configuration explains your problems - sometimes there's too low USB bandwidth for 6 cameras even at 30 fps. Certainly, a desktop computer is recommended for recording with more than 4 cameras.
To reduce the probability of such issues try to disable all unused devices with relatively high bandwidth before recording - Wi-Fi, external drives etc.

Is there anyway you can help me to understand what is actually going on here?

1. Why is it that when I push record, sometimes I get this hangup? When it does record, it works fine, usb bandwidth does not seem to be an issue ( <5 frame drops for a 10 minute video ).

1a. Is there something that happens at the very beginning of a recording that does not happen during the recording that causes the hangup?

2. Why do I have to restart the program in order for it to record again?

Of course, there is some initialization of various components necessary for recording process (encoder, disk writer, etc.). Maybe for some reason this takes unexpectedly much time and this situation is wrongly treated as hang up. Other possible reason I can think of is initial synchronization of frames from different cameras, which again takes much more time than expected (usually a couple of frames is sufficient to make cams in sync).

It's hard to say what is the real reason in your case without having your laptop at hands :) We'll work at this code by the next update of iPi Recorder to reduce the probability of false hang up detections.


What do you mean you cannot record after that error? The application hangs and not responding on user actions, or you get another error when trying to start recording again, or something else?

Thanks for the more in depth answers!



The program still responds after the error occurs. However, what seemed to happen was once the error had occurred, any future attempt to record without restarting the program would give you the same error. Then I would restart the program and it would record fine once again.

With that said, I just connected 6 cameras to the laptop and after getting the hang up error I pushed record again, got the error again, and then waited about 10 seconds and was able to record successfully without restarting the program. I had mixed results today, sometimes the program would record fine on the first attempt after the error and sometimes I would have to try a couple times, however, I never actually had to restart the program to get it to record today. The only difference between this and our usual setup is that we usually have repeater cables hooked up to all of the cameras so it may be a symptom of the extra time it takes the signal to travel through the 10 meter repeater.

If you have any additional insights that would be great. Thank you for taking the time to help me troubleshoot this issue.

Hello, mabrahamsen

Did you have a chance to try the latest release 2.2.2.27 of iPi Recorder. It may improve the situation with false hang-ups.
Also, what are the specs of your recording PC?

I haven't had the chance to try the new version. We do very large batches of recordings so restarting the program was not an optimal solution. What I had found to work if the error occurred, was to switch to the 'player' and then back to the 'recorder'. Most times that would allow me to record without any problems.

The computer we use is a dual gpu, Lenovo Ideapad Y500, i5-3230M @2.6GHz, 6GB ram, 2x Geforce 650m gpu.
6 cameras @30fps.