Hello. I just assembled a brand-new PC with iPi recorder/studio in mind, and was hoping to get the maximum video recording quality of 640x480 at 60Hz on multiple PlayStation/Eye cameras. But the best I've been able to get for sustained periods is 8 cameras at 640x480 at 50Hz.

So I'm wondering what hardware is needed to get the 60Hz speed in iPi Recorder, or if something is causing a bottleneck.

The computer's specs are:

AMD FD6300WMHKBOX FX-6300 6-Core Processor
MSI Computer Corp. Motherboard North Bridge AMD 970
8 GB RAM
Seagate 500 GB 7200RPM SATA NCQ 16 drive (for OS/software)
Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III SSD drive (for video recording data)
Windows 8
NVidia GeForce GTX 580 gpu
Two Syba Four Port USB 3.0 PCI-Express x1 Controller Cards (for extra USB 3 ports)

There does not seem to be any issue with CPU usage, since the task manager never shows utilization over 30% while recording, even with 8 cameras. RAM utilization does not go over 25%.

Six cameras are connected to USB 3 ports, the other two are connected to USB 2 ports. Between the motherboard and two USB 3 expansion cards, the system has four USB controllers.

All of that works well at 50Hz even with 8 cameras (I can get reliable 320x240 at 60 Hz with 8 cameras).

But if I use any number of cameras at 640x480 with 60 Hz, I find that the capture rate drops in a few seconds to 50 fps (or less) on some cameras, and then goes to only 1 or 2 fps on other cameras. Other times, I get a black screen instead of video in some cameras. It is in different cameras in different tests, so I don't think any of the cameras are bad.

Does anyone know what is needed to get that 60Hz speed reliably over sustained periods? Thanks!

connect 4 cameras to usb 2 plugs. Every computer has two USB 2 controllers that can handle 4 ps3 cams without frame lost , this means that one USB 2 controller can handle 2 ps3 cams. To know what usb plug belongs to a usb controller, just do it one by one, when you have the 4 cameras connected, if you have a warning on ipi recorder, this means that you have 3 cameras connected in the same usb 2 controller, so just disconnect one of the cameras and try another usb 2 plug till you get it right. I think the reason why 6 cameras connected to usb 3 plugs doesn't work is because every usb 3 card only gives you one Usb controller that is only capable to handle 2 cameras, soo when you connect 3 for each usb 3 card, you are exceeding the number of cameras allowed for each controller and that is why you are having frame lost at 60fps. Anyways, once you do this and you see that this is right and it works , if you see 2 cameras are still losing frames, the other reason can be that your Bluetooth adapter is also a wifi adapter, in that case the wifi part of the adapter is taking usb bandwidth so just go to devices manager and disable in network adapters, the wifi controller by just right click and disable, this is just in case you still have 2 cameras that are losing frames after all cameras are connected without any warnings and the frame rate is at 60fps and 6 of the 8 cameras are working at that frame rate. Hope it helps

Thanks, wicq!

I had ruled out an issue with more than two cameras connected to a single USB controller (the Recorder program nicely alerts you if that's the case).

There's no wifi or bluetooth on this system. The only item in the "Network Adapters" section of the Device Manager is"Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller" -- disabling it has no effect on the availabilty of 640x480 60Hz speed in iPi Recorder.

But it makes sense that something is taking USB bandwidth. Does anyone know of other potential sources of this?

Thanks much!

Are you recording uncompressed? My understanding is that a little compression has very little impact on final quality and it will certainly reduce bandwidth, allowing 'more' data to be pushed through the system and saved to the drive. Since your CPU is hardly breaking a sweat, you might consider this option.

I'm not recording from 8 PS3 Eyes myself but it's what I would try.

Hope you figure something out.

G.

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Thanks, Greenlaw.

I'm recording with the background subtraction method, but tried uncompressed and JPEG at both 70% and 50% quality after your comment. Alas, there does not seem to be any difference with these settings -- I can still reliably get 640x480 at 50Hz on up to 8 cameras for extended recording times, but any number of cameras at 60 Hz (640x480) causes the dropped frames or outright camera failure.

I'm actually recording with 4 cameras, but built the machine in anticipation of getting the Standard version of iPi Studio (which supports up to 8 cameras).

For this test, I used 4 cameras (all connected to 2 USB 3 expansion cards) with iPi Recorder. Here are the results:

* No compression: CPU - 6% utilization; Memory - 24% utilization; C drive (software/OS) - 3%; E drive (SSD for video recording) - 25%

* Background Subtraction: CPU - 14% utilization; Memory - 21% utilization; C drive (software/OS) - 1%; E drive (SSD for video recording) - 12%

* JPEG (70% quality): CPU - 20% utilization; Memory - 15% utilization; C drive (software/OS) - 2%; E drive (SSD for video recording) - 3%

* JPEG (50% quality): CPU - 17% utilization; Memory - 16% utilization; C drive (software/OS) - 3%; E drive (SSD for video recording) - 2%

None of these recording methods seem to have problems, so it's really looking like something mysterious is taking up USB bandwidth.

Thanks, much.

go to Bios and enable USB 3 usage or enable everything about usb3 in Bios , in case you haven't done that yet

Hi
If you have these USB cards:
http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1260&currentPage=0
then most probably you experience USB compatibility issues. These cards are based on VIA VL800 chipset which has compatibility issues with PS Eye cameras according to our tests. This is mentioned in our wiki:
http://wiki.ipisoft.com/USB_controllers#Known_compatibility_issues
The only solution in this case is to replace USB controllers to more compatible ones (based on another USB chipset).

Thanks, vmaslov.

I removed the two Syba USB cards with the problematic VIA VL800 chipsets and disabled the VIA drivers.

Unfortunately, the performance was worse after that, just using the USB ports in the motherboard.

I re-installed the two cards and drivers, and performance is back to where it was previously.

The motherboard manufacturer suggested using a powered USB hub, since there may be a voltage issue going on. I will try that next.

Is the issue with the chipset specific to the VL800 version? I see there is a VL805 out, which I assume is a newer version of the chipset. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005AR ... P4X9EWVXLJ

Is this card likely to work?

Thanks again.

Of course, if you plug all 8 cameras to built-in USB connectors, the performance is bad - simply not enough USB controllers.
We had no chance to test the VL805 chipset - hopefully it is more compatible than its predecessor. USB3 chipset which is guaranteed to work smoothly with PS Eye (according to our tests) is NEC/Renesas µPD720200. It also has 2 successors (µPD720201 and µPD720202), which we had not tested yet.