I've tested the ipiSoft system (version 1.2.0.115) before and had great results, I've just returned to try it again and the calibration isn't working, I'm kinda confused. Here's what's happening:

1. I'm shooting my calibration video with the mag torch using 3 PS3 cameras, the footage looks good.
2. In iPiSoft Studio I load in the footage with no visual problems, camera 1 is on the left, camera 2 the middle and camera 3 to the right.
3. I make sure that Calibration > Auto adjust camera FOV (3 cameras and up, all cameras must be the same model) is checked, the I hit the Calibrate button
4. The tracking starts and I see the box clearly tracking the light
5. At the end of the light tracking the system then starts orientating the cameras. I briefly see the green markers before they fly off the screen. When it's finished processing, camera 1 looks correctly placed, camera 2 is below the ground plane and camera 3 is somewhere way off from where it should be. I then can't find the markers again?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

Paul

Just noticed that looking at the avi's one of the channels (3rd down) is very grainy compared to the other channels from the RAW calibration footage. Could this be the problem and if so how do I fix that? I'm using iPi Recorder version 1.5.0.78.

Most probable cause of this problem is incorrect initial guess for camera positions. In current version of our software, the algorithm for automatic calculation of initial guess for camera positions is not very reliable, so you may need to set initial positions by hand and uncheck the "Auto detect initial camera positions" option.

Why do you use "Auto adjust camera FOV" option? Do you have non-standard cameras? Because for PlayStation Eye camera you should just use the default FOV setting (75 degrees) with "Auto adjust camera FOV" option disabled.

Also make sure all your cameras are configured for 75 degrees FOV (blue dot).



This is completely normal. 3rd channel is blue channel. Camera CMOS sensor sensitivity is naturally lower in blue segment of visible spectrum (and higher in red segment of spectrum). That's why noise is higher in blue channel.

By the way, you can send us your calibration video and we'll help you to fix this problem. We promise to use your video only for debugging. To save space, you can compress video with some good codec like Xvid or h264 or MP4. (We now have tools to uncompress all these formats). It is recommended then you upload the video to some file sharing server and send us a link, because sending complete video by email is not feasible.

I tried a different calibration avi that I had working on another desktop computer and that didn't work on my laptop either, so it looks like my laptop is the problem. It's not in front of me right now, but it's a DELL XPS. The strange thing is that it seems to be processing the calibration file fine right up until the last part of the processing. I did have a previous issue with this same laptop when I tried an earlier version of iPi Desktop as an error would appear when starting up the program, the error was in reference to SM4 (shader model 4). But since updating to the latest version of iPi Desktop this error doesn't appear.

If your Dell XPS laptop has Intel graphics this can be the cause of the problem. Intel graphics is known to have multiple driver bugs that can render iPiStudio unusable. We recommend only NVIDIA or AMD/ATI video cards.

Some laptops have two GPUs (one NVIDIA or ATI discrete GPU and one integrated Intel GPU onboard of CPU) and switch between GPUs on-the-fly based on power management settings. This can cause problems. If you have a dual-GPU laptop (discrete + integrated) then you may need to disable integrated Intel GPU when working with iPiStudio.