Has anyone had experience using these with the Eye Cam and iPiRecorder?
My laptop has only one highspeed hub exposed and it works well with recording 2x 640x480 @ 60fps bayar. I installed a (NEC chipset) USB 3.0 express card but it has trouble doing the same, many dropped frames. It works ok @ 50fps though. How could it possibly be worse than a standard USB 2.0 hub?


Cheers for any insights,
Jeremy

ExpressCard slots designed to use internally either USB 2.0 or the PCI Express bus. I can't imagine that recently manufactured laptops still use USB for ExpressCard modules but this could be the case for older hardware which basically means USB 3.0 card won't give you any reasonable performance boost. In my desktop I use 2 external USB cards one USB 2.0 and another USB 3.0 - both can handle only 2 PS3 Eye cams without dropping frames so they basically perform the same. What really made the difference in my case is switching from 32bit to 64bit Windows.

The laptop is fairly new, I imagine it is using PCI express for the slot. Is there an easy way I can tell?
I was hoping to get at least USB 2.0 speed, essentially a second high speed hub exposed which would allow me to run 4 cameras @ 60fps. Maybe I am expecting too much..

I tested HDD read speed on the USB 3.0 port (USB2.0 connection) and it was around 30mb/s. The read speed on the laptop USB2.0 port was about 28mb/s. So it seems to run at USB2 speeds just fine but I get major dropped frames...

What's type of storage device are you recording to? Is it possible that the bottleneck is there? If you're recording to the same drive with your OS, that could be problematic (unless it's an SSD.) Likewise, if you're recording to an external drive that's sharing USB bandwidth. However, if you're recording to a second internal hard disk or SSD, that should be okay.

FWIW, back when I was using a laptop with four PS3 Eye cameras I was never able to get full res at 60fps. Even with a separate eSATA express card with RAID device attached. I think I was able to get full res at 30fps from four cameras. Shortly after that I switched to using a desktop for PS3 Eye capture which worked more reliably (if less portable-ly.)

BTW, 30fps is okay if you're not moving too quickly. The main concern with 30fps is motion blur.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

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Writing to an external drive over eSATA.

If I only have 2 cameras attached via USB3.0 ports it doesn't work at 60fps. If I connect the 2 cameras to USB2.0 ports it works fine @ 60fps.

I can get reliable capture with 4 cameras @ 50fps. No idea why the USB3 performs worse than the USB2 though. Weird.

That is weird. And I think you're correct: for PS3 Eye cameras, at best a USB 3.0 card should work like a USB 2.0 card but not worse. Maybe you need a better USB 3.0 card? Can you exchange if for another card?

Good luck!

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Here's some info that might help you.

I'd seen a lot of dropped frames when I had iPi Recorder up and was aligning things (using a pciE 4 port USB2 and 2 USB2 from the mother board).

When I actually recorded, ZERO dropped frames.

Be sure to test while actually recording.

Oh, yes, he's right.

Don't pay any attention to the frame rate until after you click Record. When you are not recording other OS processes may interfere and iPi can report dropped frames; I believe this is normal. It's only when you are recording that iPi Recorder takes full system priority. In other words, the frame rate when you are actually recording is what really matters, not when the computer is 'sitting idle'.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!