Thanks for the advice but I am hoping to avoid webcam due to inherent quality/fps decrease. Also, what makes me wonder is because Kino works fine but Gem doesn't and given that Edgy is more-or-less supposed to draw from the bleeding edge lib versions that this kind of a problem will eventually trickle down to other distros which may be currently relying upon older versions of supporting libs, hence requiring update in Gem. If this is so, I think sooner rather than later is probably a good idea.
Best wishes,
Ico
On 12/28/06, Studio Zodiak studiozodiak@yahoo.ca wrote:
I tried to get 1394 running with ubuntu edgy without success also. Maybe try using a webcam before you die of frustration.
I did. It changed my life : )
Sylvain
*I*
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
Thanks for the advice but I am hoping to avoid webcam due to inherent quality/fps decrease.
USB2 is 40 times faster than USB1: at 400 mbps, in 720x576, full color 24 bits per pixel, cameras could do 40 fps... but typically they don't, they use half the data rate (decimation of chroma columns, as in most broadcast video) and have a cap at 30 fps because anyway the motion is already blurry enough at 30 fps.
You may also need a special program to unlock the framerate of the camera. For Philips cameras (most of the modern Logitech/Labtec) the setpwc program will allow you to get away from the default framerate of 10 fps.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju | Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada
Thanks for the info. However, ADVC-100 that I use is a firewire A/V device so the default behavior is 30fps at 720x480 (NTSC) with the only bottleneck being the quality of the camcorder (which in this case is still better than a webcam). But all this is moot as Gem worked just fine a month ago when I was working on Hoary 5.04 and now on 6.10 it doesn't (either the extended nightly builds or my own build). And this worries me since my project depends upon transportability/transparency which is currently sorely missing in this setup...
Best wishes,
Ico
On 12/28/06, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
Thanks for the advice but I am hoping to avoid webcam due to inherent quality/fps decrease.
USB2 is 40 times faster than USB1: at 400 mbps, in 720x576, full color 24 bits per pixel, cameras could do 40 fps... but typically they don't, they use half the data rate (decimation of chroma columns, as in most broadcast video) and have a cap at 30 fps because anyway the motion is already blurry enough at 30 fps.
You may also need a special program to unlock the framerate of the camera. For Philips cameras (most of the modern Logitech/Labtec) the setpwc program will allow you to get away from the default framerate of 10 fps.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju | Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
Thanks for the info. However, ADVC-100 that I use is a firewire A/V device so the default behavior is 30fps at 720x480 (NTSC) with the only bottleneck being the quality of the camcorder (which in this case is still better than a webcam). But all this is moot as Gem worked just fine a month ago
What I'm saying is that if ever you are stuck with having to use something else than last month, then you still have a way out that isn't completely bad. It's not like 160x120 at 5fps...;)
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju | Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada
--- Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca schrieb:
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
Thanks for the advice but I am hoping to avoid
webcam due to inherent
quality/fps decrease.
USB2 is 40 times faster than USB1: at 400 mbps, in 720x576, full color 24 bits per pixel, cameras could do 40 fps... but typically they don't, they use half the data rate (decimation of chroma columns, as in most broadcast video) and have a cap at 30 fps because anyway the motion is already blurry enough at 30 fps.
anyway, though it theoretically should be possible to
capture a webcam with 720x576@30fps, i couldn't find a
cam yet, that supports these values. also, it is so
confusing, that often they are advertized as usbII
capable cams, but actually they don't make use of the
bandwidth. further you find often a maximum framerate
in the specs, but not which dimensions these maximum
rate is related to. webcam sellers are really pissing
me off. i bought a spc900nc, which works with the
opensource pwc linux webcam driver. though this cam
should be capable of capturing at 90fps according to
the specs, i couldn't reach that rate neither with the
proprietary windows driver nor with the pwc driver.
the maximum with the pwc i could get is 320x240@30fps,
which is less than 1/4 of what you say should be
possible with usbII.
more moanings about webcams:
it's hard to tell in advance, if it will be possible
to switch automatic gain control/automatic white
balance/automatic shutter time on and off, which could
be important when using a cam with gem/pdp/gridflow.
with the cam i mentioned above, i have the following
colospace problems:
-pdp is capturing the cam as expected
-gridflow captures it only in yuv420p colorspace and
one needs to convert it to RGB using gridflow objects,
which is heavily cpu expensive.
-gem shows the captured image as bgr instead of rgb,
so colors red and blue are swapped. it is possible to
convert it to rgb with [pix_colormatrix], which is
also very cpu expensive.
fazit: webcams are kind of an annoying topic and i can really understand ivico's efforts to get a dv-cam working with gem.
roman
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-
Ivica Ico Bukvic -
Mathieu Bouchard -
Roman Haefeli