1 Topic by Mike

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I have been trying to monitor this problem as much as I can to give you all the info. I have another camcorder I recently bought. It shoots at 60 frames per second and saves the files with the .mov extension. When I playback these files everything moves in slow motion. I can watch the speed adustment setting slow down on its own until it reaches about 55%. Also if I scroll through the video it acts like the program really bogs down or struggles to replay the video. Even if I select a section of the video it really struggles to replay it. Now it seems if I let the video play through a couple times I can use the roller on my mouse an scroll through the video normally like there is nothing wrong.

Also for your information the camcorder is the Aiptek Action HD 1080p model.

Thanks,
Mike


[edit joan: changed the subject for a more descriptive one.]

2 Reply by joan

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Hi and thanks again for the bug report !

When the speed slider moves on its own, it means that the load on the program is too high...
The problem is when each frame takes more time to decode than the inter-frame delay...
To prevent a deadlock with images accumulating in the decoding queue, we drop frames and slow down the playback artificially.
If I recall correctly, each time we have to drop 12 frames in a row, the slider moves down 5%.

Seeing that your camcorder is HD 1080p (much more information to decode than with standard definition), I can understand the dropping... Now if it records at 60 fps it will be even harder to keep up the pace.

Right now I'm afraid I don't have a solution... And this is quite annoying since the HD formats will soon be everywhere...
What are the spec of your computer ? (CPU, Memory...)

If you select a very tiny portion of the video (around 3.5 seconds) you should enter the analysis mode and be able to scroll back and forth smoothly. (beware, it takes up a lot of RAM)
If you want to be able to use this mode on longer sequences, you can alter the settings in "Option > Preferences > Play/Analyze".

3 Reply by Mike

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Hello,

The one PC is a celeron 2.6 GHz processor with 480 megs of ram Windows XP Home. The other is a 2.6 GHz with 896 megs of ram Windows XP media.

I kind of thought that was the problem, because I could tell the PC are really struggling. So you think I need to max out the ram on both PC's?

I bought that camera to eleminate the motion blur problem I was having. My other camcorder recordes at 60 frames per second and is not high def, but I get a lot of motion blur.

Cutting the video down is what I do, but it seems like I have to run the video through a couple times to make it scroll smoothly.

Which reminds me another feature that would be nice is the ability to trim down the video. What I mean is cut off some of the un-needed viewing area from the sides and just leave the area that focuses on the person you are filming.

Thanks,
Mike

4 Reply by joan

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Mike wrote:

I bought that camera to eleminate the motion blur problem I was having. My other camcorder recordes at 60 frames per second and is not high def, but I get a lot of motion blur.

Ouch. Sorry for all the troubles...
I have 1.5GB of RAM on a 2.5GHZ CPU and I can see the HD1080 videos struggle to play on screen. sad 
I'm not sure how much of this could be optimized, I'll have to analyze other open source players like MPlayer or VLC and see what I can do.


Mike wrote:

Which reminds me another feature that would be nice is the ability to trim down the video. What I mean is cut off some of the un-needed viewing area from the sides and just leave the area that focuses on the person you are filming.

Yes, for HD camcorders we rarely have computer screens large enough to display the video in their full glory anyway.
Being able to select the most important area would both reduce lag during play and allow the viewer to focus on what's important...

I'll add that to the todo list smile

5 Reply by Khardin (edited by Khardin 2011-05-17 17:33:07)

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I am having the same issue (Using Kinovea 8.15), and it is definitely not related to cpu speed, or ram availability. I have 6GB of ram, and a 3GHz quad core cpu, everytime i try to speed up video it lags out and starts slowing down on its own ( I have tried maximizing the amount of ram which can be utilized by the analyzer, as well as minimizing it, and working with very short sections of video with the same results). I have run CPU monitor throughout the process, and cpu has never gone past 20%, and ram 22% usage. I am using video recorded at 120 fps, however, I have used the same videos on a crappy old laptop with a 2GHz dual core and 2GB of ram with an older version of kinovea with absolutely no problems. I am wondering if there have been any recent changes that could be affecting this. If so, is it possible to get an older version from the website (dont have the install file anymore) until the issue is resolved?

6 Reply by DaveK

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Not sure if this is a similar issue or not but we are trying to use the 'Image Capture' / 'Delay display' option on a pretty high spec. PC with > 60% free RAM (4GB) with a Panasonic NV-GS330 min-DV camera connected using Firewire.  We are trying to use this to display time-delayed routines of competitive trampolinists, something we have seen done with Timewarp software, it works but the imagery doesn't seem clear enough at the extremities (e.g. arms moving fast through a somersault) although it was on the Timewarp we tried as a demo version.

7 Reply by joan

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Most definitely not related.
Can you open a new thread, this will increase visibility of your issue.
Is it related to comb artifacts from interlaced video ?

8 Reply by Chas Tennis

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DaveK wrote:

Not sure if this is a similar issue or not but we are trying to use the 'Image Capture' / 'Delay display' option on a pretty high spec. PC with > 60% free RAM (4GB) with a Panasonic NV-GS330 min-DV camera connected using Firewire.  We are trying to use this to display time-delayed routines of competitive trampolinists, something we have seen done with Timewarp software, it works but the imagery doesn't seem clear enough at the extremities (e.g. arms moving fast through a somersault) although it was on the Timewarp we tried as a demo version.

It sounds as if it might be motion blur if the extremities are blurry and the other parts of the image are not. 

I'm not familiar with Timewarp, or the shutter speed control for the Panasonic NV-GS330 (likely to be AUTO).  Did you view the same video on both Timewarp and Kinovea with different results? 

View your video in Quicktime or other player to determine if the blur is in the video or a software artifact.    If slow objects are sharp and faster objects, like the extremities, are blurry then motion blur sounds likely.

If two videos were compared, what shutter speeds were used in each of the videos that you refer to?  If AUTO exposure control was used then the shutter speed is unknown and so is the motion blur.   

Some AUTO control cameras might adjust the shutter speed to short times when the light is bright and to long times when the light is less bright.  For those AUTO control cameras the motion blur will vary with the light level.  For example, in outdoor sunlight the shutter is very fast with little motion blur but indoors it very slow with large motion blur.  If you took your videos indoors the light levels are low and the shutter speed has to be slow to get useable videos. 

I am not very familiar with video file compression or its artifacts- I just avoid it.  Make sure that your camera has not applied video compression in saving the video file.

If you think that motion blur is an issue for you, see the other recent threads discussing it.

9 Reply by DaveK

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Chas Tennis wrote:
DaveK wrote:

Not sure if this is a similar issue or not but we are trying to use the 'Image Capture' / 'Delay display' option on a pretty high spec. PC with > 60% free RAM (4GB) with a Panasonic NV-GS330 min-DV camera connected using Firewire.  We are trying to use this to display time-delayed routines of competitive trampolinists, something we have seen done with Timewarp software, it works but the imagery doesn't seem clear enough at the extremities (e.g. arms moving fast through a somersault) although it was on the Timewarp we tried as a demo version.

It sounds as if it might be motion blur if the extremities are blurry and the other parts of the image are not. 

I'm not familiar with Timewarp, or the shutter speed control for the Panasonic NV-GS330 (likely to be AUTO).  Did you view the same video on both Timewarp and Kinovea with different results? 

View your video in Quicktime or other player to determine if the blur is in the video or a software artifact.    If slow objects are sharp and faster objects, like the extremities, are blurry then motion blur sounds likely.

If two videos were compared, what shutter speeds were used in each of the videos that you refer to?  If AUTO exposure control was used then the shutter speed is unknown and so is the motion blur.   

Some AUTO control cameras might adjust the shutter speed to short times when the light is bright and to long times when the light is less bright.  For those AUTO control cameras the motion blur will vary with the light level.  For example, in outdoor sunlight the shutter is very fast with little motion blur but indoors it very slow with large motion blur.  If you took your videos indoors the light levels are low and the shutter speed has to be slow to get useable videos. 

I am not very familiar with video file compression or its artifacts- I just avoid it.  Make sure that your camera has not applied video compression in saving the video file.

If you think that motion blur is an issue for you, see the other recent threads discussing it.

Thanks for response Chas, further to Joan's advice above I have now posted this as a new thread at http://www.kinovea.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?id=467.  I would hazard to say that it is undoubtedly motion-related blur but when we tried a trial version of Timewarp using the same equipment set up, same lighting conditions (i.e. indoors, artificial light) we did not get that so it seems to be something to do with the way Kinovea is handling the video-stream.