1 Topic by coachmattb

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I had seen thread(s) on this and to the best of my knowledge, nobody has been able to get 2 of the same type of video capture source to perform 2 capture screens successfully. I happened to stumble through a way to make this work on a very outdated laptop.  First, the laptop:

Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (build 2600)
Dell Inc. Inspiron 1520
2.20 gigahertz Intel Core2 Duo
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
4096 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded        
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. A09 07/11/2008      
Drives:   
500.11 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
464.09 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
3582 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Now, for what I did and most importantly, how I did it as the procedure seems to be important since there was no other sequence of plugging in and disconnecting that seems to work.

1) start Kinovea
2) plug in1 PS3eye camera to a USB port
3) from the "View" tab, select "Two capture screens"
4) on the left capture screen, under Select Source, choose  "PS3Eye camera" (the camera s view becomes active)
5) plug in the 2nd PS3Eye camera into another usb port
6) on the right capture screen, under Select Source, choose "PS3Eye camera" (the camera s view becomes active)

from this point, I was able to record simultaneously on both cameras.

I tried other ways of connecting and disconnecting the cameras but had no luck making it work.

I would be interested in knowing if such procedures would work with 2 identical camcorders as well.

2 Reply by joan

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Really ? That's awesome.
It was my understanding that the limitation was built in the driver…

For two DV camcorders of the same brand/model, it was found that two separate firewire cards are needed.

3 Reply by acer22

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I was able to replicate this behaviour with version 8.17.  Unfortunately my laptop is too under powered to make it work effectively.

Windows XP, Service Pack 3
1.5 GB of memory
1.86GHz Intel Pentium M

4 Reply by acer22

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I spoke too soon.  I replicated the outcome, but it is quite inconsistent (it fails more often than it works).

I will try this on another laptop and see what happens.

5 Reply by acer22

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It worked much better with a laptop that is a bit more current than the first one.

I was able to get it working on the second try.

The second PC has an Intel Core i3 CPU M350 @ 2.27GHz running Kinovea 0.8.15 and Windows 7.  I didn't try 0.8.17 but I expect that to work.

Very impressive.

6 Reply by coachmattb (edited by coachmattb 2012-03-11 13:40:37)

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I notice that which USB port I plug into first makes the difference. Took quite a while thru the trial and error process but persistence pays off!

I have 2 ($35) webcams shooting 2 angles at 125 fps. Wow!!!

7 Reply by acer22

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So how did you get the 125 fps to work?

8 Reply by coachmattb

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Just plugged them into the usb ports as I had previously described. you can then select the frame rate under the properties tab after you do "select source". The nice thing about that frame rate is there is no blurring of the replay as there would be if it were the standard 30fps.

9 Reply by acer22

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I will have to look again, but I didn't see that as an option.

What driver are you using?

10 Reply by acer22

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I thought I had installed the cleye.config file but I had not.  Now that it's installed, everything is working great.

11 Reply by joan

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coachmattb wrote:

I notice that which USB port I plug into first makes the difference. Took quite a while thru the trial and error process but persistence pays off!

Maybe it has to do with the USB root hubs vs normal? I seem to remember that some USB ports are more important than others. In the device manager, you can see some are "root" while others aren't.

Maybe if you connect the two cameras on ports that ultimately go to the same USB root hub, it won't work as the driver will be loaded only once and detect that two cameras are plugged. But maybe if they are connected to two different root hub the driver is loaded twice and both work independently… (?)

12 Reply by coachmattb

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joan wrote:
coachmattb wrote:

I notice that which USB port I plug into first makes the difference. Took quite a while thru the trial and error process but persistence pays off!

Maybe it has to do with the USB root hubs vs normal? I seem to remember that some USB ports are more important than others. In the device manager, you can see some are "root" while others aren't.

Maybe if you connect the two cameras on ports that ultimately go to the same USB root hub, it won't work as the driver will be loaded only once and detect that two cameras are plugged. But maybe if they are connected to two different root hub the driver is loaded twice and both work independently… (?)

my guess is this is exactly correct, Joan. glad it is as it enables the two hi fps webcams to work together.

13 Reply by velocanman

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Can you all confirm which version of the Code Laboratories driver you are using?

I am using the (free) CL Eye Platform Driver 5.1.1.0177,  reportedly provides functionality for a single PS3 Eye only.

http://codelaboratories.com/get/cl-eye-driver/

14 Reply by velocanman

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Please disregard last post.  I tried the recommended method for alternating the order of USB ports for first/second camera and did indeed get it to work.

Now I have to figure out why one camera is more "yellow" than the other, with the same settings.  Could be the lighting.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pe36n0brj8v9b … apture.jpg

15 Reply by velocanman

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acer22 wrote:

It worked much better with a laptop that is a bit more current than the first one.

I was able to get it working on the second try.

The second PC has an Intel Core i3 CPU M350 @ 2.27GHz running Kinovea 0.8.15 and Windows 7.  I didn't try 0.8.17 but I expect that to work.

Very impressive.

Based on data rates for USB 2.0, has anyone looked at the minimum computer specs to capture two PS3 Eyes at the higher frame rates (60,75,+)?

I can get two cameras synced up on my desktop but at higher frame rates it drops frames.  The specs are AMD X4 at 2.8 GHz, 6 Gb RAM, and nVidia GForce 9600 GT.

My older laptop completely chokes on 1, let alone 2, PS3 Eyes on video capture in Kinove 0.8.17.