Stereo3D Preview output from camcorders

[Steve Shovlar]

OK the two fakes from China were a dead loss. The proper EZCap arrived this moring, in a proper box with software. It worked straight away. I tried to use one of the ebay fakes and the PC just does not recognise it at all. A waste of a day. False economy etc..

So I have ordered a second EZCap which should be with me in the morning.

Now Multiplexer only works in SD. This is a pain as I shoot in HD. And how would two EX3's work, because they are HD only? My small Sony HC5's are hd or SD, so I guess I could set up the shot in SD then change th setting to make the shot in HD without the monitor. A pain but its still a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a Transvideo 3D monitor.

I am redy to test the water on a tablet PC. I think I am going for the 10 inch E-Pad, which runs Windows 7.It has 2 full size USB 2 ports. If it doesn't work it goes back on Ebay the following day!

[Pavel Houda]

I also only shoot exclusively in HD, however, the camcorders that have the A/V-R jack output (among others) Composite and S-video streams, that are only SD. The stream is real time down-converted, so I don't see the problem with EX-3 either. You would have to check with the HC-5 if there is an output with the S-video adapter cable during HD recording. If so, you should be able to see video with one dongle and Stereoscopic Player, even though you are filming HD. Usually the camcorders down convert everything. They have to do all kinds of resolution/frame rate conversions for the viewfinder anyway, it only takes a little bit of silicone these days to convert (or sub-sample) and filter the video stream. Component video can be either HD or SD, so one must check if there is a setting, or what the camera outputs, but I see no problem in most cases.

[Steve Shovlar]

OK the PC tablet arrived today. It looks just like a gigantic iPhone. It runs Windows 7 Ultimate. It has three USB 2.0 ports. And it works a treat.

It has wifi so I connected it to my network, downloaded Stereoscopic Player and Multiplexer, loaded on the EZCap driver and connected it all up with the two cameras, using two of the uSB ports on the left hand side of the tablet.

Player instantly saw the two cameras and I was in business. The battery life of the tablet is said to be 2 hours. I will do a test later to see how long it does last. But two hours is ample anyway.

I have also ordered a mount of the tablet. It's a cheap one off ebay and it might or might not work. I will have to alter the mount as it has a suction cup for a car screen but I will remove that part and change it so it will mount on 15mm rails or on the side of my tripod. I have a Manfrotto 482LCD small ball head to hot shoe mount which should work fine with it.
New Car Mount Holder kit Stand for Apple ipad 3G Wifi on eBay (end time 31-Jul-10 06:33:25 BST)
Manfrotto part.
Manfrotto 482LCD Micro Ball Head-Nice-In Pkg-No Reserve on eBay (end time 23-Jul-10 03:00:55 BST)

I will post some pics later of probably tomorrow of the set up.

This whole setup has cost me:

£317 for the PC tablet from Ebay
£46 for the two EXCap cables
£4 for the two S-Video cables
£12 for the Car mount ( to be canabalised)
Total = £379 or $575 US

And I get a PC tablet which has a ton of uses away from this setup.

Cheers
Steve

[Pavel Houda]

This is great Steve. Please post pictures here or video on YT. I would be very interested to see it.

[Robert Kennedy]

I have tried using the ENMVG by Encore Electronics (from newegg.com) and mounting two onto a Vista machine causes it to blue screen stop error 0x0000007E from TridVid.sys.

My plan of using devices from two different manufacturers failed too. I tried a SIIG JU-AV0012-S1 (from Fry's) in tandem with the encore and it caused the same bluescreen. It seems they all use the same tridvid.sys driver and it's not written to support multiple devices. This is true even when connecting them to separate USB busses.

I am concerned that the EasyCap (or EZCap) mentioned here is the same componentry and will cause the same problem. I was looking for the DC60+ version but the exact labelling of thse products for sale doesn't seem to be a priority. Does anyone know of an exact model number that works for this application. I have two blackmagic intensity cards but that solution isn't exactly portable.

I'd like to get this up and running.. anyone?

[Pavel Houda]

I use two SIIG digitizers, exactly the same as you mention (you use one, as I understand it). The link is: SIIG, Inc. : USB 2.0 Video Capture Device - (JU-AV0012-S1 ) . I picked them because they have 64 bit driver for Windows 7 which I use and 720 x 480 resolution. I did have to load the drivers twice, one each during the installation of the two dongles, or Windows associated the second dongle with the wrong driver. It is very important to load the correct driver. I originally mixed two different dongles, but one only had 640x480 resolution, so the Stereoscopic Multiplexer didn't handle it. I also tried to run the two over an external hub, but the PC only recognized one of them. I never experienced blue screen. I had this setup on two different computers, both worked. Both are Win 7 64 bit machines, didn't try it on Vista. You can see the devices in my YT video @: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ItnjjJ0EqE . The drivers are here: http://www.siig.com/Drivers.aspx?pn=JU-AV0012-S1 .

[Steve Shovlar]

Robert, the latest EZCap dongles work perfectly with Windows 7. I just loaded on the latest software which came with the EZCap and it worked perfectly.

I am waiting on a tablet mount which I had hoped would be here by now before taking some photos of the complete setup. Hopefully it will be with me this coming week.

I purchased a 10 inch Epad which works perfectly, though really an ideal solution would be a 7 inch tablet solution. I might pickup a Vilix tablet and it it works stick the Epad straight onto Ebay.

Then I will have to buy Stereoscopic Player and Multiplexer because at the moment it only lasts 5 minutes a pop in its current mode!

[Robert Kennedy]

Thank you Pavel and Steve for helping pave the way here. I have tried two SIIG JU-AV0012-S1 USB Video Capture with the drivers available at the link you posted on a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit and they are not working. I can only mount one successfully, as the second unit appears in device manager, is recognized correctly (same name as the first) but it has a yellow exclamation mark. In properties for that unit it says the device cannot start and gives the generic code 10 error.

As I have seen it work for you in your YouTube video, I believe it can work. Perhaps the more recent drivers have disabled the ability to use two at once? Could you confirm your driver details in device manager please Pavel and Steve?

Here's how to get that info:
Start Menu > Open Control Panel
Click "Hardware and Sound"
Click Device Manager (then authenticate the pop-up)
Got to Sound, Video and Game controllers and expand the list.
Insert the dongles and observe them appearing in the list (they are called Trident Analog Video for me)
Right click on each and choose properties.
Click on the "driver" tab and note the driver version.

My driver provider is Trident Multimedia Technologies
My driver version is 2.96.0.33
My driver date is 10/16/2007

I really appreciate your help in getting this working. I have purchased 4 capture dongles thus far and am reticent to invest in another pair of EZcap dongles only to encounter the same issue.

Thank you,
Robert

[Steve Shovlar]

Robert, I only installed the software once. I didn't have to install it twice for the two different dongles. Make sure the two USB ports are completely seperate and they are not a shared USB port (two hubs to one port)

In Stereoscopic Player you can see the live footage from each connected camera by switching between the two devices.

[Pavel Houda]

Robert, just for you I installed the two dongles on my Vista machine from the supplied CD. I really dislike Vista, but it all installed with no hitch. I just put in the disc and installed the driver (mine is 32 bit). It asked me to plug in the dongle, and in few seconds it was done. I removed the CD and rebooted the machine. Left the dongle plugged in. After the reboot, I installed the CD again, ran the driver install, and when prompted, I plugged in the second dongle. All went well. I then tried both with the Stereoscopic Multiplexer and Player, all worked well.

In the Device Manager, the device driver is version 2.84.0.23 and the date is 11/22/2006.

If I were you, I would delete the installed drivers and re-installed from the CD that came with your dongles. Otherwise I don't know what would cause your error. I do have to install the same driver twice, cannot re-use the first installation. I don't know why. It actually doesn't make much sense. If I just plug in the second dongle, it always associates it with some other, irrelevant driver. It should work the way Steve says, but I had problems that way so far on three machines.

I hope this helps. I'd make sure that your USB H/W is working correctly and that the ports are USB 2. Try different ones if you have several and install the driver each time. From the sound of it, you might have H/W problem. Do you have an access to a different PC just to try it?

[Robert Kennedy]

Hello again,

So I installed the dongles exactly according to your method, Pavel, and this did allow for more than one to be used.

I tested the devices and they work one at a time (in the test device section of the SM configurator), but I'm getting only one image as it appears all of the USB ports on my intel desktop motherboard go through the SAME CONTROLLER. It doesn't matter what USB ports I connect to on my computer, I get only one image by the multiplexer. I have a port that is built into my case that connects to pins on the motherboard and apparently that is the same controller as the USB ports on the back of the computer. Even at the lowest res setting, I cannot get two images to appear.

Under device manager, I can see where the SIIG dongles are connected and they always are connected to different ports on the same hub. I did manage to get it to read that they were connected to different ports on different hubs but it did not resolve the issue.

Pavel: Could yoi please connect both dongles and tell me what device manager reports as their connected port and hub? I saw you plugged them into adjacent USB ports on your laptop and it worked with no issues.

By the way, the drivers on my CD were 2.84.0.33, very close to yours.

Also, just to note, if I change my cameras to standard def and connect them via firewire, everything works fine. This isn't usable for me as my cameras do not allow recording in HD and outputting over firewire SD. Another bummer to note is that I didn't realize it was a laborious effort to change how Stereo Multiplexer presents the images. I can't find any options like "Anaglyph, Page Flip, Onion Skin, Side-by-side, Over/Under, Interlaced" etc. which are common in other 3D applications.

One more bummer is that installing Stereoscopic Multiplexer broke my nVidia 3D vision stereoscopic player. Now, the nVidia program tries to use 3dtv.at's decoder and the eyes aren't synchronized. getting stereoscopic multiplexer to play nicely with 3DVision... If I use 3dtv/at's stereoscopic player it works fine with 3d vision. After loading the stereoscopic player for the first time, I was a little surprised at how nvidia's and 3dtv stereoscopic players are nearly identical. I assume nvidia licensed 3dtv.at's technology?

[Steve Shovlar]

Robert, it sounds like you only have one USB controller on your PC. Bummer if the case.

Secondly, nVidia Stereoscopic Player and 3d.at look identical but the nVidia one is a stripped down version.

When you attach the dongles, you should open Multiplexer from inside stereoscopic player. File, Live Video, Sterescopic Multiplexer.

Then go to viewing method and chose the way you wish to viw the footage. Hope that helps.

[Robert Kennedy]

I loaded XP 32-bit as a Parallels machine on my MacBookPro and installed stereo multiplexer and the SIIG dongles and it worked. Ultimately I'll be looking for a small laptop/tablet as you've mentioned here previously, but at least something is working at the moment. Now to figure out Graphedit and onionskinning....

Thanks for the hint about opening stereo multiplexer via the stereoscopic player to simplify choosing viewing method. I already fought my way through graphedit and built my custom filter chain but I will use the simpler method in the future.

[Peter Wimmer]

I'm the developer of the Stereoscopic Multiplexer and would like to comment on a few issues mentioned in this thread:

OS/platform support: The Stereoscopic Multiplexer works on Windows XP/Vista/7. There are no plans to support Windows CE or Android and the ARM platform in the near future. Although the Stereoscopic Multiplexer DirectShow filter written in C++ could be recompiled for Windows CE quite easily, the GUI cannot because it is written Borland Delphi. Anyway, I expect that webcam drivers are not available for mobile platforms or that the performance is not good enough to compress and display two video streams. A tablet PC based on Windows XP or Windows 7 is a better choice and offers the greatest flexibility regarding capture device and codec support.

Mac OS: If you want to run the Stereoscopic Player/Multiplexer on Mac hardware, it is highly recommended to use Boot Camp. Although some features also work on Parallels or other virtual machines, full hardware acceleration cannot be guaranteed so that performance might be low or some features are not functional.

HD support: The Stereoscopic Multiplexer supports HD. For HDV camcorders connected via Firewire, select a resolution of 1440 x 1080 and YUY2 colorspace in the multiplexer. A MPEG-2 decoder, like the on included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is required. If the camcorders have HDMI outputs, you can use two Blackmagic Design Intensity cards to capture left and right streams with the Stereoscopic Multiplexer. The proper setting is 1920 x 1080, HDYV colorspace in this case. On Windows Vista and Windows 7 it is necessary to turn off the User Account Control or run the applications with admin rights to work around a bug in the Blackmagic capture drivers (the drivers won't store the settings otherwise).

[Peter Wimmer]

Originally Posted by Robert Kennedy

After loading the stereoscopic player for the first time, I was a little surprised at how nvidia's and 3dtv stereoscopic players are nearly identical. I assume nvidia licensed 3dtv.at's technology?

Stereoscopic Player and 3D Vision Player are indeed similar, the 3D Vision Player is a customized edition of the Stereoscopic Player.