Load Image at 50% ??

[Alex Raskin]

I can Load Frame either at 100% or 50% opacity, which is great.

However Load Image does not seem to have 50% capacity - or am I missing it? How do I display half-transparent image (Not a frame) over live video for the purpose of aligning camera with it?

[Bob Hart]

Alex.


If you arrive at the "how to", please let us know how it is done. My suspicion is that the image might have to be photoshopped to 50% transparency on a layer and then brought back into the camera. I shall have to do some reading up on this as I could have used it a few times now.

[Alex Raskin]

Ari suggested to Load Image and then use the Recall Frame, which will cycle that image through 100%, 50%, and 0% transparency of the overlay.

I think it should work, since they say Load Image and Recall Frame use the same Buffer.

But I won't be able to check it till tomorrow.

A bit counter-intuitive too... it's like clicking Start in Windows when you actually want to get to Turn Off button ;)

[Bob Hart]

Alex.


Thanks for the advice. Please let us know how it works out. We had a computer guru ministering unto computer and DVR as in Slumdog Rig. Spent about 5 hours trying to unconfound the network thing. The camera and notebook were shaking hands but not quite making the connection - blackscreen, then Eureka, it worked, beautifully, RAM buffer staying right on the bottom.

Made everyone laugh because I was trying to make the touchscreen work ( Not a touchscreen. We become slaves to our conditioned reflexes. The mouse buttons on the left side are missing too - like somebody axed my fingers, or whilst in pedestrian mode, accidentally stepping out into the traffic when the lights go to green instead of waiting for the walk signal,

But we got too ambitious and did something wrong because it all went haywire when we tried for 2048 x 1152 @ 25P.

Now it is blackscreen. If you have any setup advice for laptops any advice will be appreciated. The one they tried was a really horsepowered one with three drives in it running Vista with all SP and updates. It has a Realtek NIC.

They are going to try a Dell later tonight with XP Pro SP3 with a proper Intel NIC.

[Alex Raskin]

Hi Bob, in terms of the network card - it is critical.

Best one is Intel Gigabit NIC. It always works on both desktop and laptop PCs. Others are dicey.

Also... I don't know if SiliconDVR is supposed to work on any OS other than Win XP... so I was always sticking with it...

In any case, there's a clear procedure in the Manual - see attached. If you/your IT person follow it, there won't be any fumbling around, it works all the time.

If, after following the procedure, camera/PC still cannot connect, or connect but without any video showing, that means your NIC is no good. The magic ingredient is whether it supports Jumpo Packets of 9K size, I think.

Anyway, SI does not have recommended laptops at the moment, and you see why. It can work though. Worked on my Sony Vaio that had Intel NIC. But Vaio was not powerful enough for anything beyond 1080p, plus it could not process display in real time at full resolution - no good for focus pulling. Processor in it was Intel 2Ghx Core 2 Duo.

So I built another PC, it is a full miniATX mobo in a small metal enclosure, and I have a battery built-in it, so it is completely mobile and makes me happy. Works super solid, not a single glitch for 2 months now.

I just recently put it up for sale:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/private-...field-use.html

...but then had to withdraw because my own laptop attempt with the latest 2.66Ghz machine proved fruitless, so this little guy stays. I call it PHDrig.

[Alex Raskin]

And here's DVR installation manual.

Look at paragraphs 12 and 24, they are critical and you have to do this manually, installation does not do it for you.

Hope this helps.

[Bob Hart]

Alex.


Thanks for that. They did have the manual and were going through all those steps. The five minutes or so that it worked it was great, the RAM bar hardly moved off bottom of the display at 1920 x 1080 @ 25P. It all went pearshaped when we opened a new project and set it to 2048 x 1152 @ 25P.


By coincidence, Our computer guru's name is Lex. He has a long background in game programming.

He is encouraging much of the 3D effort with the 2Ks here.

He has written his own automated program for a varying resetting of the convergence in post, - some sort of tracking thing and another for eliminating or reducing ghosting of close foreground objects.

Someone asked him about an older videogame and if he knew it. He told quite casually. "I wrote it".

I came home because it was getting late. I suspect I will get a call tomorrow along the lines of "pity you didn't stay we got it going" (probably about 3am if I know the way these things become an obsession when you just nearly have it right but not quite.).

[Alex Raskin]

I'm not even touching 3D at this point.

Another pointer on why RAM buffer can get overloaded:

- are you trying to record to HDD that is almost full? Then it gets slow and recording will stop.

- are you trying to record to an EXTERNAL hard drive? DVR is very sensitive to what is going on with USB bus, don't use it for external HDD. Try FireWire or - best - eSATA.

Hope this helps.

Now, what does all this have to do with Load Image? ;)

[Bob Hart]

Alex.


I think I might have sown confusion by my use of words. On the bar display, at 1920 x 1080, the ram buffer was hardly being used and the recorded images were fine on playback.

On 2048 x 1152, it reverted to balckscreen and an image never came back when we reset to 1920 x 1080, only blackscreen.

This particular laptop computer has separate internal drives in it and capacity was apparently not an issue.

There was another appliance connected via the USB but that was subsequently unplugged.

They are trying to get the laptop systems running because that will be more portable and cheaper excess baggage on the flight to Bali, than two heavy recorder units.

Thanks for your inputs. Regards from Western Australia.

[Alex Raskin]

You're welcome, matey :)

Bali? Should be beautiful there - I'm in!

[Alex Raskin]

So yes, confirmed - Load Image, and then cycle through Recall Frame button to make it semi transparent, 100% opaque, or invisible.

Done deal, thanks Ari.