\[pix\_write\]

gsagostinho

Hello all,

This if my first post here (I am also a beginner with pd), so I hope my question won't be utterly silly. I am having problems with the GEM object [pix_write]. I would like to have a single JPEG file being overwritten over and over again at every second, thus I created the following code:

It works well, and I do get my test.jpg file saved on C:, but the problem is I am unable to get this file to be overwritten: in other words, I get a flood of JPEG files on my root, named test0000.jpg, test0001.jpg and so on.

Is there any way I can overwrite the same file with [pix_write]??

Thanks a lot!
Gilberto

Johnny Mauser

Hi Gilberto,

If you only want to use the picture within pd, check out [pix_buffer]

or:

if you specify the folder and name everytime again, it will override the other picture!

[tgl]
|
[metro 1000]
|
[t b b]
| \
| |
| |
| |
| |
| [file C:\test 60(
| /
[pix_write]

greets

-j-

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/takepics.pd

gsagostinho

Hi Johnny,

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I need to use this picture with an external software. Since I am also using a pd patch for this sound installation of mine, I thought the easiest way to solve this webcam -> JPEG problem was to write another pd patch myself, but it is turning out to be more complicated than I thought.

When I am using my windows notebook, I have plenty of programs that can do what I need (webcam overwriting a single JPEG file every 1 second), but I need to use this setup on a Mac computer, and I really couldn't find ANY app that does that...

If anyone has any other suggestions (regarding both [pix_write] or some Mac app), I would be extremely grateful!

Thanks a lot,
Gilberto

Johnny Mauser

should have written new post instead of editing, sorry. see above.

gsagostinho

Hi Johnny,

Thank you so much for all your help, it works perfectly!!! What an elegant and ingenious solution

My only concern now is the reliability of my patch... I don't know why, but some GEM objects are being very unstable on both computers I am using. On my Win 8 notebook, pd crashes 99% of the time when I try to use [pix_video], exactly on the moment when the webcam is coming alive. It somehow worked fine twice, but I can't make it work again, even if I restart the computer before loading my patch... On the MacBook Pro, the same patch works, but it gives me some error messages (but not every time), and though it works most of the time, I had to restart the notebook sometimes.

I read in some forum that other people are having crashes and/or errors when using some GEM objects.

(by the way, my pd-extended version is 0.43.4 and my GEM version is 0.93.3)

Did anyone experience this kind of problems as well?

Johnny Mauser

one thing making pd crash is trying to open the same camera in more than one [pix_video]. better open it only once and distribute it from there.

gsagostinho

Hi Johnny,

I have only one [pix_video] object, and all other apps that can would use webcam are closed. It is really funny, sometimes it works fine, sometimes not. Today when I turned the Macbook on, the first thing I tried was to load my webcam patch on pd, and it gives me the following errors:

SGSetChannelDevice returned error -9408
SGSetChannelDeviceInput returned error -1
could not set SG Rect
could not make new SG channnel error -9405
[pix_video]: no valid video backend found

Then I restart the computer, and I do exactly the same, but this time the patch loads! It still give me some errors, but fewer than last time:

SGSetChannelDevice returned error -9408
SGSetChannelDeviceInput returned error -1
could not set SG Rect
Image saving support: QT

So it is a Russian roulette... Also, when I am using this webcam patch, the notebook becomes very slow and pd becomes very problematic (not responding, hanging, etc).

Do you have any suggestions about the problems above?

Thank you so much...
Gilberto