Hi!

It's not I'm too lazy to do own researches, but maybe you guys have some experience for helping me with the project I'm planning.

I want to use a live cam on a theatre stage, stream the video signal into Pd, add some (maybe audiowise triggered) effects and put the signal to some older TVs on stage in (almost) real time. As you can probably imagine with as low latency as possible, but it hasn't to be perfect.

We have a Canon Legria HF R26 camera (which gives out HDMI and Composite video) and some Composite switches (cinch to cinch). As far as I know now, Composite is more reliable than HDMI on growing cable distances, so the quesion for is:

How to get the signal into the computer and out without having too much latency? I probably would need to buy some kind of video grabber (card or composite to USB?). Please note we are a small theatre group which needs to save every coin we can, so we can't pay 300$ for some Matrox device...

Could you give me some hints for more affordable but also reliable hardware to work with?

Thanks in advance!

@Hightower Hello.......... I would suggest that you look first here.........
It is a dedicated program built in Max..... free....... and might do what you want straight away in a way that you will understand.
for windows.......
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fnervousvision.com%2Fvpt%2FVPT7_02_win.zip&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHeHIDaEsWCiBzdXnl7bDeYr9EFZw
for osx........
https://hcgilje.wordpress.com/vpt/
If you are on the mac platform it should work for you straight away using syphon, and I believe that it now works under windows with more than one camera using sprout.......
The program works well with a laptop webcam as well, which might be all you need (adequate resolution) if you are screening on a TV.
David.

Looks nice, I will definetly check it out

Still searching for some hardware though...

What computer are you using? What platform are you using? I mostly use OSX laptop (no possibilites for using PCI cards) and made some testing concernig your questions through the last years. Since you're talking about TVs i think CV quality will be enough for you. I made good experiences with this grabber:

http://www.geniatech.com/pa/igrabber.asp

its not the cheapest among the usb grabbers, but i found it to be the cheapest working with mac. For use with gem it is important that it is usable with quicktime. I had bought cheaper products which worked with their own software but not with pd. The cheapest HD (hdmi) grabber would be

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/de/products/intensity

for use with windows i can recomend this (i think it was about 400€ though - there should be many cheaper products nowadays)

https://de.ids-imaging.com/store/produkte/framegrabber/framegrabber-pciexpress/falconquattro-express.html

If i had to buy something now i would take the intensity shuttle. It will also work with your next HD-project. Do you mind to tell what project you're working on?

best

johnny

Hi Johnny (are you actually that German hip hop artist?),

At the moment I'm using an older desktop computer with AMD quadcore, 4GB RAM, Nvidea graphics card and Windows 7 Professional, but I will get a new computer in the next 2 months (not sure what exactly yet, but it will be probably a windows driven workstation laptop or rackmount pc, which has more power than my actual one).

The Intensity looks quite interesting, it costs about 200€ at the moment, which could be affordable. I might get it lent for testing by a local video artist and if it works for me, I might save some coins more and get it myself.

Just for understanding: If I have this, can I route the signals of Pd on the Intensity video outputs (so it practically serves as a "video input and output card") and route some other signals to my build video card, so I can use both's video outputs simultanously? That would be great and another pro argument to buy it... I'm also no friend of "buy cheap - buy twice"...

I've bought a Terratec Grabby USB 2.0 rescently for 40€, which actually works with Pd, but I have a latency of about 1/3 second. Maybe this is enough for the show I'm planning, since at the moment there is no wish by the group to have the picture on the TVs be lip-sinc. If it's got to be synced with music, it won't work though.

For use with gem it is important that it is usable with quicktime.

Could you explain this a little? Because I've thought in the worst case the signal you're getting from the input interface is translated into QT, so there shouldn't be a problem except having a bit of latency for the translation progress...

you mind to tell what project you're working on?

You mean which show exactly in which theatre? If you are really interested, drop me a pm. Otherwise I would like to keep it for myself in public.

Thanks for the input so far.

Hi Hightower

i*m not that hip hop artist, but i send you german links last post, sorry.

A quick research didn't show for shure whether it's possible to use the intensitys output as a normal output, but i have doubts about that. I mostly speak for OSX though. You really better test first!

"For use with gem it is important that it is usable with quicktime." <- thats also only statet for OSX and me, since i used quicktime as a backend, sorry for the confusion. I had cheap grabbers (~10€) that were supposed to work with OSX and did, but only with proprietary software to digitize old VHS or whatever. I also used quicktime with WindowsXP & 7 for projects with 4-8 video inputs..

best

-johnny

EDIT is very interested in latency tests with intensity shuttle USB3 and pd

No problem, I'm living in Germany and understand German...

As I have researched, at least Max/Msp and some other VJ softwares can't work with the Intensity's outputs and inputs paralelly. I don't know how Pd handles this. Overall the Intensity seems to be a little beast, since you have to have the right chips on your mainboard, it can't handle every input resolution and some other bummers. But at least for laptop it seems to be the only solution, which I can afford and has the specs, I'm looking for.

So yeah, I probably have to find an reseller, who will take the shuttle back, if I can't use it, and just test it.

If I have some results, I'll let you know.

For mac the most versatile option is iSight camera module taken out of the iMac 2005(actually all white iMacs). It is a USB camera that works with mac native drivers. It needs soldering standard USB cable - wires are matched color-coded. I have made several units for my interactive installations and it is very easy to do really.
USB could be extended with active cables easy 25m or use cat5 to USB baluns.
Camera modul from ebay go as low as 3EUR. USB extenders 10/15EUR.
The best thing about this is its small size and obviously it work with mac always.
Look at this list
http://forum.garagecube.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3951&start=105#p26022