FreeTrack Forum

RSS > Shucks! I had it and then I lost it! Using the VX-3000

fullperception	#1 21/03/2008 - 15h19 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 17 Registered on : 20/03/2008 Off line Mail Www	(PROBLEM SOLVED!!! See to my latest post below to see what I found out) Hello all fellow Free-Track'ers. I just found this website after youtubing for TrackIR videos and this is amazing that people are doing this DIY! Many, many praises! I went out and bought a Micro$oft VX-3000 which I have read some people use in the forums. I've throughly been looking and searching the forums and I seem to have a slight problem when in comes to getting full 30 fps. My framerate upon first trial with one regular red LED only gave me 20 fps. I tried playing around with things like lowering the camera resolution, turning off the auto-exposure check off box with the help from Enable Button, using a floppy disk filter over the front of the cam to increase the contrast of the LED pickup. On a few rare occasions I have gotten my fps to 30 but I don't know what I did. I think that it has something to do with exposure because at one point the threshold slider would give me "either/or" results. I would either have the LED dot with very little jitter problem, or it would go too a full red screen, there was very little in between. I have read about the method of using a flashlight on the camera to force it into 30 fps but that doesn't seem to work. I don't plan to remove the IR filter inside the camera as I plan on using regular red LED's and will also to use the camera normally. I think that I might try multiple pieces of 35mm film for a more subtle contrast filter. Are there other VX-3000 users out there that could help me with their setup? I assume that VX-1000 users could also help since their camera is a close cousin. Thank you in advance Cheers! Christopher Edited by fullperception on 24/03/2008 at 22h58.
Deimos	#2 21/03/2008 - 17h26 Top
Class : Beta Tester Posts : 120 Registered on : 07/11/2007 Off line	The primary means for getting the right FPS is the exposure setting - it should be set manually (so auto-exposure off) and be bellow 1/30sec, anything longer than that will cause framerate drop. For example exposure set to 1/20sec means that the sensor is exposed to light for 1/20 seconds before capturing a single frame, therefore it's impossible to achieve more than 20frames per second at this setting. Since frame capturing and transmission also takes some time, try setting the exposure to a bit shorter than the minimal -1/33 or even 1/40 seconds should do the trick. The problem is that with short exposure times the image gets darker and it'll get harder to separate the LEDs from background (especially visible light LEDs). You might try turning gain slider up a bit to make the image brighter, but don't go too high or you'll get too much noise in the picture. The best way would be to use IR LEDs and visible light filter (like a photo film or a magnetic disk), so you don't have to worry about background light. Just don't think about using the visible light filter with visible red LEDs - it will filter out their light too. The IR leds have optimal performance when the camera has the IR filter removed, but the fact that you don't want to do it doesn't mean that you won't be able to use IR LEDs at all - they'll just have to be vary bright to punch trough the IR filter - you'll have to power them with something about 70-90mA (use this value as forward current in LED calculator), depending on the IR filter strength. This way the camera will see just the LEDs, and even if the exposure is set really low and the LEDs seen on the image will be dark, they'll be easy to pick out, since nothing else will be seen on the image (visible light will be filtered out). The visible light filter can be removable (for example using rubber bands) so you can use the cam normally as well. A side note - removing the IR filter doesn't mean that you won't be able to use the cam normally - if you mount the visible light filter externally to be easily removable, as mentioned above you'll still be able to use your cam normally - the image captured without ANY filters will be in color, with just a slight purple tint. In daylight the tint should be barely visible, and as a bonus the cam will become much more sensitive to incandescent light (the purple tint will be a bit more visible here, but the colors when using artificial light are crappy anyway...).
amgsport	#3 21/03/2008 - 17h28 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 36 Registered on : 12/03/2008 Off line	Saw your response to my question about same problem... isn't it frustrating!! Have you had any luck working with the startup bits VX3000 installed? I disabled them and lost cam exposure adjustments so went back to square one. Strange deal... everything works fine at mid-20FPS, but obviously cam will do 30FPS and if that's the case I want 30FPS!! BTW - use an old floppy disk for your light filter instead of film negative. Much easier and better results. Good luck.
amgsport	#4 21/03/2008 - 17h35 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 36 Registered on : 12/03/2008 Off line	Deimos @ 21/03/2008 - 17h26 a dit: ...For example exposure set to 1/20sec means that the sensor is exposed to light for 1/20 seconds before capturing a single frame, therefore it's impossible to achieve more than 20frames per second at this setting. Since frame capturing and transmission also takes some time, try setting the exposure to a bit shorter than the minimal -1/33 or even 1/40 seconds should do the trick...... Very interesting. Thank you. Currently have exposure set at 1/20. Think I need to make some adjustments and try this out......
fullperception	#5 21/03/2008 - 18h19 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 17 Registered on : 20/03/2008 Off line Mail Www	Thanx fellas for your responses. I'm currently getting good tracking with the one LED and only about 6-9 jitter so I think for now I will try to stay with the visible LED's. The properties page for the VX-3000 lets you tune the color balance manually so it can either be opposed to or attracted to the red spectrum. What Deimos says about the shutter speed makes sense to me. The VX-3000 properties doesn't list exposure in terms of tenths of a second but there is a value scale. They also put in a USB bandwidth scale and I always have that all the way up. I do really think that it is the exposure that I need to look at over the weekend. I did see on another thread these steps: 1. Start FreeTrack 2. Click on the camera button to get properties for your camera 3. Disable the AE box 4. Drag slider to the left (lowest value) 5. Check the box 6. Re slide the value to the left 7. Uncheck the box 8. Click Apply 9. Click O.K. I haven't had the time to check this out yet but it seems to be close to my hunches. I know and have seen the glorious 30fps with great results..... I just gotta get back to that promised land! Cheers all! Christopher
amgsport	#6 21/03/2008 - 19h39 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 36 Registered on : 12/03/2008 Off line	I thought the 'value' exposure settings for VX3000 were the actual exposure settings... ie: 20 = 1/20, etc. Can anyone confirm this? I googled the VX3000 for direction on exposure setting but found nothing. I did find interesting info on the startup and services the cam installs, and what can be disabled. In startup, looks like VX3000.exe is solely responsible for launching IcePick.exe when top button on cam is pressed. It can be disabled in startup without issue. LifeExp.exe can also be disabled in startup, but it may try to reinstall itself in startup when you access the cam dashboard. The service MSCamSvc also installs as an automatic service. It can be stopped and either set to manual or disabled. It may also look to reset itself to automatic when accessing the cam dashboard. Disabling all these goodies may cause issues if you open cam dashboard... that's the problems I had on first attempt. Easy solution is not to launch cam dashboard. I'm pretty sure the only VX3000 setting we need that can't be accessed directly through FreeTrack is cam resolution. Anyway, I made the changes and FPS is still the same... lol. Good luck.
fullperception	#7 24/03/2008 - 15h58 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 17 Registered on : 20/03/2008 Off line Mail Www	Eureka! I now have something! Well, I went and followed my own steps to enable AE, turn down the exposure rating, uncheck and reslide the rating down. Fired up FreeTrack and got my whopping 30 fps back. What's more impressive is that I can set my resolution for the camera all the way up to the 640x480 setting and I still get the 30! Over the weekend I crudely made a 3 point cap array and used that for testing and it does work pretty good. In FS2004 I do notice that the framerate is a bit slower so I think I may try turning the resolution down to free up some speed hopefully. One other tip. After I sanded down my LED's like we're all doing to improve the cone of visibility I thought about the jitter problem as I had before and decided to use a finer sandpaper on the lens and also used some Novus plastic polish #2 on it. It's essentially a rubbing compound made specifically for plastic and I've been using it to restore my car's tail lights, scratched DVD's, a lot of stuff. Anyway, by using this stuff I'm able to get a crystal clear face on the LED's. I also used heat shrink tubing to isolate any parasitic light. The result is pin point bright dots that the VX-3000 picks up very very well. I don't even have to use any type of filter in front of the camera either. It's really turned out well for me! I just now need to build a cap and I'm all set. P.S. after making my crude cardboard setup and mounting it to me head to fly around in FS2004 I developed the popular motion sickness effect and was stricken with nausea for about and hour after I stopped. If you have any questions about me setup just let me know and I'll be happy to help! Christopher
amgsport	#8 24/03/2008 - 16h13 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 36 Registered on : 12/03/2008 Off line	Congrats! I did the exact same thing with my LEDs, but I'm using IRs. I detail show cars for fun so yes, with a little high grit wetpaper and compound my flattened IR-LEDs have a very nice finish! Also fully enclosed the sides. What exposure 'value' are you set at? Seems as if that's the key to higher FPS, although adjustments didn't bring my FPS back. Sorry to hear about the motion sickness... that's gotta suck.
fullperception	#9 24/03/2008 - 16h48 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 17 Registered on : 20/03/2008 Off line Mail Www	Amgsport, My exposure values are the lowest that they can go on the slider. I'll notice that if I switch from auto off to auto on that the slider has moved up a little bit. One thing that I played around with was when I was in the cameras LifeCam program, the one that comes on the CD and lets you take a photo, record audio, record video (BTW.. I do have the startup entries (2) for the camera enabled). Anyway I access the properties from the swing down arrow menu and (while using Enable Button) enable the auto exposure checkbox and play with the slider to see how the image looks. By sliding it higher the image gets brighter, and lower gets darker. For some reason I tend to remember that I didn't have this responsiveness at one point. But this is was a good indicator to me that I had control of the camera. I then set it down so the image was as dark as it could be, uncheck the box, and slide the slider down again just for the heck of it. Clicked Apply and OK. I don't really seem to need to go into properties thru FreeTrack, I only use the threshold adjustment to hone down the detected lights. So I guess I would have you try to play around with the exposure in the native LifeCam program first, shut it down and then open FreeTrack. I'm sitting pretty at the moment with the results I got but I now wonder if a lower resolution setting will help my ingame frame rate (about 22 with clear weather). I do also have a lot of scenery settings turned way up and my have to set them down a little. Oh... and here's some of my system specs for anyone's interest: 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 HT 1 GB RAM Nvidia GeForce 4 video card (128?) Let us know how it comes along Amgsport! Christopher
fullperception	#10 25/03/2008 - 14h58 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 17 Registered on : 20/03/2008 Off line Mail Www	I should also add that I have turned off the auto white balance box as color is not of an important issue for us when using Free-Track. I set the resolution to the half way point and I still get 30fps in Free-Track and the ingame fps has improved! I think that I'll stay at this setting since it's giving me the responsiveness that I'm looking for with the decent resolution. This thing is great! Now I've just got to get acclimated to the motion sickness problem. LOL Cheers! Christopher
vranac	#11 25/03/2008 - 15h37 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 24 Registered on : 05/02/2008 Off line	Hi fullperception, I'm glad that you make it work) could you please tell me what hapens when you close freetrack and start it again? Does exposure jump again?(24 ) on what value you managed to low down exposure? (8 with my vx1000) Which driver version are you using?(5.xx.xx.xx >>device manager )
fullperception	#12 25/03/2008 - 15h55 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 17 Registered on : 20/03/2008 Off line Mail Www	Sure...glad to help out. The exposure jump thingy is when I am in the properties screen through the LifeCam program up and running (don't have Free-Track running). I never need to get into the properties screen through Free-Track. So try to keep your tweaking separated from Free-Track when you do this. First, start LifeCam, open properties from the down arrow menu, use Enable Button to uncheck and play with the exposure slider to make sure that your image (in LifeCam) is darker than normal. Make sure all the auto boxes are unchecked. Click apply is applicable and o.k. Set your resolution to what you would like. Close Life Cam. Second, start Free-Track, click on the start button and begin tracking. Move the slider to get the best results. Since I'm away from home right now I don't know the exact driver that my VX-3000 is using but I only picked up the camera from Best Buy last week and the LifeCam program is 1.4. Hope that helps, let us know! Cheers, Christopher
vranac	#13 26/03/2008 - 20h11 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 24 Registered on : 05/02/2008 Off line	I have tried even that, via lifecam but nothing changed. I set exposure to 8 (minimum I can manage) but when I exit LifeCam and start it again ,driver force exposure to 24 and then tracking isn't good. I tried before to uninstall LifeCam software , only driver left and same thing happens. You just have to look at camera properties when you start it again, and there is noticebly difference in freetrack, LEDs dont look like dots anymore. Thanks anyway. I'm just want to be shure that anyone REALY managed to disable AE, and I am not,till now.
amgsport	#14 03/04/2008 - 03h19 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 36 Registered on : 12/03/2008 Off line	Found the missing FPS answer, but its not quite what I'd hoped..... Seems the extra/missing FPS is associated with large adjustments to camera config and/or tracking position. I made huge adjustment to my seating position (2ft closer to camera), and suddenly had 30FPS again. It lasted for about two hours like before then went back to normal 24FPS range. Decided to test theory and made wholesale changes to cam settings after that. Sure enough 30FPS returned for all of 2hrs or so, and then returned to normal. Not quite the answer I'd been looking for, but it is what it is. I'm happy at 24FPS. Freetrack is an AMAZING program! Thanks!!
fullperception	#15 07/04/2008 - 17h57 Top
Class : Apprenti Posts : 17 Registered on : 20/03/2008 Off line Mail Www	Hmm... strange that the distance of your LED unit to the camera has an effect on the fps. I never thought of this. My face is always about 18" from the screen and so the LED to camera distance is probably about the same. Thanks for letting us know about this and perhaps it will help someone else with the similar problem. Christopher

fullperception

#1 21/03/2008 - 15h19

Top

Class : Apprenti
Posts : 17
Registered on : 20/03/2008

(PROBLEM SOLVED!!! See to my latest post below to see what I found out)

Hello all fellow Free-Track'ers. I just found this website after youtubing for TrackIR videos and this is amazing that people are doing this DIY! Many, many praises!

I went out and bought a Micro$oft VX-3000 which I have read some people use in the forums. I've throughly been looking and searching the forums and I seem to have a slight problem when in comes to getting full 30 fps.
My framerate upon first trial with one regular red LED only gave me 20 fps. I tried playing around with things like lowering the camera resolution, turning off the auto-exposure check off box with the help from Enable Button, using a floppy disk filter over the front of the cam to increase the contrast of the LED pickup. On a few rare occasions I have gotten my fps to 30 but I don't know what I did. I think that it has something to do with exposure because at one point the threshold slider would give me "either/or" results. I would either have the LED dot with very little jitter problem, or it would go too a full red screen, there was very little in between. I have read about the method of using a flashlight on the camera to force it into 30 fps but that doesn't seem to work.
I don't plan to remove the IR filter inside the camera as I plan on using regular red LED's and will also to use the camera normally. I think that I might try multiple pieces of 35mm film for a more subtle contrast filter.
Are there other VX-3000 users out there that could help me with their setup? I assume that VX-1000 users could also help since their camera is a close cousin.

Thank you in advance
Cheers!
Christopher

Edited by fullperception on 24/03/2008 at 22h58.

Deimos

#2 21/03/2008 - 17h26

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Class : Beta Tester
Posts : 120
Registered on : 07/11/2007

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The primary means for getting the right FPS is the exposure setting - it should be set manually (so auto-exposure off) and be bellow 1/30sec, anything longer than that will cause framerate drop. For example exposure set to 1/20sec means that the sensor is exposed to light for 1/20 seconds before capturing a single frame, therefore it's impossible to achieve more than 20frames per second at this setting. Since frame capturing and transmission also takes some time, try setting the exposure to a bit shorter than the minimal -1/33 or even 1/40 seconds should do the trick. The problem is that with short exposure times the image gets darker and it'll get harder to separate the LEDs from background (especially visible light LEDs). You might try turning gain slider up a bit to make the image brighter, but don't go too high or you'll get too much noise in the picture.
The best way would be to use IR LEDs and visible light filter (like a photo film or a magnetic disk), so you don't have to worry about background light. Just don't think about using the visible light filter with visible red LEDs - it will filter out their light too. The IR leds have optimal performance when the camera has the IR filter removed, but the fact that you don't want to do it doesn't mean that you won't be able to use IR LEDs at all - they'll just have to be vary bright to punch trough the IR filter - you'll have to power them with something about 70-90mA (use this value as forward current in LED calculator), depending on the IR filter strength.
This way the camera will see just the LEDs, and even if the exposure is set really low and the LEDs seen on the image will be dark, they'll be easy to pick out, since nothing else will be seen on the image (visible light will be filtered out).
The visible light filter can be removable (for example using rubber bands) so you can use the cam normally as well.

A side note - removing the IR filter doesn't mean that you won't be able to use the cam normally - if you mount the visible light filter externally to be easily removable, as mentioned above you'll still be able to use your cam normally - the image captured without ANY filters will be in color, with just a slight purple tint. In daylight the tint should be barely visible, and as a bonus the cam will become much more sensitive to incandescent light (the purple tint will be a bit more visible here, but the colors when using artificial light are crappy anyway...).

amgsport

#3 21/03/2008 - 17h28

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 36
Registered on : 12/03/2008

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Saw your response to my question about same problem... isn't it frustrating!!

Have you had any luck working with the startup bits VX3000 installed? I disabled them and lost cam exposure adjustments so went back to square one.

Strange deal... everything works fine at mid-20FPS, but obviously cam will do 30FPS and if that's the case I want 30FPS!!

BTW - use an old floppy disk for your light filter instead of film negative. Much easier and better results. Good luck.

amgsport

#4 21/03/2008 - 17h35

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Class : Apprenti
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Registered on : 12/03/2008

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Deimos @ 21/03/2008 - 17h26 a dit:
...For example exposure set to 1/20sec means that the sensor is exposed to light for 1/20 seconds before capturing a single frame, therefore it's impossible to achieve more than 20frames per second at this setting. Since frame capturing and transmission also takes some time, try setting the exposure to a bit shorter than the minimal -1/33 or even 1/40 seconds should do the trick......

Very interesting. Thank you. Currently have exposure set at 1/20. Think I need to make some adjustments and try this out......

fullperception

#5 21/03/2008 - 18h19

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 17
Registered on : 20/03/2008

Off line Mail Www

Thanx fellas for your responses. I'm currently getting good tracking with the one LED and only about 6-9 jitter so I think for now I will try to stay with the visible LED's. The properties page for the VX-3000 lets you tune the color balance manually so it can either be opposed to or attracted to the red spectrum.
What Deimos says about the shutter speed makes sense to me. The VX-3000 properties doesn't list exposure in terms of tenths of a second but there is a value scale. They also put in a USB bandwidth scale and I always have that all the way up. I do really think that it is the exposure that I need to look at over the weekend.
I did see on another thread these steps:
1. Start FreeTrack
2. Click on the camera button to get properties for your camera
3. Disable the AE box
4. Drag slider to the left (lowest value)
5. Check the box
6. Re slide the value to the left
7. Uncheck the box
8. Click Apply
9. Click O.K.

I haven't had the time to check this out yet but it seems to be close to my hunches. I know and have seen the glorious 30fps with great results..... I just gotta get back to that promised land!

Cheers all!
Christopher

amgsport

#6 21/03/2008 - 19h39

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 36
Registered on : 12/03/2008

Off line

I thought the 'value' exposure settings for VX3000 were the actual exposure settings... ie: 20 = 1/20, etc. Can anyone confirm this? I googled the VX3000 for direction on exposure setting but found nothing.

I did find interesting info on the startup and services the cam installs, and what can be disabled. In startup, looks like VX3000.exe is solely responsible for launching IcePick.exe when top button on cam is pressed. It can be disabled in startup without issue. LifeExp.exe can also be disabled in startup, but it may try to reinstall itself in startup when you access the cam dashboard.

The service MSCamSvc also installs as an automatic service. It can be stopped and either set to manual or disabled. It may also look to reset itself to automatic when accessing the cam dashboard.

Disabling all these goodies may cause issues if you open cam dashboard... that's the problems I had on first attempt. Easy solution is not to launch cam dashboard. I'm pretty sure the only VX3000 setting we need that can't be accessed directly through FreeTrack is cam resolution.

Anyway, I made the changes and FPS is still the same... lol. Good luck.

fullperception

#7 24/03/2008 - 15h58

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 17
Registered on : 20/03/2008

Off line Mail Www

Eureka! I now have something!

Well, I went and followed my own steps to enable AE, turn down the exposure rating, uncheck and reslide the rating down. Fired up FreeTrack and got my whopping 30 fps back. What's more impressive is that I can set my resolution for the camera all the way up to the 640x480 setting and I still get the 30!
Over the weekend I crudely made a 3 point cap array and used that for testing and it does work pretty good. In FS2004 I do notice that the framerate is a bit slower so I think I may try turning the resolution down to free up some speed hopefully.

One other tip. After I sanded down my LED's like we're all doing to improve the cone of visibility I thought about the jitter problem as I had before and decided to use a finer sandpaper on the lens and also used some Novus plastic polish #2 on it. It's essentially a rubbing compound made specifically for plastic and I've been using it to restore my car's tail lights, scratched DVD's, a lot of stuff. Anyway, by using this stuff I'm able to get a crystal clear face on the LED's. I also used heat shrink tubing to isolate any parasitic light. The result is pin point bright dots that the VX-3000 picks up very very well. I don't even have to use any type of filter in front of the camera either. It's really turned out well for me! I just now need to build a cap and I'm all set.

P.S. after making my crude cardboard setup and mounting it to me head to fly around in FS2004 I developed the popular motion sickness effect and was stricken with nausea for about and hour after I stopped.

If you have any questions about me setup just let me know and I'll be happy to help!
Christopher

amgsport

#8 24/03/2008 - 16h13

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 36
Registered on : 12/03/2008

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Congrats! I did the exact same thing with my LEDs, but I'm using IRs. I detail show cars for fun so yes, with a little high grit wetpaper and compound my flattened IR-LEDs have a very nice finish! Also fully enclosed the sides.

What exposure 'value' are you set at? Seems as if that's the key to higher FPS, although adjustments didn't bring my FPS back.

Sorry to hear about the motion sickness... that's gotta suck.

fullperception

#9 24/03/2008 - 16h48

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 17
Registered on : 20/03/2008

Off line Mail Www

Amgsport,

My exposure values are the lowest that they can go on the slider. I'll notice that if I switch from auto off to auto on that the slider has moved up a little bit. One thing that I played around with was when I was in the cameras LifeCam program, the one that comes on the CD and lets you take a photo, record audio, record video (BTW.. I do have the startup entries (2) for the camera enabled). Anyway I access the properties from the swing down arrow menu and (while using Enable Button) enable the auto exposure checkbox and play with the slider to see how the image looks. By sliding it higher the image gets brighter, and lower gets darker. For some reason I tend to remember that I didn't have this responsiveness at one point. But this is was a good indicator to me that I had control of the camera. I then set it down so the image was as dark as it could be, uncheck the box, and slide the slider down again just for the heck of it. Clicked Apply and OK. I don't really seem to need to go into properties thru FreeTrack, I only use the threshold adjustment to hone down the detected lights.

So I guess I would have you try to play around with the exposure in the native LifeCam program first, shut it down and then open FreeTrack.

I'm sitting pretty at the moment with the results I got but I now wonder if a lower resolution setting will help my ingame frame rate (about 22 with clear weather). I do also have a lot of scenery settings turned way up and my have to set them down a little.

Oh... and here's some of my system specs for anyone's interest:
3.06 GHz Pentium 4 HT
1 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 4 video card (128?)

Let us know how it comes along Amgsport!
Christopher

fullperception

#10 25/03/2008 - 14h58

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 17
Registered on : 20/03/2008

Off line Mail Www

I should also add that I have turned off the auto white balance box as color is not of an important issue for us when using Free-Track.

I set the resolution to the half way point and I still get 30fps in Free-Track and the ingame fps has improved! I think that I'll stay at this setting since it's giving me the responsiveness that I'm looking for with the decent resolution.

This thing is great! Now I've just got to get acclimated to the motion sickness problem. LOL

Cheers!
Christopher

vranac

#11 25/03/2008 - 15h37

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 24
Registered on : 05/02/2008

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Hi fullperception,
I'm glad that you make it work)

could you please tell me what hapens when you close freetrack
and start it again? Does exposure jump again?(24 )
on what value you managed to low down exposure? (8 with my vx1000)
Which driver version are you using?(5.xx.xx.xx >>device manager )

fullperception

#12 25/03/2008 - 15h55

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 17
Registered on : 20/03/2008

Off line Mail Www

Sure...glad to help out.

The exposure jump thingy is when I am in the properties screen through the LifeCam program up and running (don't have Free-Track running). I never need to get into the properties screen through Free-Track. So try to keep your tweaking separated from Free-Track when you do this.

First, start LifeCam, open properties from the down arrow menu, use Enable Button to uncheck and play with the exposure slider to make sure that your image (in LifeCam) is darker than normal. Make sure all the auto boxes are unchecked. Click apply is applicable and o.k. Set your resolution to what you would like. Close Life Cam.

Second, start Free-Track, click on the start button and begin tracking. Move the slider to get the best results.

Since I'm away from home right now I don't know the exact driver that my VX-3000 is using but I only picked up the camera from Best Buy last week and the LifeCam program is 1.4.

Hope that helps, let us know!
Cheers,
Christopher

vranac

#13 26/03/2008 - 20h11

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 24
Registered on : 05/02/2008

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I have tried even that, via lifecam but nothing changed.
I set exposure to 8 (minimum I can manage) but when I exit LifeCam
and start it again ,driver force exposure to 24 and then tracking isn't
good.
I tried before to uninstall LifeCam software , only driver left and same thing
happens.
You just have to look at camera properties when you start it again,
and there is noticebly difference in freetrack, LEDs dont look like dots anymore.
Thanks anyway.
I'm just want to be shure that anyone REALY managed to disable AE,
and I am not,till now.

amgsport

#14 03/04/2008 - 03h19

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 36
Registered on : 12/03/2008

Off line

Found the missing FPS answer, but its not quite what I'd hoped.....

Seems the extra/missing FPS is associated with large adjustments to camera config and/or tracking position. I made huge adjustment to my seating position (2ft closer to camera), and suddenly had 30FPS again. It lasted for about two hours like before then went back to normal 24FPS range.

Decided to test theory and made wholesale changes to cam settings after that. Sure enough 30FPS returned for all of 2hrs or so, and then returned to normal.

Not quite the answer I'd been looking for, but it is what it is. I'm happy at 24FPS. Freetrack is an AMAZING program! Thanks!!

fullperception

#15 07/04/2008 - 17h57

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Class : Apprenti
Posts : 17
Registered on : 20/03/2008

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Hmm... strange that the distance of your LED unit to the camera has an effect on the fps. I never thought of this. My face is always about 18" from the screen and so the LED to camera distance is probably about the same. Thanks for letting us know about this and perhaps it will help someone else with the similar problem.

Christopher

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