Buffer filling and stopping recording before RAM full
Answered
Hi, I'm attempting to make recordings with a BlackFly BFS-U3-13Y3M-C, however if I set the framerate above around 25fps on SpinView then the frames start getting buffered. However this doesn't correspond with an increase in RAM usage in task manager, but still freezes/ stops the recording after a short amount of time. I'm very keen to avoid dropped frames so want to use the buffer, but am wondering if there is a setting somewhere that would increase the amount that can be buffered? Otherwise, a new computer might be in order, however I can't seem to figure out what specifically limits the ability for the frames to saved quickly rather than getting buffered, and so am wondering what I should look out for regarding that as well?
Thank you,
S
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Official comment
Hi Stefan,
SpinView sometimes is too slow to record continuously at higher frame rates. I recommend our source code example AcquisitionMultipleCamerasWriteToFile that comes with Spinnaker. That example saves all images to a big binary file first and extracts them later for saving images or videos (similar to how we save and process stream files from our spherical Ladybug cameras).
Best regards,
Manuel
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Hi Manuel, Thanks very much for the reply. I've tried to find this example code, and can find the link for it in the SDK info and examples, however it seems the code for it is missing. Is there a way you can help?
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Hi Stefan, what do you mean by you can find the link for it?
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I tried looking through this resource for the code, as well as the equivalent guide that gets downloaded with the SDK download: http://softwareservices.flir.com/Spinnaker/latest/examples.html
In other examples, the code is there for it, but not in the example I'm after.
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What operating system do you use? On Windows you can find the source code examples in C:\Program Files\FLIR Systems\Spinnaker\src
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Ah, thank you, got it now.
Thanks very much for the help
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I still do have a question regarding what you think might be the reason spinview works fine for this camera on one computer vs another where it doesn't allow high FPS recording? Do you know what aspect might be limiting this?
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That is hard to say. Could be differences in amount of RAM, hard disk write speed or CPU speed and possibly other bottlenecks.
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I'm getting the same problem with my BFS-U3-13Y3M-C camera. The recording software eats up 30 GB of RAM within 5 min on a PC with excellent specs, even when I acquire images at just 45 FPS. This performance is worse than some non-high-speed cameras, which is quite counterintuitive. Uncompressed images take up too much hard-disk space, whereas MJPEG and H264 images overload the RAM. Should I tweak settings or try different software?
Update: seems like the MJPEG compression quality makes a big difference - if it's set to 100, the RAM isn't overloaded, but the file size is huge. If it's set to 1, the file size is small, but the RAM gets overloaded quickly. I'm going to try different software to see if this relationship applies across the board.0 -
Hi Eric,
It sounds as if the CPU was the bottle neck in that situation. I recommend to try our source code example AcquisitionMultipleCamerasWriteToFile and adapt it to your needs. That way you will need a lot of hard disk space initially but can take your time compressing the images later and then delete the binary file.
Best regards,
Manuel
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Hey Manuel,
Thanks for the input. Can it really be a CPU issue if the CPU usage seems low/normal in the task manager?
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It seems so. If uncompressed video works fine, the hard disk seems to be fast enough.
Maybe you are looking at the overall CPU usage but the software maxes out only a single core.0 -
If it helps, when I tried I was able to get as far as getting the example code mentioned above running by loading the visual studio workspace into VS, but then stopped going down that route as my coding abilities aren't too strong in C++ and felt it would take too long to adapt. I also realised I needed to be able to view the camera output at the same time as recording for my use of it, and so I settled on cropping the image being recorded in the settings panel of SpinView. This allowed me to u crease the frame rate, but at a cost. I also had the same issue of seemingly none of my computer components getting maxed out but still getting it freezing. In my opinion this seems like a pretty critical flaw in the way SpinView is built and a fix to this would be very much appreciated, especially considering the companies own code proves that full speed recording is possible.
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