[mdlug] Raspberry Pinewood Derby

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Dan Pritts

> Are you confident that the captured video is really 75fps?  Or are frames getting dropped at input time?

During the recording, ffmpeg outputs the FPS it's seeing; with the settings shown, it occasionally drops to 74fps, but not below that. If I try to set the FPS higher, say 90fps, ffmpeg doesn't report any FPS higher than about 86fps in bursts. The CPU pretty much gets pegged either way.

What I'd like is to be able to record more frames per second. The current ffmpeg approach is an order of magnitude faster than using software like 'motion' and such, but it may be hitting the peak of what the Pi can handle. Especially because the USB bandwidth is shared between the camera and the storage.

> If it's recording ok but not playing OK I don't have any particular solution to suggest, other than
> making sure that whatever player you end up with is fully optimized for the Pi's video chip.

Looks like there's a tool called "omxplayer" that might do better. But it apparently only supports H264 and XVID, but that's not the format the videos come in. The other option is apparently a camera module for the Pi which could do up to 90fps at 640x480, but... only does 30fps for now. (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=68492)

> The other obvious solution is to use some sort of "real" computer.

Which might be the final solution. But carting my desktop around is a bit tricky. On the other hand, I might be able to do something with an Android phone or tablet with better specs than the Pi... :-)

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                                (313) 227-2317

 "[F]ascists armed by Mussolini and the Nazis won the Spanish Civil War,
 whose atrocities inspired Picasso, Orwell, and Hemingway. As unspeakable
        tragedies go, it was an artistic success." - Bob Harris

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