EOS Movrec - slow frame rate

[sharkbite]

Hi Folks -

I am just starting to use EOS movrec with my Canon 7d to capture
liveview AVIs'

I have an older dual-core laptop running W7.

I have loaded the latest Canon utilities.

On recording the liveview stream i am getting a very low frame rate.
(mostly around 8 fps, but sometimes dips to less than 2)

I have tried a few settings in movrec - i.e. using the non-stable frame rate and not displaying the image on the laptop, with no real improvement.

Looking in task manager, the CPU is not particularly stressed, and there is plenty of free RAM.

Is there anyone out there with some experience with this software,
and perhaps a faster frame rate?
(hoping you might be able to give me some tips!)

any help will be most appreciated.

cheers,

[Nikolas (Nik)]

try using the liveview zoom feature so that it crops the majority of the non essential image and see if that speeds it up.

[2stroke (Jay)]

Quick look at it maybe totaly wrong but i think it was made for the older eos models 720p and using liveview to capture. I have only used backyard EOS in the past for a quick planetary but i'am pretty sure it makes use of movie mode (yes can liveview to) and uses the digi processor to capture 1080p because it encodes with a H.264 codec ( i hope but if not some other) and is then able to shift the data through usb 2. Theres no way you could push a 1080p stream in raw through a usb 2 connection at 30fps or even 10fps so it must be encoded before hand to do so. You can't even write that data to a flash card because each frame is that huge in raw the card write speed could not coup. Hope that kindia helps maybe try cannon utils hopefully a dslr expert can help.

The best option is a 5d mark II or 600D with magic lantern for home movie making 1080p on a budget with a dslr.

[sharkbite]

thanks Gents -

sadly 5x makes no difference to performance :-(

Movrec doesn't do 1080p....
1024 x 680 is the frame size of the resultant .avi

The theory is that to "1080p" that you would normally record to the CF card is actually quite compressed, and contains compression artifacts...
The .avi from movrec is not compressed....so theoretically has better quality.

(This seems to be borne out by some low-light non-astro pics i have tested...a stack of 100 grainy pictures started to approximate a nice picture, with no grain)

back to the performance issues....

So i tried movrec in my desktop which has quite a decent h/w spec.
A consistant 30fps is the result....

so it looks like the lappie might be a tad underspecced :-(

I did discover one thing though....

turning of "aero" boosted the FPS to a consistant 15...

anybody know what else i can do do wring more out of a dual-core 1.8ghz AMD lappie?

[2stroke (Jay)]

SSD with good writes would help, if you do alot of this work it will cew it out a bit but thats life. I would go with a intel 520 series even though your notebook maybe on a sata 2. I don't know what socket your using but i guess its an older socket before the apu's, you could try for a cpu upgrade.

Personally i would bin it haha, have a sony vaio with a 2ghz T7200 core 2 and nvidia 7600 gt i could pass on for $90, dvd writter, think it has a 320gb hd and 3gb of ram. Has a COA windows xp and a "trail" copy of win 7 ulti running dual boot. Not sure on battery life though. This offer is for you only so no one else pm me ffs, forge will put it up in the classy's when she gets time.

[sharkbite]

Wow gee thanks for the more than generous offer!
If i put one more computer in the house though - there might be trouble....

The lappie does have a usb3 port, so i'll jam a fast drive in that to see
if it makes a difference...

[2stroke (Jay)]

Originally Posted by sharkbite

Wow gee thanks for the more than generous offer!
If i put one more computer in the house though - there might be trouble....

The lappie does have a usb3 port, so i'll jam a fast drive in that to see
if it makes a difference...

What cpu is it? Or notebook model maybe able to help with cpu upgrades in term's of info. Seems odd its got usb 3 and only 1.8ghz because that would mean its a E2-3000M aka Llano and if that's the case case you can overclock it for free to 2.4ghz more then likely. If its not BGA meaning its a socket cpu not soldered to the motherboard you could upgrade it. Don't worry about the bs about overclocking as long as you stick with stock spec voltages the only concern is battery life, if it overheats they throttle down.

This will help you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6nBc7XtnxE

I run a trinity and can even overclock this baby up (its alot more work then Llano though), though putting a richland's a10 in soon