Where did Vitamind.com go?
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garysmacman - Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:32 pm
Where did Vitamind.com go?
What is up with Vitamin D? The website now redirects to http://www.sighthoundlabs.com/ Sighthound! What the hell Ryan, they'll upgrade my $200 program for $75 with what's 'new' features? Looks to be the same thing to me. So what happened?
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ryan - Posts: 1015
- Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2010 2:52 pm
- Location: Palo Alto, California
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
Hi Gary,
Vitamin D Video is now known as Sighthound Video. We just launched the new website on Thursday, we will absolutely be contacting everybody over the coming weeks and are moving through everything as quickly as we can. I promise you, I've never slept less in my life.
This is very exciting for me - as you know VDV has been in a sort of "support only" mode for several years, as we had to close the company and go get new jobs. We loved Vitamin D and have been doing our best to keep the product alive in our spare time with support and bug fixes, but sadly to both us and our users we have been unable to devote time to adding new features. This is all changing, as the product is now being developed full time by both myself and a number of others. Exciting things are coming.
Yes, there will be an upgrade fee for most people aside from those who purchased VDV within a certain recent timeframe. It is not at all uncommon for software to do this when major revisions are released, and Sighthound Video 2.0 certainly represents a major revision. If you are content with VDV 1.4.2 your license will be valid indefinitely and you are under no obligation to upgrade.
What is new in Sighthound Video? If you download the stable 1.5 build it is true that you will not see many user facing changes, though there are some under the hood. If, however, you download the beta of 2.0 you will see some of the things that we've been working on the past months, and many many more arriving over the coming weeks. What is there now? Here's a short list of some highlights -
* The video decoding and encoding libraries have been updated and improved
* Video is now stored as h264 rather than mpeg4
* There are more supported camera resolutions, as well as a "match source" option
* Most significantly perhaps is an early release of remote access functionality. You can access your clips and live cameras, and turn cameras on and off from any desktop or mobile browser.
We have a lot more in store as well. We have a wonderful group of customers, and we're thrilled we can continue serving them for years to come deliver features that have long been asked for.
Thanks,
- ryan
Vitamin D Video is now known as Sighthound Video. We just launched the new website on Thursday, we will absolutely be contacting everybody over the coming weeks and are moving through everything as quickly as we can. I promise you, I've never slept less in my life.
This is very exciting for me - as you know VDV has been in a sort of "support only" mode for several years, as we had to close the company and go get new jobs. We loved Vitamin D and have been doing our best to keep the product alive in our spare time with support and bug fixes, but sadly to both us and our users we have been unable to devote time to adding new features. This is all changing, as the product is now being developed full time by both myself and a number of others. Exciting things are coming.
Yes, there will be an upgrade fee for most people aside from those who purchased VDV within a certain recent timeframe. It is not at all uncommon for software to do this when major revisions are released, and Sighthound Video 2.0 certainly represents a major revision. If you are content with VDV 1.4.2 your license will be valid indefinitely and you are under no obligation to upgrade.
What is new in Sighthound Video? If you download the stable 1.5 build it is true that you will not see many user facing changes, though there are some under the hood. If, however, you download the beta of 2.0 you will see some of the things that we've been working on the past months, and many many more arriving over the coming weeks. What is there now? Here's a short list of some highlights -
* The video decoding and encoding libraries have been updated and improved
* Video is now stored as h264 rather than mpeg4
* There are more supported camera resolutions, as well as a "match source" option
* Most significantly perhaps is an early release of remote access functionality. You can access your clips and live cameras, and turn cameras on and off from any desktop or mobile browser.
We have a lot more in store as well. We have a wonderful group of customers, and we're thrilled we can continue serving them for years to come deliver features that have long been asked for.
Thanks,
- ryan
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garysmacman - Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:32 pm
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
Thanks Ryan. I guess I jumped the gun there. I thought maybe you bailed and sold the company. I'll take a look at the beta and go from there as I do love Vitamin D. Please tell me that time/date stamp is high on your list of features to add. I already access Vitamin D via Logmein so that's not a high priority for me but the time/date stamp is. I like the fact that you're now storing videos in h264 format. Great idea. Thanks again and best of luck as you go forward with Sighthound!!!
Gary
Gary
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ryan - Posts: 1015
- Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2010 2:52 pm
- Location: Palo Alto, California
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
Thanks Gary,
To be completely clear, we did sell the application, but I am heading up engineering at Sighthound so you don't need to worry about the product changing hands. What this transition means for Vitamin D Video users is restored active development and a promising future for the product. Timestamps are definitely on my list, I hope that you won't need to wait too long for them to make an appearance.
To be completely clear, we did sell the application, but I am heading up engineering at Sighthound so you don't need to worry about the product changing hands. What this transition means for Vitamin D Video users is restored active development and a promising future for the product. Timestamps are definitely on my list, I hope that you won't need to wait too long for them to make an appearance.
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DrBunsen - Posts: 38
- Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:57 am
- Location: Fate, TX
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
This sounds GREAT to me! I don't know who all were owners of the company, but I'm hopeful that you and the others were able reap some windfall from developing such amazing software, and keeping it going during the lean times. I'm VERY glad that it's back in active development!
Ray
Ray
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Bytorok - Posts: 5
- Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2013 3:14 pm
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
Congrats, Ryan! All the best - I know you are going to keep up the great work!
Russ
Russ
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Semper Vaporo - Posts: 331
- Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:51 am
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
I played with the trial versions of both the "Released" version and the "Beta" version on another PC first and decided it was worth plunking my money down for the upgrade to the Pro version of SightHound.
I have the "Released" version installed on my dedicated Surveillance PC now and the install was quite seamless and didn't take long at all. All the previous videos from VDV as still accessible and from the User standpoint not much changed.
I do detect, I think, that it is faster (or at least less CPU intensive) as evidenced by watching the CPU usage graphs of Task Manager (which I have had running and on screen all the time for a couple of years, so I am used to seeing the graphs). It is hard to quantify the change but I think the graph shows less excursions over time; i.e.: it is a bit of a straighter line than before. I do believe the Kernel CPU usage is up slightly too, but the User CPU usage time is down. The Drive Access light on the computer case is blinking at about the same rate as before.
When in the review mode of the program, I believe it populates the list faster than before, too. Not a lot faster, but it is noticeably "less slow", (I can still read it faster than it can populate the list).
So far, I am pleased.
I will leave it run this way for a while and then install the "Beta" version to see how the "new" features work for me. I doubt if I will be impressed with most of the new stuff, because my Surveillance PC is totally stand alone, with no access to the internet, so I do not need the remote access features.
I have the "Released" version installed on my dedicated Surveillance PC now and the install was quite seamless and didn't take long at all. All the previous videos from VDV as still accessible and from the User standpoint not much changed.
I do detect, I think, that it is faster (or at least less CPU intensive) as evidenced by watching the CPU usage graphs of Task Manager (which I have had running and on screen all the time for a couple of years, so I am used to seeing the graphs). It is hard to quantify the change but I think the graph shows less excursions over time; i.e.: it is a bit of a straighter line than before. I do believe the Kernel CPU usage is up slightly too, but the User CPU usage time is down. The Drive Access light on the computer case is blinking at about the same rate as before.
When in the review mode of the program, I believe it populates the list faster than before, too. Not a lot faster, but it is noticeably "less slow", (I can still read it faster than it can populate the list).
So far, I am pleased.
I will leave it run this way for a while and then install the "Beta" version to see how the "new" features work for me. I doubt if I will be impressed with most of the new stuff, because my Surveillance PC is totally stand alone, with no access to the internet, so I do not need the remote access features.
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Razor512 - Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:09 pm
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
I am thinking about getting the basic version, but am wondering if thee object detection is any better as compared to the free version.
The free version is limited to 320x240 but I am wondering, is it making use of the full camera resolution for the detection, or is it basing it off of the 320x240?
I have been a free user for a while and pretty much only tested new versions for a day or 2 before giving up at the greater number of false positives, than actual real positives. eg the software believing that a 30 foot tall person is laying in the yard when ever a car headlight shines in. (wish it offered some kind of learning function, eg bring able to click on a false positive button on videos like described above to get the software to learn to ignore certain things or adapt to the coverage and ignore large changes)
Overall, what I would like to now is if the paid version will offer better detection, and will there ever be some kind of learning mode to help get it to stop going crazy over car headlights?
Anyway, really hoping to see lots of new functionality, from an ease of use standpoint, and the rules/ detection type function, I have yet to see any other application (except some crazy expensive enterprise application) that offers anything close to this.
literally the only issue that I have with it, is the headlights, if you live near a high traffic area, then you can get hundreds of detections a night, ant with that, the issues is when it detects the light shining onto the yard as a person
(time limits do not help much as due to the location, it takes a few second for a car to drive past, so you get a large area of light creeping in)
The free version is limited to 320x240 but I am wondering, is it making use of the full camera resolution for the detection, or is it basing it off of the 320x240?
I have been a free user for a while and pretty much only tested new versions for a day or 2 before giving up at the greater number of false positives, than actual real positives. eg the software believing that a 30 foot tall person is laying in the yard when ever a car headlight shines in. (wish it offered some kind of learning function, eg bring able to click on a false positive button on videos like described above to get the software to learn to ignore certain things or adapt to the coverage and ignore large changes)
Overall, what I would like to now is if the paid version will offer better detection, and will there ever be some kind of learning mode to help get it to stop going crazy over car headlights?
Anyway, really hoping to see lots of new functionality, from an ease of use standpoint, and the rules/ detection type function, I have yet to see any other application (except some crazy expensive enterprise application) that offers anything close to this.
literally the only issue that I have with it, is the headlights, if you live near a high traffic area, then you can get hundreds of detections a night, ant with that, the issues is when it detects the light shining onto the yard as a person
(time limits do not help much as due to the location, it takes a few second for a car to drive past, so you get a large area of light creeping in)
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ryan - Posts: 1015
- Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2010 2:52 pm
- Location: Palo Alto, California
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
Hi Razor,
We're certainly looking toward the future and doing our best to develop better and more feature-rich tracking and recognition, but these changes will take some time. Between the free and licensed versions of the application at the moment you likely won't see changes in recognition. I'm sorry you're experiencing trouble with that at the moment. As best as we tried to create algorithms that are zero configuration and work in all scenarios, that task is sadly impossible to completely fulfill. A pitch black scene where headlights are the only item to make an appearance is such a side case. If you are attempting to capture dark night scenes you may wish to invest in an IR camera, though this would again depend on your specific scene. If the camera can always "see" the scene in this fashion, headlights popping in and out will not have the same effect.
Thanks for the compliments on the features and functionality - we have even more queued up for release soon: http://sighthoundlabs.com/releasenotes
We're certainly looking toward the future and doing our best to develop better and more feature-rich tracking and recognition, but these changes will take some time. Between the free and licensed versions of the application at the moment you likely won't see changes in recognition. I'm sorry you're experiencing trouble with that at the moment. As best as we tried to create algorithms that are zero configuration and work in all scenarios, that task is sadly impossible to completely fulfill. A pitch black scene where headlights are the only item to make an appearance is such a side case. If you are attempting to capture dark night scenes you may wish to invest in an IR camera, though this would again depend on your specific scene. If the camera can always "see" the scene in this fashion, headlights popping in and out will not have the same effect.
Thanks for the compliments on the features and functionality - we have even more queued up for release soon: http://sighthoundlabs.com/releasenotes
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falcon999 - Posts: 20
- Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2012 9:47 pm
Re: Where did Vitamind.com go?
my most important questions is
has cpu used decreased? I have 16 cameras and I was never able to monitor all of them with vit d because the cpu usage was so great, storage isn't a problem, it was a quad core cpu, but no where close to fast enough to monitor all of the cameras.
can anyone tell me if it's a significant decrease? I could usually do about 8 - 9 cameras before, can I get all 16 or maybe 16 with a new i7 haswell cpu? 4770?
has cpu used decreased? I have 16 cameras and I was never able to monitor all of them with vit d because the cpu usage was so great, storage isn't a problem, it was a quad core cpu, but no where close to fast enough to monitor all of the cameras.
can anyone tell me if it's a significant decrease? I could usually do about 8 - 9 cameras before, can I get all 16 or maybe 16 with a new i7 haswell cpu? 4770?