Feature Feedback

[Paul]

Hi,

As there doesn't seem to be an open thread I guess I'll just make a new one?

Been using vitamin d for about a week now, upgraded to Basic after the first day. Tried a lot of similar programs and this is way above and beyond the rest.

Anyway, as for feature feedback could I suggest the following:

1) The main window is quite large on my 1366x768 screen and it'd be nice to leave it pinned somewhere instead of minimising. I'm not sure what is possible but resizing the main window below the current minimum would be nice, or perhaps a grid view. Some kind of mini player perhaps.

2) When a rule is set to save triggered events to My Computer, would it be possible to specify a seperate folder for those flagged files as opposed to the main working directories? I've got a free FTP space set up, but it's limited to 1GB. if I could specify a folder that only contained the files that have detected content in them, then just that folder could be synced to either somewhere else on the network or into the cloud using something like Windows Live Sync (the old Mesh.com)

3) When the program warns that it's getting low frame rates, maybe there could be some way to test the transfer speed between the camera and the PC. I have a Foscam FI8908W connected directly to the router next to the PC via 10m of ethernet and I constantly get the warning. I don't know if it's the camera or network or vitamin d being over zealous. Perhaps some kind of "snooze" for the warning, feedback for how far below 10fps the stream actually is, or the option to set a lower trigger point? It's not a massive issue, but I do worry about how much attention I should give the warning.

As I said, fantastic program, very happy customer.

Thanks
Paul

[doug]

Paul,

Thanks for your feedback. Glad you like the program! A few quick thoughts:

1. It's definitely on our list to think about resizing issues, though they haven't made it to the top of the list yet. You bring up some interesting angles on it, though. I hadn't thought about wanting to pin the window somewhere...

2. Copy to a folder is definitely on the top of our list of things to do. I can't promise when it will be done, but it's not incredibly difficult and is often requested. For now, the workaround is to run a local FTP server yourself. It's not a great workaround, but it does work... I think that's mentioned elsewhere in these forums.

3. Yes, Vitamin D can be a little overzealous about low framerate warnings. There are actually two of them that are subtly different: one indicates that the CPU is overburdened and the other that we're getting low framerate from the camera (which could be the camera, the lighting, or the network). We have info about the framerate internally, but never found a good place to put it in the interface. Maybe we can eventually put it in the test screen? One trick you can do: export the video that you've recorded to a file. You can then use a video player like QuickTime to check the frame rate. Generally, things work pretty well at 8FPS or higher, though we certainly have run below that. The system was tuned for 10FPS, so that's where the warning lies.

-Doug

[Paul]

Hi,

Thanks for your response, great to know you're looking at some of this stuff already.

I thought of another other feature suggestion, I suspect it might be out of the scope of the software but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Would it be feasible to build into the program the ability to turn a USB webcam into an IP cam, so that it could be viewed from another device on the network, or assigned a fixed IP for remote view?

It would be great to have this built right in, or perhaps you know of a different program that could do this that I can install instead?

[Joe]

Paul,

I don't know if you want to go this route but I set up a USB webcam on a Win XP Pro computer with Vitamin D and then enabled the Remote Desktop feature on that machine. Now I can access the webcam live view or the saved files from any computer on my home network by connecting via remote desktop.

The live video feed from Vitamin D is as clear as it is on the local machine and works very well for my purposes.

One drawback is that it takes about 30 seconds for the remote desktop connection to initialize, but that's not terrible and I'm assuming that is not uncommon when establishing remote desktop connections.

Anyway, just another option.

Joe.

[Paul]

Hi,

Actually, that's not a bad idea. I was contemplating setting up a dedicated PC in a cupboard somewhere and leaving that permanently switched on for video recording purposes (and media server purposes) and I'd have to access that via remote desktop.

I made the suggestion as I've been using an Android app to view the feed from my Foscam, and it'd be nice to be able to do the same with the webcam, but I could just as easily use a remote desktop app on the phone as well (just).

Thanks

[doug]

Paul,

Agreed that it would definitely be nice to be able to re-stream webcams from within Vitamin D Video. ...in the short term, though, I think some people have had success using a program called "WebcamXP". I can't vouch for it, but figured I'd pass along the info. Here's a post on our old forum talking about it:
https://vitamind.fogbugz.com/default.asp?video.1.69.7

Best of luck!

-Doug

[Paul]

Ahh, WebCamXP was one of the programs I tried before VitD and it didn't do the saving streams thing very well. Maybe if I way just using it as a Webcam to IP cam I should give it another look.

My MS Lifecam gets a bit ansty sharing its stream between two applications, but I'll have another look.