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Thursday 01, January 01:33

We have bun pics!

Spent today trying in vain to get VNC working so I can remotely administer the camera server without having to trapse down to the garage. All seems fine but either something is wrong, or I cannot find a compatible VNC client for Windows 'cus I'm blowed if I can get it to work :(

Nevermind, I have installed Xming on my XP box instead and this is working fine to give me a remote client

Sooooo, Camera server is now sat in the garage, and connected to the run camera. And whaddya know! It works!

These images are not direct grabs, but rather grabs from an MJPEG stream at a tiny 16kpbs. This is the quality you will get online when you view the cams. Before you moan too much though, bare in mind that this is 25 frames per second video, NOT the 1 frame per 3 seconds I was running previously.

I have also been playing with the H.264 codec again. Below you can see some grabs from an H.264 stream (again at 16kbps). At first it looks impressive as the quality is far better than MJPEG: (These are nighttime infrared shots BTW)

MJPEG left, H.264 right, identical scene

However, the nasty surprise comes when movement takes place. Here is a sequence as Sparkle jumps down from the step. Note the huge pixelation that occurs due to the large frame changes:

>

Although the image recovers fidelity fairly quickly, I'm just not sure whether this is a feasible codec to use. This is quite apart from the massive processor load that it gives the server, along with the problem of displaying it in a browser. Currently only Quicktime supports H.264 at the moment, and I have been unable to get a compatible stream so far, despite much tweaking and delving through docs. The other possibility is to offer the VideoLAN plugin itself.

One other problem you will notice in the above images is the massive overexposure of Sparkle. Another good example here:

This is because the infrared light is emitted from the camera, so objects close to the camera recieve a lot more light than the far end of the run which is in near darkness. This wouldn't be a problem except that the cheap camera use a metering system where is tries to average the entire scene to mid grey. The dark back corners of the run cause the camera to overexpose the true subjects (ie the buns).

One way around this would be to mount another IR light at the back of the run, to provide more uniform illumination. Something else I will have to look at in the future.

I was hoping to have a rudimentary stream online by the end of today, but it appears that the MJPEG stream being encoded by videoLAN is not quite right, because I cannot get either native Firefox support, or and Java or ActiveX controls to render the stream :(

It could end up with the videoLAN plugin yet...... :/

Autumn      2006-12-06 20:21:26

my rabbit is totally cuter then yours, tell me this; do you love your rabbits enough that you would die for them? If not, then you aren't nuts like me. I would personaly sacrifice my life for my rabbit ( Cameron). I always told her the two things. One: when she was born they had to redifine the word 'Beautiful'. And the second one is, that the pretties bunnies are priceless, like she was. Now that is what I call..." Bunny Love."

Pyro      2006-12-06 20:27:57

I respect your website and most of your thoughts, but I think that you should learn to use night vision abilities better befor subjecting them to publicity. The best of wishes, BUDDY+ Punk IN YOUR FACE, BOY! love, Pyro p:s, I am a guy too, and I know Autumn( who rocks socks) Autumn: Hello