[spook-l] Features and bugfix request

[Vladimir Lasky]

> Yeah, that's kind of annoying, but I haven't found an easy way around
> it.  If the stream is delayed, say, four seconds until the next
> keyframe, QuickTime will increase the buffering delay from the default
> of three seconds to seven seconds.  That seems more annoying than the
> current behavior.  I think the appropriate workaround would be to delay
> the response to the PLAY command until a keyframe is about to be sent,
> but there's not really a clean way to do this with the current design.

OK then how about displaying a user-defined splash screen until the keyframe is
ready?
 
> > 3. I have noticed that spook generates a Floating point exception if you
> run it
> > without all your configured hardware connected e.g. When spook.conf has
> three
> > cameras configured, but only two are connected at the time spook is
> executed.
> 
> Is this with the IIDC input module?  The multi-cam support wasn't
> particularly clean to begin with.  I'd have to test it with my own
> system and that will have to wait until I'm back in my office in a few
> weeks.

Yep, using the Apple iSight cameras.

> I think the 1394 support in the kernel has been pretty stable for a
> while now, and I haven't seen any kernel-related problems in years.  Are
> there specific issues that are resolved in 2.6.12 that would impact
> Spook?  -Nathan

Can't be sure - all I can say that there are less kernel messages produced.

A while ago I had a problem when I was using Griffin Sightflex gooseneck camera
mounts. They have a very bad internal cable (probably violates all IEEE1394
specs) and this was causing video to stop at random times. Sometimes the system
would also hang as well.

Once I installed good quality cables and got the workshop to build
custom-designed sturdy camera mounts, this problem went away. I don't know if
the latest kernel would handle the bad cable scenario any differently.

Bad things still happen if you turn a camera off (by turning the ring at the
front near the lens) or if the firewire cable is accidentally yanked out while
spook is running, though I imagine that would be hard to deal with in
software.

Regards, Vlad.

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