[PD] camera lag

[simon wise]

On 27 May 2006, at 7:32 AM, Thomas Ouellet Fredericks wrote:

> In your experience, what is the best setup for the least camera lag?
> I tried DV in XP and the lag seems to be more than 20 ms.
> Webcams are terrible.
> Anyone tried video input pci cards? For Linux or XP?


I had been dealing with the same problem - DV via firewire has the  
big time lag with any software.

I switched from a MacMini to a Linux system with a PCI video card and  
I can get 4 streams simultaneously, and can switch each stream  
between 4 different inputs - and the lag time is very small (I have  
cameras onstage, with shots of performers speaking on a screen behind  
them, so the lag has to be small so their lips aren't way out of sync).

I use a Eurosys Tetra card - not cheap but it is supported properly  
by the v4l drivers. My OS is Debian (Kannotix). It was my first foray  
into linux, that combination worked well for me though the learning  
curve was steep.

simon