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Dual camera input I (naively) connected two firewire cameras and to my horror I was only only able to get video from one at a time. Is this inherent in the Firewire interface? Some bug/limitation with the Apple drivers? Is there any way to achieve this, for example using two USB cameras? |
I'm guessing that the two cameras were of identical models?
Firewire supports more than one camera, so it's not a FW limitation. It may be a driver issue; however, it might just be a QC limitation too (its video input patch doesn't support distinguishing cameras based on GUID, so if they're identical models it only sees the first one).
You could try using USB, but the system load may be noticeably higher, and I've not seen as many high-quality USB cameras out there (mind you, I'm not a video guy, so I only casually tinker with these sorts of things; I'm not well-versed at all on the details or specs of these things)
I remember seeing a patch that used 2 firewire cameras to make stereo/3d images. I can't find it now but it is possible. I have used 2 cameras in one machine combining isadora and quartz, making the video input in qc one camera and selecting the other on Isadora. Anyhow, it is possible, I will look into it to see if I can find that comp.
Oh yeah I found it
http://www.daisyrust.com/2006/02/05/qc-stereoscopic-recorder-05/
hope it helps
there's a long thread after my post "Multiple Video Inputs / DFG1394s / vdig in app", and the answer is basically seems no due to the quicktime capture gui rather than the framework itself. ie vdmx can handle two dfg1394s no problem, but both qc and qt apps have the same gui that can't differentiate between different devices of identical type.
that bug is so annoying.. :P it's the exactly the same thing with max/msp, it uses a string from the device-firmware instead of an unique ID to identify usb-devices.. for an installation i made once i had to use 3 networked computers just to be able to use 3 identical usb-devices simultaneously.. handling devices like that should be illegal :)