Cameras and accessories

You can order software and hardware as one package from CamVFX, our official US Reseller.

Alternatively, you can select and order items you need separately.

Cameras

Recommended camera for use with iPi Motion Capture is Sony PlayStation Eye for PS3.

The following properties make it a preferred camera for motion capture:

• High frame rate - up to 60 frames per second (important for reducing motion blur and capturing fast motions like dancing, boxing or running).
• Fully automatic configuration with excellent auto-exposure and auto-gain.
• Very good low-light sensitivity.
• Low-distortion wide-angle fixed optics.
• Efficient protocol for image transfer (saves more than 50% of USB bandwidth when compared to other webcams).
• Low cost (under $40).

The only downside of PlayStation Eye is its lack of tripod mounting screw. A possible solution is to use sticky tape to fix it to tripods.

You can use other webcams with iPi Motion Capture but please be aware that most webcams are not capable of capturing video at frame rates higher than 15 frames per second. Some webcams like Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 can reliably capture video at 30 frames per second.

Cables

For distances over 5m, you should use active USB 2.0 extension cables. You can daisy-chain multiple active USB 2.0 extension cables for distances longer than 10m.

When combining active and passive cables, make sure that connection order is correct (computer->active cable->passive cable->camera).

Tripods

Inexpensive 40- or 50-inch tripods like [1] should be fine for use with iPi Desktop Motion Capture. It is recommended to place at least one of the cameras reasonably high (2 or 3 meters high) so you may need a high (72 inch or higher) tripod like [2] or some kind of ad hoc wall mounting solution.

Mini Maglite (or other flashlight) for calibration

You will need a small bright object for calibration. It is recommended to get Mini Maglite (or other similar flashlight) for that purpose.

Video Card

iPi Desktop Motion Capture relies on GPU for calculations. Therefore, it is recommended to use a fast GPU for processing recorded videos. As a minimum, you need a Shader Model 4.0-compatible (DirectX 10-compatible) GPU. Intel integrated graphics is not supported

Please be aware that desktop GPUs are dramatically faster than notebook GPUs (due to apparent thermal constraints in notebook PCs).To give you an idea of potential performance for various GPU models below are some benchmark results:

You can Compare and Order recommended GPU from Amazon.

Professional GPUs like NVIDIA Quadro or ATI FireGL are not recommended due to high price and lack of performance advantage. You should understand that Quadro/FireGL video cards are designed for very specific professional OpenGL-based workloads. Their main advantage is high image quality in OpenGL rendering. iPi Desktop Motion Capture needs raw 32-bit floating point performance and does not benefit from image quality features of Quadro/FireGL video cards. For best performance, use top gaming-class NVIDIA GeForce or ATI Radeon video cards.

USB controllers

Under certain circumstances you may need to get additional USB controller.