Merge video source from multiple firewire cameras

Hello evvvveryone,
first of all i wanted to say hello because it’s really long time no see.

I was wondering if it’s possible to merge the video input from 2 firewire unibrain cameras (link to camera: http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_580.htm), to get a single image as a result, that i can use for tracking (CCV and fiducial tracking). Somehow similar to what can be achieved with multiple ps3 eye cam and the dedicated drivers.
I have done some research but with no success, so i hope some of you can give me some tips.

I don’t have the cams right now so i cannot give them a try, but is it as simple as merging the images/textures from 2 videoin (one for each camera) to get a single image?
If it’s possible could you please point me in the right direction?

Thank you very much.
crash

Send both to one renderer (drawing them on a properly scaled quad), and connect a ‘AsTexture’ node to that renderer?

Have you tried that or just guessing? It’s what i was supposing but wanted to be sure before eventually buying the cameras…
thanks anyway!

You mean you are not sure whether you can successfully open the 2 camera’s streams in vvvv? Me neither, I only ever used 1 FW unibrain at once.

(but IF you can play both streams together, I see no reason why you wouldn’t be able to combine them in the way I described)

Sorry if I misunderstood your question.

Yes i’m not sure if it’s possible to open the 2 camera streams together… i see no reason too for not being able to combine them together after that.

By the way you understood my question perfectly, lets hope that someone that has experienced this situation can give us a solid answer

thanks for your help ft

any suggestion about the possibility to open 2 video signals from different firewire cameras simultaneously?
thanks

Hey,

there should be no problem using two firewire cameras - I already did that. If you’r gonna go with unibrain cameras the provided drivers should work out of the box. If you decide to go with point grey cameras there’s some hassle involved in getting the drivers up and running. I can’t tell how it works with imagine source cameras as I’ve no experience with them.

hope that helps
m9d

By the way,

as far as I know vvvv relies on the direct show capture stream (right?!) … so as long as there is no “unibrain Fire-i plugin” (don’t know if such a thing already exists) involved you can’t use the Format7 Mode.

here is a related forum link:

https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/2395

take a look at the opencv video in nodes

Thanks very much to you all guys. These are really precious pieces of information!
If i’ll go with this solution i’m going to update the thread with my personal experience too.