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thecloudmediagroup  
#1 Posted : Sunday, July 20, 2014 4:11:24 PM(UTC)
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How does vMix measure drop frames within the normal statistics window?

The reason I ask is that 2 out of 3 of our cameras are going HDMI over cat5e cable and I am trying to eliminate links in the chain where loss could happen. If the HDMI extenders drop frames, would that show up as a dropped frame within vMix? For instance, if vMix is expecting 1080p60 and the HDMI extender only supplies 39 frames in a given second, would vmix report that as 21 dropped frames?
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#2 Posted : Sunday, July 20, 2014 9:15:18 PM(UTC)
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In the Statistics window the follow columns are shown:

Source Dropped
-Capture card is unable to deliver frames fast enough

Renderer Dropped
-Graphics card unable to render frames in a timely manner

Resync
-Camera clock running faster than the system clock.

Video
33 33 33 33 (49)

In the above example, the four previous frames arrived 33 milliseconds after each other
indicating a frame rate around 30fps

The number in brackets shows how long it took for the frame to displayed on screen. 1.5 frames in this case.

Examples

1. High Source Dropped, low Renderer Dropped

Capture card dropping frames

2. High Renderer Dropped, low Source Dropped, resync may also be high.

Graphics card dropping frames, check Render Time value at bottom of vMix. Times consistently above 20ms is a cause for concern.

3. Both renderer and source show large number of dropped

System under heavy load, perhaps a particular input or recording is consuming greater than 80% of CPU.
May also be caused by DPC latency issues.
(A bad driver can hold up all other drivers on a system, causing delays across all types of hardware)

LatencyMon is a good tool to diagnose DPC latency issues.

http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

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lbgaus on 7/21/2014(UTC)
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#3 Posted : Sunday, July 20, 2014 9:21:08 PM(UTC)
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In addition to the above overview, to answer your specific question, it depends on the capture card.

Some cards will deliver the exact number of frames per second regardless of the source camera
others will deliver verbatim what they receive, missing frames and all.
Others still will show black frames if frames are being dropped by the camera (or cabling).

However, I have not seen Cat5 extenders cause dropped frames necessarily.
They may cause dropouts or "jumpy" and distorted images, but not a consistent amount of dropped frames.

In any cause, SDI cabling is highly recommended for long cabling runs.
An HDMI to SDI converter can be placed on one end and a SDI to HDMI on the other.
Converters can be found on ebay for around $200 for both. Or high quality converters from AJA are also available.

This is not to say this will solve your problem, but is good practice in any case.

thecloudmediagroup  
#4 Posted : Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:43:25 PM(UTC)
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Thanks Martin! That's all really good info. I never realized what those four numbers meant. Now would numbers that very drastically in those set of four numbers indicate some sort of bad clock or capture car? In good video capture should all those numbers the fairly consistent? If those numbers vary greatly will the resulting video seem more choppy?

If there is an issue with the capture card not being able to pass the frames fast enough, can a buffer be added to compensate? One of the issues I am having is with a new capture card I am testing. I seem to be getting a great amount of drop frames but when viewing the video live In vmix I can't really tell if many frames are being dropped if any at all. How would it be possible to have a lot of dropped frames logged but not seem as if framed are being dropped in live video preview?

I'll try to get a log and some video up soon.
lbgaus  
#5 Posted : Monday, July 21, 2014 6:10:09 AM(UTC)
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Thanks Martin! Can this information be written in the vMix documentation for version 13? Thanks!
richardgatarski  
#6 Posted : Monday, July 21, 2014 9:59:45 AM(UTC)
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Is perhaps "source" frames "dropped" in large numbers when the source frame rate is higher than the frame set in vMix?
thecloudmediagroup  
#7 Posted : Monday, July 21, 2014 12:54:32 PM(UTC)
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Did some more testing.

When I changed the capture settings to 30p instead of 60p, I get about 1 or 2 drop frames in total.The input coming into the HDMI port is still 60p but I changed the capture settings to 30p. This is strange because the capture input is not half the rate of the system frame rate. I thought that if the system and the capture device is different, that would result in dropped frames.

When I add a second camera from the same card at 30p I start getting dropped frames again.

When I was capturing in 60p, the 4 numbers were right at about 14 14 14 14. Is that normal with a 60p input?
thecloudmediagroup  
#8 Posted : Thursday, July 24, 2014 5:15:34 PM(UTC)
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I think I figured out most of my problem.

So for any of you out there using the ASUS Maximus Hero VI, the bottom PCI-e slot on the motherboard is by default set to 1x and switchable to 4x by disabling the other 1x slots. I was trying to use a 4x card in the 1x mode. Why a 4x slot has the physical slot of a 16x, I do not know. Hopefully this saves someone some time!
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richardgatarski on 7/29/2014(UTC)
thecloudmediagroup  
#9 Posted : Thursday, July 24, 2014 5:18:11 PM(UTC)
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Another question on frame rates;

Are the 4 bracketed number in the stats window indicitive of any kind of video jitter or stutter? In testing some video, sometimes I seem to get the feed looking like it is skipping some frames or not displaying them symmetrically from each other. In such cases there are no drop frames or render drop frames either.
richardgatarski  
#10 Posted : Tuesday, July 29, 2014 12:45:48 PM(UTC)
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thecloudmediagroup wrote:
the bottom PCI-e slot on the motherboard is by default set to 1x and switchable to 4x by disabling the other 1x slots. I was trying to use a 4x card in the 1x mode.


Indeed very valuable info - thanks!
How did you find that out (info in the mobo manual)? And, did you do the disabling in the bios?
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