Hi Kevin,
For HD video recording I'd say you want to be looking at your disk I/O before 
your %CPU, I've seen dropped frames and even broken streams happening right 
there with %CPU below 20% , of course that is assuming you have no bottleneck 
upstream.

Cheapest reliable disks I've used in HD setups are the Seagate Cheetahs 10k.

*************
Jaime Gago
Systems Engineer
[email protected]

Entwine - Knowledge In Motion 
www.entwinemedia.com
@entwinemedia on Twitter 


On Feb 8, 2012, at 9:14 AM, Kevin Chan wrote:

> Hi Nils,
> 
> Thanks for your info. While I have heard of other universities running 
> different hardware, this is the first documented case (as far as I know) of 
> someone specifically stating that someone is running capture agents using 
> i5/i7 cores.
> 
> At UC Berkeley, we are likely to need some higher powered capture agents to 
> do some HD camera captures (and possibly for SD camera captures) and that's 
> why I have been trying to get the Opencast Community to share their 
> hardware/software/config setup on this list (and even better would be on the 
> Opencast Wiki).
> 
> As such, can you share some basic information about your setup (perhaps with 
> a note on the path that led you to your particular setup)?
> 
> Even though we are still in our very early stages of testing/silent piloting, 
> if I have a few minutes today, I will try to get a "capture agent setup page" 
> for UC Berkeley started on the Opencast wiki so that others can benefit from 
> this information.
> 
>  Kevin Chan
> 
>  Operations Team
>  Educational Technology Services
>  UC Berkeley
> 
> 
> On 2/7/12 10:46 PM, Nils Birnbaum wrote:
>> Hi Kevin,
>> besides Gallicaster, this is a general problem. Most Universities run i5
>> or i7 processor to capture sufficient framerates for 2-stream-recording.
>> So you have a trade off between CPU-Power and framerate (and some RAM) to
>> get a result that match with the needs of your institution.
>> 
>> Regards
>> Nils
>> 
>> 
>>> Hi Ruben,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for the info, your approach sounds reasonable to me.
>>> 
>>> I am still unclear on what hardware setup you are using. I found this
>>> page - http://wiki.teltek.es/display/Galicaster/Hardware+recommendations
>>> - so I am guessing you are probably running your captures against an
>>> Intel i3 processor with some sort of Hauppauge card.
>>> 
>>> So in summary:
>>> 
>>> a) using the above hardware setup, you had some video sync/dropped frame
>>> rate issues
>>> b) these issues were fixed with "a different pipeline structure with the
>>> element 'videorate' to guarantee the video stream synchronization"
>>> 
>>> In theory, adding "videorate" to the MH capture agent pipeline should
>>> also fix this issue, but the placement of this element is probably key
>>> to the whole thing!
>>> 
>>> Let me know if I got any of the above wrong.
>>> 
>>>    Kevin Chan
>>> 
>>>    Operations Team
>>>    Educational Technology Services
>>>    UC Berkeley
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 2/6/12 4:51 AM, Rubén Pérez wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> 
>>>> The pipeline we are using in Galicaster is rather different than the
>>>> one used in the standard capture agent in many ways, the first one
>>>> coming to my mind being the fact that Galicaster needs to provide
>>>> video feedback and the CA doesn't.
>>>> 
>>>> Still, I will take a look and see if we can commit some changes to
>>>> improve the synchronization quality. I cannot guarantee though.
>>>> 
>>>> The pipeline used is in the code of Galicaster, available at
>>>> www.galicaster.org<http://www.galicaster.org>  .
>>>> 
>>>> Sorry I cannot be more specific right now. When I have some spare time
>>>> I'll try to document myself on this topic and try to apply a patch
>>>> based on our research in Galicaster, if that's feasible without
>>>> altering the current CA pipeline too much. Does this sound reasonable?
>>>> 
>>>> Regards
>>>> 
>>>> 2012/2/2 Kevin Chan<[email protected]
>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>>
>>>> 
>>>>     Hi Ruben,
>>>> 
>>>>     Was this "fix" done against the referenced MH capture hardware or
>>>>     some other hardware setup?
>>>> 
>>>>     In any case, thanks for the info, it would be great if you can
>>>>     provide this info for the MH developers in:
>>>>     http://opencast.jira.com/browse/MH-8505
>>>> 
>>>>     Also, if you can provide the full pipeline structure, that would
>>>>     be great (for novice pipeline constructors like me).
>>>> 
>>>>        Kevin Chan
>>>> 
>>>>        Operations Team
>>>>        Educational Technology Services
>>>>        UC Berkeley
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>     On 1/30/12 5:38 AM, Tobias Wunden wrote:
>>>>>     Hi Ruben,
>>>>> 
>>>>>     any chance that fix will make it back into trunk anytime soon? It
>>>>>     would have been great to have this in for 1.3 as well, given that
>>>>>     you seem to have sorted out that issue a while ago.
>>>>> 
>>>>>     Tobias
>>>>> 
>>>>>     On 30.01.2012, at 09:15, Rubén Pérez<[email protected]
>>>>>     <mailto:[email protected]>>  wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>>     Hi Kevin,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>     I can also confirm that we experienced the same frame drop/out
>>>>>>     of sync problem in long recordings, both in the capture agent
>>>>>>     and also in Galicaster's development stages. Finally, we
>>>>>>     discovered that the key was a different pipeline structure with
>>>>>>     the element 'videorate' to guarantee the video stream
>>>>>>     synchronization.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>     Maybe you could try and add this element to the CA's standard
>>>>>>     pipeline, and see what happens. Of course, you can also try
>>>>>>     Galicaster :)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>     Good luck
>>>>>>     Rubén
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>     On 25 Xan, 2012 07:18, "Kevin Chan"<[email protected]
>>>>>>     <mailto:[email protected]>>  wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>         Hi all,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>         During preliminary testing of a 2h 15m capture (which we
>>>>>>         intend to post produce for YouTube), UC Berkeley discovered
>>>>>>         that the capture files for video and screen were off by 15m
>>>>>>         (with the screen capture via Epiphan being 15m short), which
>>>>>>         is more or less unacceptable to our post production folks
>>>>>>         (as it is very difficult for them to stitch this back
>>>>>>         together). This is likely to be due to dropped frame rate,
>>>>>>         but it is a bit difficult to confirm.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>         I am wondering if anyone else (besides Saskatchewan folks,
>>>>>>         who confirmed this issue) has encounter this issue and how
>>>>>>         they are working around it. I imagine that lowering
>>>>>>         framerates and bitrates would work, though some initial
>>>>>>         testing using various capture agent configurations seems to
>>>>>>         suggest that the capture files are still off by a few
>>>>>>         minutes even with the CPUs being not fully taxed.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>         We are using the reference capture agent hardware and very
>>>>>>         basic capture agent settings. This issue has been filed in
>>>>>>         MH Jira if anyone is interested:
>>>>>>         http://opencast.jira.com/browse/MH-8505
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>         Finally, we have heard that there are various hardware and
>>>>>>         configuration setups for Matterhorn Capture Agents in
>>>>>>         production. I think it would be great if that we, as a
>>>>>>         community, can share this information (via the MH wiki) to
>>>>>>         help each other understand and learn about the various use
>>>>>>         cases and setups that are employed.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>         Thanks,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>         --
>>>>>>            Kevin Chan
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            Operations Team
>>>>>>            Educational Technology Services
>>>>>>            UC Berkeley
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
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>>>>>> 
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