Real-Time Video

[Grant]

Hello, I am having trouble getting the real-time video to work over telemetry.  Video works when viewing post-flight with the TM data.  Further, real-time video works with our GQuick version installed in the aircraft via the SAMDEC.  I have tried it both with the smartmode set as true and false with the datafile property empty.  We are using an ACRA vid103 card and have 8.1.1 installed.

Thanks,

Grant

[Kathy Rodittis]

Hi Grant-

 

If the video is working on-board but not the ground then there’s a couple of possibilities:

1)      There are too many TM drop outs. Is the signal very ratty when it gets to the ground?

2)      The codecs on the machines on the ground are not correct.

3)      There is a network problem on the ground station.  Try running a realtime client on the same machine you have your decom on and launch the video server there and tell me if works that way.

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[James Bretz]

Hi Grant,

 

More things to add to Kathy’s list:

 

1) Make sure SmartMode is True. You only want to set this to False if you’re trying to ‘fool’ the video player (as in attempting to receive real-time video while running in playback mode, or attempting to play an archived video while in real-time mode). For most cases, this should be set to True.

 

2) Set the VideoChannel property to “Channel 1”. By Default, it’s set to “Off”. Try the other channels if necessary.

 

3) As Kathy mentioned, ensure that the proper version of ffdshow is installed on the PC.

 

Regarding that issue, we think we just discovered why the newest version of FFDshow Tryouts wasn’t working with the Vid103 stream. If you’re adventurous, you can install the lastest FFDShow tryout (http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/). At the end of installation, choose “Video Decoder Configuration”. In the dialog that appears, under the “Profiles / Preset Settings” in the left window pane, select the “Decoder Options”. On the right window pane *uncheck* the “Drop frame on delay” and hit Ok to dismiss the dialog. Alternately, you can install the ffdshow-20041012 version which didn’t have the drop frame option (hence why it worked reliably). Apparently this is some sort of congestion algorithm that kicks in right at startup of the video player (before it’s received any video packets) and it’s not playing nice so it ends up throwing out huge amounts of video frames. We’re still investigating why it’s not playing nicely with our system.

 

4) If you’re running Windows 7, make sure you have the 8.1.1 final version installed. We made quite a bit of changes late in the game to help with permission and firewall issues in Windows 7.

 

In version 8.1.1 (final release), the Video player screen should now show you the exact error that is occurring or why it is unable to display video. If it’s unable to get packets due to due a firewall setting, it should display an error message accordingly. If the codec is missing, it should alert you. If it’s running in PostTest and the video file is missing, it should inform you of that situation. If you’re not seeing these message, it’s quite possible that you have an 8.1.1 ‘pre release’ installed. You may want to upgrade to the final. Having said that, we did have one problem on 8.1.1 final in which the firewall settings weren’t being interpreted correctly. If there’s any remaining issues after installing 8.1.1 final, I would go straight to the Firewall and make sure there’s an ‘inbound rule’ to allow both TCP and UDP for the Iads Client Application (and probably the Iads Playback Client) . As a quick test, you can turn off the Firewall. If video suddenly appears, you know there’s a missing setting.

 

5) Problems with the data or setup

 

Beyond that, as Kathy mentioned, there may be some basic video parsing errors due to a large amount of PCM dropouts. It’s pretty rare to get nothing... even when the telemetry is bad, you still get sporadic frames sneaking through. In this case, the video player will show partial frames which will resemble an abstract painting. The IadsTpp log (in the Logs folder) might state this problem. It could also be possible that there’s something ‘old’ or incorrect with the XidML file used for the ground station. The logs will probably show this as well (maybe).

 

Having the latest video player and it’s ability to display the errors on the video player window will probably help you the most. If you don’t want to upgrade the whole installation, we can give you the latest video player dll. That should spot the errors more quickly.

 

Hope this helps,

Jim

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[Grant]

Ok, I tried a couple things so far.  I installed the latest version of FFDshow unchecking the "drop frame on delay" option on the CDS and on the Ops console computer.  The video on the ops console reported "Searching for Video on Channel 1" which is what I think it reported before.  I started a realtime client on the IADS CDS and single frame showed up on the display but was frozen.  I tired to revert to FFDshow-20041012 but the opportunity to check it passed before I got everything restarted.  Our IADS machines are XP, the CDS is windows server 2003.

I believe the decom happens in the Lumistar for us and we don't have any of the IADS software installed on that.  Does testing on the CDS accomplish the step you suggested?  TM on the ground and nearby is pretty good.

Hopefully, reverting back to ffdshow-20041012 will get the video working better on the CDS.  Any suggestions as to why the CDS and the ops console computer behave differently?  A network setting as suggested?

Grant

[Kathy Rodittis]

Hi Grant-

 

Ok it’s encouraging that you can get a single frame on the display on the CDS.  If you revert to the older codec, I’ll bet you can play video on it.  When you do rollback the codec, make sure you uninstall ffdshow, reboot, reinstall and reboot again.  ( And you do indeed have some IADS software installed with your Lumistar card or you wouldn’t see anything in IADS at all! ). 

 

Is your CDS multi-homed? Does it sit on more than 1 network? ( And if so, is that a new change to your configuration? )  Make sure the network the clients sit on is the “first” in the adapter list.)   To do this go to Start Menu l Control Panel l Network Connections l Advanced l Advanced Settings and push the wired network interface (generally called something like „Local Area Connection‟) to the top of the list.

 

Kathy

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[James Bretz]

Grant,

 

It probably doesn’t help the current situation, but for informational purposes, we just did confirm that the latest FFDShow Tryouts codec does work properly with the VID103 card as long as you have "drop frame on delay" unchecked.

I’m still working on the exact reason why you need to uncheck this feature, but in the mean time everything seems to be working fine with it disabled.

 

If you get stuck on this current video problem, try running a test and then zip up your “Logs” folder (in the data output directory) and send that to iadssupport at symvionics dot com. Be sure to rename the zip file extension to “.iadsZip” to get through our email filters. We might be able to use the log information to determine the problem.

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