Webcam bugs

I was happily using a USB webcam with a few issues, but fairly stable running, until someone with a much better view than me offered to put a webcam up, and upload the images to my server every minute. So today, all day, and half the night (so far) I’ve been trying to set things up this end so that I can put overlays on the image, and create an all day video. I’m using WD to download the image from the server every minute, and using the image in WD’s webcam capture instead of a webcam device, with the “Use image file instead” feature.

First of all this was working ok, but every so often it would connect to my usb webcam and capture that image instead of the downloaded image file. So I disconnected the usb webcam, but then it would switch to the analogue input on my Matrox video capture card, and capture the odd blank frame from that. So for some reason, when using the “Use image file instead” option to work with a downloaded image, it will try to revert to a capture device for one or two frames in say 20 or so. This is a major problem as I want to create all day videos, and these rogue frames make the video creation stage abort!

I’ve been trying every setting I can, and each time reverting back to the previous setup, but rather than stay the same, the problem has been getting worse to the point where I have been getting no frames from the image, and just hours of rogue frames. Despite that, the image updates in the preview window just fine, but when it takes a capture it’s trying to take it from a device. It’s as though the “Use image file instead” option is not disconnecting the devices, and is somehow conflicting. I have removed all the devices, and disabled the matrox card, but the issue still persists. The device opdown box is blank. In the activity list it sometimes shows up when it capturea rogue frame from a device, but most of the time it doesn’t, and most of the time in the preview window you can only see the actual image that I want which updates just fine. Mostly in the activity list it says “INFO th clip is not seekable”. I also occasionally get an error about a dll file for movie maker, and it tels me to run “regsvr32.exe C:\Windows\System32\qedit.dll” which I do, and it reports back that everything is ok.

The problem is very strange as it seems to suddenly get worse for no reason, and even rebooting doesn’t fix it. Then almost for no reason it will start working again for a while, then go wrong again!

Another problem that I have also been getting is the webcamimage.gif file will get updated every minute as instructed, but the webcamimage.jpg file only gets updated intermittently, or sometimes not at all - they should both get updated at the same time. Now since trying to fix these issues with out success, other things in WD have stopped working properly (and not for the first time). Some of the files uploaded by “Custom file creation and uploads” are not getting updated or uploaded any more, unless I rebuild and upload them manually.Yet other files are being built and uploaded just fine! Very strange.

Right now I am starting over from scratch with this remote webcam file, and just trying to get WD’s webcam system to update the jpg file. The .gif file is updating every minute, but the .jpg file now hasn’t updated for an hour.

I’m sure these issues must be bugs as there is no logic to them, and they are intermittent mostly.

I upgraded to the latest version of WD today trying to fix all this, so my current version is 10.37L build 03.

Unless you want animated gifs, then there is little need to create a gif as the jpg often gets overlooked for website updating as it does the gif first then the animated gif and then the jpg if it hasn’t gotten lost in the queue to the server and doesn’t end up going. I think, for the webcam image you can use on the main page as the weather condition icon or in the summary gif, can be both selected as jpg.

So if you don’t need the gif, then I suggest renaming the image jpgwebcam.jpg (which I think you can do even with imported or file type images) to align with the video image naming series that have the timestamp added.

Graeme

Thanks for that info Graeme, I have tried to disable the gif file creation just by leaving the gif file name blank in the webcam file save tab, but they are still being created. How do I disable gif? Also the way I have it setup at the moment (and I don’t want to talk too soon, but I think I may be on the way to cracking it), is that the file I am importing is called swancam.jpg which gets exported from the WD webcam system as webcamimage.jpg and also gets uploaded to my site with that name. I have the time stamp files setup to use webcamimage.jpg and export the time stamped files as 0000jpgwebcam.jpg which they are doing. That’s ok yes? Or are you saying that the original files should be called jpgwebcam.jpg too?

I now seem to be getting there, and right now WD seems to be fairly stable. After a frustrating day, and almost as soon as I started this thread, I think I found why the rogue files were being created. I had “restart regularly” turned on, and I guess that must have been trying to run the default device. Not sure why the rogue file creation became irregular though, but so far no more rogue files! At this point though, I am still getting gif files, and the jpg file is not being updated regularly.

Well I’ve basically got rid of the gifs, but it’s the actual main jpg file created by the WD webcam capture that’s having problems with updating. The time stamped jpg’s are being created just fine. In the webcam capture I have the file being saved everyminute from the radio button options, and in the seconds box I have it set for every 30 seconds. That gives it more chance of getting updated, but it’s still only getting updated every few minutes maximum, which is causing time stamp files to be duplicates!

No the naming isn’t really a problem - Mine were named the default way of webcamimage.gif and .jpg and still are, and as you said, WD renames them anyway for the alldayvideo and necessary timestamp.

You can alter the timimg of the webcam image uploads in the Control Panel - FTP & Connections - Webcam Upload - set an offset of 1 or 2mins and then click on the every 5mins or 10mins option and they start out all evenly offset that way. Then there is less likelihood of clashing with the timing of the normal weather data uploads. That may just get you over the hurdle of timed-out uploads. HTH

Uploads aren’t the problem. The problem I am left with now is the main jpg file creation (webcamimage.jpg). As I said, when it was generating gifs too, the webcamimage.gif file was being created bang on schedual, but the jpg one some times gets updated intermittantly, or as it is at the moment, not at all! The problem has to be in the WD webcam capture system. Everything else is working fine. It just won’t update the main jpg file.

This is really strange. I’m finding that it is generating the file, but it’s generating an old one. In other words when you click on the file and look at the time it was created, it’s telling me it was created at 6.15am, but it’s 7.07am - 6.15 was the last time I got it to update… In WD Webcam capture I have put the time on as an overlay. If I delete the webcamimage.jpg it gets recreated. Windows says it was created at 6.15, and the time on the overlay also says 6.15. However, the preview in the webcam system shows the latest image preview with the overlay saying the right time. This issue is only happening with .jpg files, and not gif files. So what’s going on here??

I think I found why the rogue files were being created. I had "restart regularly" turned on, and I guess that must have been trying to run the default device

for the jpg file creation problem, try ticking , safe mode , in the file save setup
as the problem could be that the files is being ftp at the same time its trying to be updated

Hi Brian, I’ve tried it with safe mode (create temp file), and with out. This problem is a very strange one! I’ve discovered that now gif file generation has a similar problem in that it’s an old image (from 6.15) that’s being created, but it’s creation date in explorer is correct. (The jpg image’s creation date in explorer is 6.15 all the time). I’ve deleted all the old files it generated, so I don’t even know where it is getting the 6.5 file from any more, especially as I have restarted WD webcam many times, and rebooted the computer many times! The fact that the jpg file is also showing in windows explorer as having been created at 6.15, even though it’s only just been created is very odd.

What does “[INFO] this clip is not seekable” mean?

When the preview is showing in WD webcam it flashes the image up for about 2 seconds, then it goes blank, then it flashes up again and so on. Each time it flashes up the time that is added to it as an overlay is updated and correct. When it flashes off, the mouse pointer turns into a scroll for a second as though WD webcam is working to process the image. It’s probably adding the overlay at that stage. Pressing “Stop” and some other buttons has no effect, but the event list says to “Close player first”. The only thing that stops the preview is to deselect “Use image file instead”. All that side of it seems to work fine. It also writes the file to the directory, but it’s a duplicate of the last file it wrote. The problem must be at the point where it captures the image. Instead of capturing the latest version of the image, it’s recapturing the last one it successfully captured.

looks like the problem is with the use image file instead
I will do some testing with that
(Bashy did note that when I updated the webcam component I used, that started to cause problems)

also make sure that the image file you have selected to use as the source file is actualy updating too
what you will most likely find is that the source image file that you set to use has a create time stamp of 6:15

The original file was not updated on the web server after a while (since 1.50), but the create date on my system was the time the file was last downloaded which was still every minute.

Well you might have to test it for a while under different settings, as it did work reasonably ok when I first set it up, but it got worse, and I can’t get it to work at all now. I can tell you though, that the problem seems to be in the capture process it’s self as it does write the file, but it’s an old one. I hope I’ve included enough info here to help you track the problem. It would be great if you could let me know what you find and when it’s fixed.

please check that the source image file is actually up to date
(because if it is not then the resulting image file that the wdwebcamcapture will not be)

OK still have this problem. The image from the “pub cam” is being uploaded to my server every minute, and downloaded to my local machine every minute. It then gets fed to WD webcam image capture, and saved to \webfiles\webcam\ directory so that time stamp files can be created and all day videos etc. The webcam.jpg image output from WD webcam is not always changing when it gets updated every minute, but is remaining the same - same time stamp (which gets added at the pub.

I know the pub image is fresh every minute because I also use it as the background on a customscreen which I use on my site as the main webcam image. That’s getting refreshed every minute. Also checking in the downloads folder on my local machine shows that the image is getting renewed every minute which can be confirmed by the date stamp.

The other night when I had these problems, I went around changing all sorts of settings trying to solve the problem, but that eventually caused it to stop working altogether. I reset all those settings, and have now started from fresh, but - same problem. I think it has to be a bug :?

If you watch the web cam image on the site for a while you should see it changing, and under it you get a link to my all day video. If you watch the video you will see the problem… duplicate frames.
http://www.newton-noss.co.uk/weather/webcams/

Just to add to this. I tried the “Setup image settings for other web cam…” out, and am getting the same problem - file being created, but it’s creating the one it’s already done for the pa how ever long. Same problems as above in other words.