Record Greyscale? Or only stream it? ( R2-FS camera )

[warren]

I setup the Expression Pro package today. Loving it.

Is the extra camera in this Pro package (R2-FS) purely for "real-time" video reference?
Or can I record the greyscale video it produces (and save this alongside the tracking data)?

* The "Frame-by-Frame Overlay" section on the product summary page implies recording is possible?
http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/p ... v100r2-fs/

* This FAQ implies it's only possible with the Camera SDK? (uh, like i'd have to write my own app?)
http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/s ... .html#q204

* This old forum thread suggests video recording only works in Expression v1.4 or earlier?
http://forum.naturalpoint.com/forum/ubb ... #Post38941

(thanks for any help here)

[VincentG]

The latest Arena software has support for the scene camera to be saved in the software as a grs file, which you can then export out as an AVI file

[Seth Steiling]

Note that the quality of the exported file can vary a bit depending on your codec of choice. Some that we've found to work pretty well:

microsoft MPEG-4 VKI V1
microsoft MPEG-4 VKI V2
microsoft MPEG-4 VKI V3
PICVideo wavelet 2000

[warren]

Took me a while to figure out what the "Scene AV Camera" was, where it was located, and how to set/add-into it (initially, I was trying to just save data... or export... in a grs format, and was baffled). but. think I puzzled it all out.

Er, I wasn't snooping into the arena training videos, because i figured they wouldn't be relevant to Expression. but apparently I should? http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/p ... als/arena/ )

Once Scene Camera is set, it seems to save .grs file by default when I record a take.
Ok, cool. what's grs?
Now that I have a .grs file, how do i convert to avi?
(googling for .grs does me no good)

(are there tutorial videos or manuals on this conversion process somewhere?)

- separately(?), when I select the menu option "Windows > AV Window" a popup appears with nothing in it. I guess this should display the Scene AV camera, but i couldn't get it to work. When I right click it, i can choose "Properties", which divides the popup into 3 areas. but. not sure why I'd do that.
Is there a video that covers this menu option? (or is it still be developed?)

[VincentG]

Once you record a take with a Scene Video camera it will save the video as a .grs file. This grs file will show up under the Scene AV Files node in the asset manager (you can right click on AV files to load a previous recording).

Once loaded -> Right click on the file name, and there should be an option to export AVI. You can then select where to save, and in the next window the video compression to use.

I will have to get some more input on the AV window section.

[dsc]

I realize this thread is quite old, but following up on this:

[quote=NaturalPoint - Seth]Note that the quality of the exported file can vary a bit depending on your codec of choice. Some that we've found to work pretty well:

microsoft MPEG-4 VKI V1
microsoft MPEG-4 VKI V2
microsoft MPEG-4 VKI V3
PICVideo wavelet 2000 [/quote]

I would like to know where to get these encoders. Google came up with a whole lot of cracked/hacked/whatever downloads, but I was wondering if there are any official releases (e.g. by Microsoft, for their MPEG-4 implementation) of these encoders?

I tried using the (open-source) XviD codec, but it always only produced files of 0 byte size. WMV1 worked, but looked horrible.

Thanks, Dietmar