xCapture Playback Issues

[DesignTagline]

I am having a world of issues trying to get xCapture to record or FPP to playback the recorded file. Using a grandMA3 lighting console streaming 12 universes of sACN I get a very strange issue when I try to playback the recorded data once it is ingested into FPP. 

It seems to playback with a delay between universes rather than in sync which is weird. When you watch the videos (see below) you will notice the DMX seems to start on the first universe and then offset itself across the universes. I am very confused and have tried every setting I can in xCapture. What am I doing wrong here as everyone seems to love FPP and I am feeling quite confused that I can get a simple record to playback
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/lmbxd9zorbe2mw8mb3k02/AJYxkfwfL17lNzayOuY6U5k?rlkey=0oxl0nckw49sxvb40n0omyluc&dl=0

Hardware is a fresh install RP4 with 7.5 on it. I did try the onboard recording plugin but had mixed results/reliablity issues with that as well. For our intended operation we don't want to build the show in Xlights and need to be able to build it in our media server of choice and then record either directly to FPP or via a program similar to Xcapture. If someone wants to undertake a project of building a nice recording plugin I can allocate budget to make that happen as well.

[dkulp]

There is an FPP Capture plugin for FPP already that should work better.   I'd give that a try and see if that will work for you.  

[DesignTagline]

Hello, it doesn't have a UI or if it doesn't I can't find it (and it doesn't install currently without a modification to the plugininfo file) check github there is a pull request for you to approve that solves that. 

[dkulp]

Hello, it doesn't have a UI or if it doesn't I can't find it (and it doesn't install currently without a modification to the plugininfo file) check github there is a pull request for you to approve that solves that.

Merged the PR so that should fix that problem.

It doesn't really "need" a UI.   It will capture whatever channel ranges that FPP is configured to output.   Basically, it's creating the same sparse FSEQ files that FPP Connect from xLights would create.    If you want to capture a larger block of channels, configure a Virtual Matrix or something with the block you need. 

It provides FSEQ Start Capture and FSEQ End Capture FPP Commands that can be invoked in any of the various ways FPP Commands can be invoked.   You could use the Big Buttons to create buttons, but if your console can invoke an OSC command or REST or similar, your console could be setup to trigger the Start/Stop automatically.

[DesignTagline]

Hello, perhaps I am missing a step but I can't seem to get this to work.

Install plugin.
Configure outputs (not inputs as I originally thought)
Configure record/stop buttons via big buttons
Hit record. Record show
File that is created ends in.capture (and is only 32kb) trying to put that into a sequence or renaming to fseq doesn't appear to be working. What step am I missing?

Every time I try and do a record it seems to create a file that is 20 minutes which makes sense as the code creates a 20 minute file before doing anything.


I've tried to unicast the data with no luck either.


Looking at the sequence information this what it says.
{
  "Name": "Show.fseq",
  "Version": "2.2",
  "ID": "1722231003314689",
  "StepTime": 25,
  "NumFrames": 48000,
  "MaxChannel": 32776,
  "ChannelCount": 32776,
  "variableHeaders": {
    "sp": "FPP Capture Plugin"
  },
  "Ranges": [
    {
      "Start": 0,
      "Length": 32776
    }
  ],
  "CompressionType": 1,
  "CompressionTypeString": "zstd"
}

[DesignTagline]

Looking at the code it seems like its not receiving data as default show record length is meant to be 20 minutes as a default. Can you let me know what step I am missing with this plugin or anything I can do to assist? 

[DesignTagline]

I have resolved my issues. 

Plugin is working nicely it would be nice to be able to do DMX or sACN input triggering to send commands to start and stop and have a progress bar/record view but that is well beyond the scope of this plugin. 

[darylc]

How did you fix your issue @DesignTagline ?

[dkulp]

I have resolved my issues.

Plugin is working nicely it would be nice to be able to do DMX or sACN input triggering to send commands to start and stop and have a progress bar/record view but that is well beyond the scope of this plugin.

You likely could.   On the "Other" tab, add a "Control Channel" output, assign a channel for it, and add start/stop events for the values corresponding to what your device is sending.   

[DesignTagline]

I have resolved my issues.

Plugin is working nicely it would be nice to be able to do DMX or sACN input triggering to send commands to start and stop and have a progress bar/record view but that is well beyond the scope of this plugin.

You likely could.  On the "Other" tab, add a "Control Channel" output, assign a channel for it, and add start/stop events for the values corresponding to what your device is sending. 

Thanks for this. I did test that and had mixed results. I worked out a bit more when I tried using the same triggers for show start/stop instead.
Image of settings:


If I use any other value (1 or 128 for example) It seems to ignore the secondary trigger.