Frequently Asked Questions and Troubleshooting

General
- Running StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix under Windows 64 bit.
- I'm having problems with the Sentinel driver.
- The camera/frame grabber is not in the Hardware List.
- The camera/frame grabber won't start.
- How do I do a clean installation of one of the NorPix products?
- Where can I find these applications: Sequence Editor, Batch Processor, Register Manager, NorPix Logger, Disk Bench?
- The camera/frame grabber is not working anymore.
- Where can I find the user manual?
- How can I import the sequence files in Matlab?
- How can I process multiple sequences?
- Corrupt sequence (computer crashed when recording).
- StreamPix freezes when launched.
- On the sequence bar, I can go past the last image (ex : 51/50).
- Sending a Crash Report.
- What do I do with the authorization codes file I received ?

Performance
- Buffer usage fluctuates a lot or is 100%, indicating a possible frame drop. How many buffers should I set?
- How can I make sure I have sufficient bandwidth performance to stream my data ?
- After all my efforts to get optimum performance, StreamPix still can't follow the camera frame.
- Could disk fragmentation be an issue ?

Display
- When "Fit image to window" is selected or when using the zooming feature, StreamPix toolbars aren't repainted or you are dropping frames or the playback speed is slow or the image is ugly.
- The sequence toolbar says it is running at X frame rate but StreamPix doesn't seem to display at X frames/second.

Exporting
- My exported AVI file seems to skip frames during playback.
- My exported AVI frame rate is incorrect.
- My AVI playback is a little bit slower than the actual recording.
- I have exported to an AVI, but the resulting file size is 0.
- I cannot export to MOV or record image directly to a MOV file.

Notes:
1. Before using StreamPix/TroublePix , make sure the camera/frame grabber works with its own driver.
2. If you have 2 of our products installed on the same computer, make sure their versions are compatible. Each product comes with a history file called changes.txt. If the release dates are the same, it means the products are compatible.

If you have a question that isn't listed above, contact NorPix technical support at .

General

Q. Running StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix under Windows 64 bit.
A . Considerations:
1. It's possible to run the 32 bit version of StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix under a 64 bit OS.
2. Both 32 and 64 bit versions of StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix can be installed and run on a 64 bit Windows.
3. When StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix needs to connect to a camera or frame grabber for acquiring images, more considerations have to be taken into account:
3a. When running StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix 32 bit edition, you have to make sure that the 32 bit driver for the specific camera or frame grabber is installed and able to run in 32 bit mode under a 64 bit OS. Not all camera / frame grabber drivers support this mode. Typically, running the 32 bit application provided with the camera will help you figure that out. If the application cannot connect and capture from the camera, StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix will not work either.
3b. When running StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix 32 bit edition, if the 64 bit version of the camera driver is installed, StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix 32 bit edition will not recognize the camera. Rather use StreamPix 5/Hermes API/TroublePix 64 bit edition in this case.
3c. Typically, you cannot have both 32 bit and 64 bit camera / frame grabber drivers installed simultaneously.
4. Both Version of StreamPix / HERMES / TroublePix 32 bit and 64 bit can be installed in a 64 bit OS, since files are in separate folders.
Back to FAQ index

Q. I'm having problems with the Sentinel driver.
A . Follow these steps:
1. Remove the USB key if plugged in.
2. Use the SSD Cleanup application to remove any existing Sentinel driver, if any installed. SSD Cleanup can be found here: http://www.safenet-inc.com/support-downloads/sentinel-drivers/.
3. After SSD Cleanup completes, restart your computer.
4. Install the Sentinel driver from http://www.norpix.com/Download/SentinelInstaller.exe.
5. When reinstalling, select Custom mode instead of Complete.
6. Make sure only USB System Driver is selected as shown here.
7. When finished, restart the computer.
8. Plug in the USB key and wait until the system recognizes it (it should be displayed in Control Panel -> Device Manager).
9. At this point the USB protection key should be ready to use.
Back to FAQ index

Q. My camera/frame grabber is not in the Hardware List.
A. Cause 1 : The driver for your camera/frame grabber is not installed on the computer or is not a version compatible with StreamPix/TroublePix . Click here for the driver compatibility list.

Cause 2 : StreamPix/TroublePix was installed before the camera/frame grabber driver and libraries were installed on the computer. Because of DLL dependencies, the driver must be there before StreamPix/TroublePix is installed. Simply use the Register Manager application to register the device. If you are not sure what is the name of the file that needs to be registered, simply try to register all the devices. If this doesn't fix the problem, re-installing StreamPix/TroublePix may help.

Cause 3 (only Prosilica Firewire): There is a problem with one of the SDK dependencies for the Prosilica firewire. On some computers, it freezes the installation when trying to register it. So, for the moment, our Prosilica firewire is not registered by default. Please use the Register Manager (NpxRegMan.exe) to register it after the installation. The name of the file to be registered is NpxProsilica.

Cause 4 : There could be some incompatibilities between older and newer NorPix files or between NorPix products. A clean installation should fix this.
Back to FAQ index

Q. The camera/frame grabber won't start.
A . Cause 1 : The camera/frame grabber is not correctly configured. Test the camera/frame grabber with its own software before trying in StreamPix/TroublePix . If it doesn't work with its software, it won't work with our product either.

Cause 2 : The version of the camera/frame grabber driver is not compatible with your current version of StreamPix/TroublePix . Check the changes.txt file that comes with the setup to see which version of the driver you need to install. Also, you can see here the driver compatibility list for the latest releases.

Cause 3 : There could be some incompatibilities between older and newer NorPix files or between NorPix products. A clean installation should fix this.
Back to FAQ index

Q. How do I do a clean installation of one of the NorPix products?
A . Here are the steps to follow:

1- Uninstall StreamPix3/Streampix5/Troublepix/Hermes API from the add remove applet in control panel.
2- Search also for another package, NorPix Shared Files. Make sure to remove this one too, if it exists.
3- Using Windows Explorer, browse to c:\program files\NorPix and remove all files that may still be there.
4- Using Windows Explorer, browse to c:\program files\Common Files and remove the NorPix folder and sub-folders.
5- Using Windows Explorer, browse to c:\program files(x86)\NorPix and remove all files that may still be there (only if you installed a 32 bit version of a NorPix product on a 64 bit OS).
6- Using Windows Explorer, browse to c:\program files(x86)\Common Files and remove the NorPix folder and sub-folders (only if you installed a 32 bit version of a NorPix product on a 64 bit OS).
7- Install the new version of the software.

Back to FAQ index

Q. Where can I find these applications: Batch Processor, Register Manager, NorPix Logger, Disk Bench, Sequence Editor ?
A . All these applications are included in the Shared Files that come with any StreamPix/TroublePix/Hermes API setup. Here are some ways to access them:
Directly from Windows Explorer:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\NorPix\BatchProcessor.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\NorPix\NpxRegMan.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\NorPix\NpxDebug.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\NorPix\DiskBench.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\NorPix\SequenceEditor.exe

or through the Start menu:

Start menu | All Programs | NorPix | Tools | BatchProcessor
Start menu | All Programs | NorPix | Tools | Register Manager
Start menu | All Programs | NorPix | Tools | NorPix Logger
Start menu | All Programs | NorPix | Tools | Disk Bench
Start menu | All Programs | NorPix | Tools | Sequence Header Editor

Back to FAQ index

Q. My camera/frame grabber is not working anymore.
A . You can reset StreamPix/TroublePix to factory defaults. To do that, first select the virtual grabber from the hardware menu and then open the StreamPix/TroublePix settings window. For StreamPix 3 : Select the Buffer, etc tab and click the RESET button. For StreamPix 5/TroublePix press "Reset all grabbers settings...". Then, quit and restart StreamPix/TroublePix. It's better to unplug the camera too, to reset it to its default settings.
Back to FAQ index

Q. Where can I find the user manual?
A . The manual for StreamPix 3, StreamPix 5 or TroublePix can be accessed from Help | User manual.
The documentation for Hermes API can be found under Start menu | All Programs | NorPix | Hermes | Hermes Documentation or using the Windows Explorer, in C:\Program Files\Common Files\NorPix\Hermes\docs\Hermes.pdf .
All our products have also a Camera installation manual that gives details about the supported devices and their features. It can be found under Start menu | All Programs | NorPix | Tools | Camera installation manual or using the Windows Explorer, in C:\Program Files\Common Files\NorPix\help\Grabbers.pdf .
Note: Adobe Reader or any other PDF viewer needs to be installed to open the manuals.
Back to FAQ index

Q. How can I import the sequence files in Matlab?
A . The sequence files can be imported in Matlab using a macro file. MathWorks engineers helped us develop a demo macro for sequence files of 640 x 480 pixels, 8 or 16 bits. Based on this demo, other macros can be created, for different image sizes and formats. More details about the sequence format can be found in the Streampix User manual, on the last page.
Disclaimer: The macro file is provided as is. Norpix does not guarantee that this macro is suitable for all usage. It is the user responsability to test the code and eventually adapt it to his needs.
Back to FAQ index

Q. How can I process multiple sequences?
A . There is a stand alone application called Batch Processor that comes with StreamPix/TroublePix setup. This allows multiple sequences processing like exporting to different formats or applying some of the StreamPix 3 plugins.
Back to FAQ index

Q. Corrupt sequence (computer crashed when recording).
A . The sequence header wasn't saved properly. In this case you can open this sequence with the Sequence Header Editor that comes with StreamPix/TroublePix . Open also a reference sequence, that has the same image size, bit depth and format as the corrupt one. Copy the parameters from the reference sequence to the target sequence and then press Save Target.
Back to FAQ index

Q. StreamPix freezes when launched.
A . This might happen with frame grabbers if the current configuration file doesn't work with the current camera. To fix this, activate the "Scroll Lock" function of your keyboard. Start StreamPix . StreamPix won't connect to the camera while Scroll Lock is on. Open "File | Hardware Settings" and go to the configuration file tab. Replace the current file by the one made for your camera. Click "OK". Disable "Scroll Lock" and click the "Live" button to connect the camera using the new file.
Back to FAQ index

Q. On the sequence bar, I can go past the last image (ex : 51/50).
A . You can always advance one image past the end. The current frame number tells what will be the ID of the next image to be captured. So when you create a new sequence, you are at position 1/0 meaning that the sequence currently contains no images and that the next image to be captured will be labeled "1". Pressing record or snap will always capture at the current image position. So if you want to append more images to an existing sequence (containing 123 frames), you would place the cursor at image 124/123 (so you aren't overwriting existing images).
Back to FAQ index

Q. My application crashed. What should I do?
A . There are a lot of factors that can make StreamPix/TroublePix unstable. In most cases, hardware or driver compatibility issues may crash the application. In case of a crash, a report is built containing general information about the operating system version, processor type and loaded modules. To help us identify the cause and fix the error, send the crash report to our Technical Support department for further analysis and investigations.
To send us a crash report, please follow the procedure below:

1. When the crash dialog shows up, fill in the form and click Save & Send ( see picture ).
Note: please provide a valid email address.
2. A file dialog will prompt for a name and location for the crash report. Select a destination folder and click Save ( see picture ).
3. If your computer is not connected to the Internet, you'll have to send us the report manually to including a short description of what you were doing when the application crashed.

Back to FAQ index
Q. What do I do with the authorization codes file I received ?
A .

Locate the the "SysInfo" application in the Start menu > NorPix and launch it.
Click on [Browse for authorization codes file...].
Select the file received and click on [Open].
Agree to the warning about writing to the registry.
SysInfo should then state that the codes were successfully written to the registry.
Your application is now ready to use.

Back to FAQ index

Performance

Q. Buffer usage fluctuates a lot or is 100%, indicating a possible frame drop. How many buffers should I set?
A . A "buffer" represents the amount of memory holding a frame. At some point, a buffer may contain one captured frame from the camera or may be empty (no data). More buffers allocated will bring more stability, but less available memory.
Each buffer size on bytes can be calculated by FrameWidth in pixel * FrameHeight in pixel * number of bytes per pixel. Color image are typically 24 bit or 3 bytes. A 10 bit sensor will be rounded to 16 bits or 2 bytes. Raw bayer ar typically 8 bit like monochrome images.
Example: the buffer size for a color VGA image is 640 * 480 * 24 / 8 = 921,600 bytes.

The buffer count depends on system performance. NorPix usually recommend to set the buffer size to a number equivalent to the current camera image rate per second. This means about 1 second of buffering. This is a suggested value, and may required tune up depending on your configuration.
Back to FAQ index

Q. How can I make sure I have sufficient bandwidth performance to stream my data?
A . Run the disk benchmarking tool from the StreamPix help menu. This will evaluate the maximum theoretical bandwidth you should obtain.
Two tests should be done:
- Run the bench utility while receiving live images from the camera
- Run the bench utility while not receiving live images from the camera
Monitor the CPU usage (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, and select performance tab) for both cases. CPU usage higher than 85% may result in frame drop while streaming.
Using the bench number, it is possible to evaluate the kind of performance that will be obtained while streaming for real.
Note that disk performance degrades significantly with disk capacity usage. When more than 50% of the disk is used, performance degrades about 25%. At 80% capacity, performance degrades 50%.
Finally, if the data is recorded on the operating system disk, performance will degrade significantly more. By adding more disks and stripping them together using Windows XP streaming capabilities, you should regain some bandwidth.
If you still get some frame drops, you can also temporarily disable the image display while recording. Hence, you'll be sure no computer resources will be allocated to the image display. To disable the display, uncheck the "Enabled" entry in the display menu.
Back to FAQ index

Q. After all my efforts to get optimum performance, StreamPix still can't follow the camera frame rate.
A . Try to reduce the area of interest and/or image bit depth if possible. Significant gain can be obtained if you reduce the image size to be streamed. To reduce the image size, open the hardware settings property page, and reduce the image size in x and y. You can also change the origin (top left corner) of the grab area, hence defining a smaller window within the total CCD image area. Also, make sure you have disabled any "on the fly" exports.
Back to FAQ index

Q. Could disk fragmentation be an issue?
A . Yes, disk fragmentation is a significant issue. Ideally, we recommend that you use a dedicated hard disk to stream the data. That disk should be different from the disk where the operating system has been installed. Consider clearing or reformatting (quick format is enough) the stream disk on a regular basis.
Back to FAQ index

Display

Q. When "Fit image to window" is selected or when using the zooming feature, StreamPix toolbars aren't repainted or you are dropping frames or the playback speed is slow or the image is ugly.
A . When those options are used, the image is scaled to fit the window. The algorithm used by windows to do this is slow and gives mixed results. It is strongly recommended to use the "Fit window to image" mode and "Reset Zoom Level" when doing capture or playback.
Back to FAQ index

Q. The sequence toolbar says it is running at X frames/second but StreamPix doesn't seem to display at X frames/second.
A . StreamPix updates the image display on "idle". That means that the image gets updated when StreamPix has nothing else to do. StreamPix does this in order to give priority to the streaming on disk. If the sequence toolbar shows that you are capturing at 29 frames/second, that means that StreamPix is currently able to grab and save 29 frames/second. So even if the display is updated only 5 to 10 times per second (or not at all), you are still saving frames at the rate indicated in the toolbar.
Back to FAQ index

Exporting

Q. My exported AVI file seems to skip frames during playback.
A . If you exported the AVI from an existing sequence, then the AVI has all the information contained in the sequence. The problem is often file fragmentation which will cause jerky playback. To reduce file fragmentation, try to make a copy of the file or run "Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter". If your AVI was created using the "On-the-fly AVI" option, you may have dropped some frames if your system could not handle the data output from StreamPix.
Back to FAQ index

Q. My exported AVI frame rate is incorrect.
A . The frame rate used in the AVI is the one shown in the StreamPix Sequence toolbar at the exact moment you press "Record". If you didn't wait long enough for StreamPix to accurately bench the frame rate, you will have an incorrect value. Now, if the frame rate shown by StreamPix drops during the on-the-fly export, then your hardware isn't fast enough to process all StreamPix data output.
Back to FAQ index

Q. My AVI playback is a little bit slower than the actual recording.
A . AVI file format does not support non-integral frame rates. That means that even if your sequence was captured a 25.67 frames/second, the AVI will only playback at 25 frames/second.
Back to FAQ index

Q. I have exported to an AVI, but the resulting file size is 0.
A . Most common cause : the desired AVI encoding format doesn't support the current image resolution. Each codec has its own requirements, for example, most codecs will refuse to encode with odd length image resolution (ex: 639x479 is refused, but 640x480 works). Thus, if you need to work with a non-standard image size, you will need to do some trial-and-error to find the codec which best suits your needs. At least, the "uncompressed AVI" codec will work with anything. The available codecs aren't made nor supported by NorPix.
Back to FAQ index

Q. I cannot export to MOV or record image directly to a MOV file.
A . You must install QuickTime on your computer in order to access MOV functionalities. Furthermore, on a 64 bit OS, since QuickTime is 32 bit only, you also must install and run StreamPix 32 bit on order to access MOV functionalities. There is no problem installing both 32 and 64 bit versions of StreamPix on the same machine. Simply use StreamPix 64 for all your work, and StreamPix 32 bit only for exporting captured sequences to MOV.
Back to FAQ index