Audio buffering

[twink]

I'm running 2 USB cameras and have always had issues with the audio staying on. I have been losing audio from both cameras in 6 to 12 hours after starting.

I recently installed 2.1.6 and now icamsource just blows off after several minutes with no error message, it just goes away.

It runs with no problem if I have audio turned off on one, or both cameras. So I turned on Windows 7 Resource Monitor and watched it for a bit. With audio turned off, or on one camera only, there are no disk hits. If I turn on audio for both cameras, it looks like icamsource opens a thread and writes and reads about 5kB/sec to disk continuously. I presume the two cameras audio streams are too much for icamsource to process... but since I did not have my icam iphone ap turned on, why is icamsource doing anything with the audio? It does not store it and it was not sending it to the iphone.
I'm running a quad core HP P6240 with 8 gig. Icamsource uses about 10% CPU.
Please see if you can 1) see why it is buffering audio to the drive when two cameras audio streams are coming in and 2) if it really needs to do anything with the audio streams when the iphone icam app is not using it.
Thanks

[Stefan]

We'll try to replicate the issue and see if we can determine why the iCamSource might be hitting the hard drive when there is more than one camera involved.

It is odd that it would be losing audio and / or crashing, however.

Do you have the latest drivers installed for your webcams? Are they plugged directly into your computer and not into a USB hub or extension cable? If you turn motion detection off for both cameras (so that there are no motion events written to the hard drive) does it still access the disk?

[twink]

The cameras are both running from hubs. Both cameras use the Microsoft generic USB video drivers and all software is current.

I just ran it with motion detection turned off and it crashes immediately if audio is on. Runs fine with audio off. So I can't really check it.

I watched it enough with audio on and audio off that I am fairly sure I was not seeing motion causing the disk writing. When I had the audio off, I had no disk writes. When I had audio on one camera, I had no disk writes. When I had audio on both cameras, I had continuous disk write at about 5kB/sec.

One piece to the puzzle maybe. Both cameras are outside and it is dark now so the video stream is much smaller. When I turn audio on both cameras the disk writing does not occur. Icamsource 2.1.6 still disappears after a minute or two. With Icamsource 2.1.5, the audio would stop after some time, but the module did not terminate.

[Stefan]

If you connect the webcams directly to the computer and install the manufacturer's recommended video and audio drivers does that improve the iCamSource's stability?

[twink]

Both cameras use the generic USB video driver as their primary recommended drivers. Neither have native drivers of their own.

And unfortunately, both cameras are mounted and difficult to move so I am not sure if connecting directly to the computer would help.

Both cameras are stable as long as I have audio turned off, so I am good. I know that Microsoft has had ongoing issues with their audio driver (audiodg.exe) and it may be their problem.

I will just let you know when I see anomalies in new releases, just in case someone left a little debugger code in.

Thanks for the quick responses. You have a really good product.