time code problem on Mac

[Stan Dodds]

I am having problems with time marking in movies captured on a Mac. The 
system is

Computer: Mac OS X v10.4, on an eMac. Camera drivers from Apple and 
from IOXperts  v.1.1(demo) are installed.

Camera: Unibrain FireI, connected to native FireWire interface

Application software available: BTVPro v.5.4.1 demo (latest available), 
QuickTime Pro v7  and VideoPoint Capture v. 2.0 (Lenox Softworks) for 
capture. LoggerPro v.3.3 for analysis (Vernier Software and Systems). 
All are OS X native.

The following behavior occurs with BTVPro
      The usual menus allow selection of the IOXperts driver and access 
a settings panel to control the driver. The preview panel on your(?) 
settings dialog responds to various gain, saturation etc., commands, 
but the shutter speed slider has no effect. (It did work in the 
previous driver version, provided with the camera.) Also, Unibrain 
claims the camera has various mode/frame rate settings, but I see no 
provision to set those.

      BTV successfully captures a short movie with the default 
compression setting, "Component Video - Native". QuickTime player 
claims the output file is marked 28 frames/second, but plays at 30 
frames/second. Counting frames with a standard rotor shows the true 
speed is 30 per second. LoggerPro, which reads the time codes for 
frame-by-frame analysis, gives results consistent with 28 frames/second 
and will not read some frames at all, even though they are displayed. 
Previous experience with mismatched DV cameras and drivers indicates 
that this can be caused by errors in the time codes embedded in the QT 
movie file.

     I have also tried to change the compression algorithm used, but 
without success. The QT output file is always "Component Video - 
Native", regardless of the choice in the settings dialog of BTV. For 
whatever reason, this compression gives a 320x240 image while the 
camera has approximately 640x480 native resolution.


Another capture application, VideoPoint Capture correctly accesses the 
IOXperts driver and provides a settings dialog, but gives essentially 
the same garbled and reduced-resolution QT movie output as BTVPro.

QuickTime Pro will recognize the IOXperts driver, but provides no 
settings dialog at all. (Presumably Apple's choice.) The recording 
image is normal, but the file is marked 12-15 fps, apparently randomly 
from recording to recording, and the time code as read by LoggerPro 
jumps erratically.

Since the problems seem consistent across application software, I 
assume there is some problem with the driver or system configuration, 
or perhaps an interaction with the Apple native driver. Unfortunately I 
have no other diagnostics available to test these possibilities. Since 
it would be highly desirable to use the Unibrain camera in our teaching 
labs, I would appreciate any suggestions you may have to cure these 
problems.

Thank you.

Stan Dodds
Physics and Astronomy
Rice University