1. #1

    Room setup for PS4 camera

    Hello there,
    I'm kinda new to Just Dance. I started my Dance journey two months ago (February).
    It was best decision ever coz I had alot of time to play due the coronawirus issue.
    Otherwise I would go mad - quarantine is working really bad for me

    I could score pretty nice on mulitple songs - megastar on OMG extreme, and two 13k - I'm the best and Tiki Taki.
    I was only struggling on that extreme, but I thought it's my fault, that I'm not good enough.

    But now I know, that it's not true. That this camera is extremaly tricky. So issues to score started now.
    The older Unlimited songs are completly unplayable for me. I have alot of X, without a reason. Not even "ok", just "x".
    On new songs I get mixed results for the exact same move - sometimes X, sometimes perfect.

    I have read alot of articles about how to setup it properly.
    The camera is not loosing my face, whole body outline is fine.

    I wanna prepare better setup coz i'm about to record my dance.
    On different guides I found out different setups for proper tracing - one thing is common - good light
    The rest:
    1) Light background, contrasting clothers
    2) Dark background, light clothers
    Which will be better?
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  2. #2
    For me, bright colors like orange, green, and yellow without stripes, patterns, or logos against a solid black background worked best with the PS4 camera.

    As far as lighting, my main problem was floor and wall shadows. When I turned off the other lights and put a light above and behind the t.v., so that the light was behind the camera without being blocked by the camera or t.v., this really helped with shadow interference. I did have to experiment with how much light. Too little or too much caused problems.

    Another issue I had was where the wall behind me meets the floor. If you can make the flooring and wall color blend together, that might help, but it's not easy to do on a small (or zero) budget. Other players put strings of lights across this part of their room.

    If you see a good outline of your body at all times, even after several dances, even when you're taking the X's, then it seems like your setup is pretty good. If you have trouble with the outline image, that's when I give more attention to clothing, background, lighting, etc.

    The game is fussy in general, all platforms and all modes of game play, and you really need experience to learn the intricacies of what the game is looking for, or just naturally use your entire body and have all of it in sync all the time. The game is trying to determine who is dancing better. One thing is using your whole body, head to toe, doing moves that you're not even sure if the game can pick up. It often surprises me what it can pick up and what little subtle details it may look for. It doesn't seem to look for every possible detail every time; there is variety. So if you test something out and believe that detail doesn't matter, well, it might actually matter in a different move or a different dance. There are certain parts of the body that can make a big difference in PS4 camera scoring, causing X's and OK's.

    In addition to using the whole body, there are a lot of intricacies regarding technique. I sometimes discover seemingly small features of technique that the game can evidently pick up on.

    The other thing is rhythm. The game often seems to be pretty flexible with rhythm of many moves, but it may place a higher premium on certain moves. Plus, there can be multiple rhythms and under rhythms that the game can pick up, even subtle ones sometimes. There are also moves where two body parts are moving and they need to sync up well.

    The penalties don't always seem reasonable, especially in the Unlimited catalog. Sometimes you can take X's and OK"s on a song, and when you finally figure out what the game was looking for, it seems like a rather small detail. Once I figure out what it was looking for, I usually concede that better dancers would do that correctly and thus deserve a better score; I don't always agree that others should be taking an X or OK for it, but it is what it is. The challenge is a good aspect to the scoring, even though it can get frustrating at times.

    I learned a lot by going through the Unlimited catalog and forcing myself to learn how to score well on the dances. Unlimited is hit or miss. Certain dances are pretty easy with the PS4 camera, certain ones are much more demanding. (Oddly, many dances that are really hard with the camera are much easier with PS Move and vice-versa.) Every time I learned how to turn an X or OK into a good or perfect, I discovered a new detail that the game may be looking for. The more I learned, the more my scores improved even on the newer dances.

    I spend a lot of time watching video and practicing moves in front of a mirror, especially moves that are giving me trouble.

    Good luck and happy dancing.
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  3. #3
    Oh my, thank you so much for detailed guide.

    In general body outline was fine. Sometimes is losing my hands, or I have holes in body after long time of playing
    That's why I wanted to know the best setup, to make sure that if I get "X" that's only my fault, not camera issue.
    I guess megastar on that extreme spoiled me, and I demand perfect scores
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  4. #4
    For holes that develop in the body outline, the best solution is usually to close and reopen the game to refresh the detection. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't automatically refresh the detection between songs. Occasionally, I can walk out a door and back in the room and it refreshes well, but that trick doesn't work very reliably for me.

    If I walk close to the t.v. and back, or if I grab a towel to wipe off sweat, or if I drink a bottle of water, sometimes these necessary activities erode the detection, causing oddities in the body outline. I really can't avoid these things though. I try to towel off and drink water in an adjacent room, but nothing seems to prevent erosion of the body outline well enough.

    To help with hand detection, I sometimes wear gloves for the PS4 camera. If your forearms are thin and they disappear, sleeves might help. But with gloves and sleeves, it can get really hot, and then comfort level is an issue. At some point, you need to "just dance."

    The detection of the PS4 camera is pretty good with moves with quick motions, so if you can pull off the challenging choreography of the extremes, it can reward you nicely on those. Sometimes slow moves seem to be a problem, but it's not always easy to tell if it's because the detection isn't as good, if it's just more demanding on the rhythm and timing on slow moves, or if there are subtle issues with technique or underrhythms that the game is looking for.There are a couple of slow moves walking left/right in Hips Don't Lie, for example, that seem to score harder than they should with the PS4 camera. But that brings up another issue. Dances where I have to move far left or right sometimes introduce objects into the background that ordinarily aren't a problem.

    Keep dancing, gain more experience, and on average many of your scores will probably continue to rise; it feels great to hit more and more 13k's. The "progression of improvement" (as one of the World Cup dancers describes it) really makes this game appealing. Good luck.
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  5. #5
    I meet today another issue that I had so far only once - specially on extremes.
    Camera stops to see me, and puts me as another player (Crazy etc) in the middle of song. Thats makes my whole effort going to waste.
    I had it once on OMG extreme and now on bad guy extreme.
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  6. #6
    Yeah, that is really frustrating. It seems to happen more with the PS4 Camera even with a good setup. It used to happen to me with Xbox Kinect occasionally when another person in the house happened to walk through the room I was dancing in, but it hasn't happened to me with Kinect since I have been able to prevent people from walking through my dance room. With the PS4 camera, it seems to happen even when nobody else is in the room.

    The PS4 camera can get confused when dancing in front of background objects. But it can also get confused with a sudden change in position, as occurs in a few of the dances.

    It seems like better programming could help with this. There is one person doing the dance for a couple of minutes, then suddenly the game thinks a different person is in the room for the rest of the dance. The programming should say, hey, if there had only been one dancer in the room and there still is only one dancer in the room, it's probably the same dancer, let's just give one composite score. It might give a couple of bad scores in the interim moments where the camera is confused, which is still a problem, but when you lose your id to Crazy, it's insanely frustrating. The programming should also understand better the limitations of the PS4 camera and be a little more flexible in the tracking and scoring of the problematic moves (which it could make up for, say, by being more demanding in other ways where tracking is less of an issue).
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  7. #7
    Or just don't let join players after half of song...
    Atleast have option to turn off to join in after coach choose
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  8. #8
    That's a great suggestion. :-)
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  9. #9
    I have tested it out...
    the dark background is not working for me at all. The camera doesn't see me even if I have neon colored clothers.
    Sometimes it will pick up me, but with whole background. The outline is messy or not exsistent.
    It was much better when I had messy kitchen behind me.
    it;s not the lighting issue, coz I have two soft boxex behind the camera, and celling light.
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  10. #10
    Go to the Just Dance 2017 forum, General Discussions, and look for Warfutt's sticky post, the PS4 camera guide. There are a lot of helpful ideas to explore in that post.

    I experimented a lot with my setup. When I had the camera picking up the whole background, not just me, periodically, one of the times this happened in a room that let in a lot of natural light from outside. The blinds were actually closed, yet still sunlight from outside seeped in (one could see without turning any lights on in the house). It doesn't mean your issue relates to lighting. The PS4 camera setup is pretty sensitive and everybody's room is unique.

    Another time I had the whole background getting picked up, I had a low ceiling fan in the room and that fixture was getting picked up. I played with the height of the camera and its angle and got it so that it could no longer see the ceiling fixture, yet could still see my hands when raised up.

    When you had the messy kitchen behind you, maybe the background objects were further away? A background behind can present its own challenges, especially if the camera can pick up shadows against the background.

    Try turning the front lights off, having the ceiling fan on only. Then try just the front lights, no ceiling fan. Also check it out at night when it's dark outside (even if you don't want to dance then), just to see whether the different outside lighting has any impact. Clothing, background (what worked for me may not be best for you), I would change just about anything I can until it seems to detect me reasonably; there is a lot one can experiment with.

    I would also go outside of the game periodically and play with the camera setup and adjustment options.

    (Once it seems to work reasonably, I wouldn't touch anything with a ten-foot pole.) Good luck. Try commenting on Warfutt's post. (You may not get a quick response, but perhaps sometime in the future...)
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