LabVIEW to Output Video

[Mellobuck]

Hello,

Is it possible to use LabVIEW to generate a Video output test signal? The Unit Under Test here is a Monitor, we want to make sure the video test displays.

Is having a spare video output on my computer sufficient, or do I need to get a special piece of hardware?

Can the same software/hardware package test both DVI and VGA, or will I need dedicated Digital and Analog interfaces?

I found this summary, but these seem like overkill for what I need, or is this the minimum entry point for this kind of test?
http://www.ni.com/product-documentation/7678/en/ 

Thank you,

Mello

[Bob_Schor]

I don't know what you mean by a "Video Output Test Signal".  Certainly with the LabVIEW Vision package, you can (for example) get LabVIEW to acquire Video images from, say, a WebCam at 30fps (typically) and have this viewed on the LabVIEW Front Panel.  You can also generate checkerboard patterns and have them flash (be careful -- they can be "disturbing" to view).  If you want to draw Lissajous patterns, LabVIEW can do it but it wouldn't necessarily be fast ...

Bob Schor

[rolfk · Accepted solution]

It pretty much depends what you really need to test!

You could of course use a second video output on your system, configure it as secondary display and carefully place a LabVIEW frontpanel on it to display the desired test image. Then have some operator visually control it, or use a camera to capture the image and analyze it. 

If you however want to do an advanced test, you would probably need some dedicated programmable video generator hardware and somehow capture the result (video camera) and analyze this. And yes that would be expensive. There are video test generator hardware available but they are far from your average video card in price, since typically they can only sell so many of them in comparison to the standard video card!

It all depends on your test requirements! If it is only a quick visual test to see if the display works, the normal video output will do. If you however have to test with different signals to test that the display still performs correct with signals with specific electrical and timing tolerances, you won't get away without an expensive programmable video test generator.

[Mellobuck]

Thanks you Bob, thank you Rolf,

My use case was to just test if the display was working, but need to adjust to different resolutions, and different outputs (DVI, VGA). Rolf's breakdown helps a lot, I think I will need the dedicated hardware to test in this case.

Regards,

Mello