Need video capture with overlay

[BDS]

I am looking for a video capture card or camera that I can use to capture video of a sample under test.  Labview would be controlling the test and I would need to have the test parameters displayed as a text overlay on the captured video in real time.

What sort of capture device can I start/stop with Labview and also insert a text overlay as frames are captured?  I would also prefer the frames to be built into some standard video format like AVI as they are captured. 

I don't need to do any "vision" processing on the video. I just want to capture and save.   I would like to capture using a firewire megapixel camera for higher resolution if possible.

[Irene B]

Hi BDS,

From what I understand, you are looking for these hardware and software capabilities:
- Use FireWire camera and/or framegrabber card
- Insert text overlay
- Create AVIs

If you would like to do image acquisition with a FireWire camera in LabVIEW, you will need to use the NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 driver that comes bundled in the Vision Acquisition Software.  You can either plug the camera in directly to a computer with a built-in FireWire port or use the PCI-8252 FireWire interface device (which comes with the NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 driver).  For information on other framegrabber card options (for non-FireWire cameras), please see the NI Vision Hardware website.

The functions for creating AVIs are included in the Vision Acquisition Software.  The text overlays, however, are functions only found in our image processing software, the Vision Development Module.

Cheers,
Irene Chow
National Instruments
Applications Engineer