Trying to obtain Video frames in LabView

[PhysMatt]

I am new to LabView and attempting to obtain video footage in LabView from a Sony CCD Camera which is connected to my computer by an S-video cable through a Frame Grabber PCI. Is this possible to do directly through the software (and if so, how would I do this) or do I need an additional card from NI?

[Bill Choy]

I had a project about using a capture card (not NI) with LabVIEW to record TV programmes. I found some video capturing programs supported ActiveX and called the program functions in LabVIEW through ActiveX. However the performance was not good because sometime the program was hanged when it ran for a certain time. I still don't know the reason (maybe incompatible of the card and the capture program) but you can try.

Bill

[Wiebe@CARYA]

Hi,

When ActiveX programs hang after some time, it's probably a memory leak.
Make sure all references are closed.

Could you tell us the name of the activex component?

Regards,

Wiebe.

"Bill Choy" wrote in message
news:50650000000500000090910100-1079395200000@exchange.ni.com...
> I had a project about using a capture card (not NI) with LabVIEW to
> record TV programmes. I found some video capturing programs supported
> ActiveX and called the program functions in LabVIEW through ActiveX.
> However the performance was not good because sometime the program was
> hanged when it ran for a certain time. I still don't know the reason
> (maybe incompatible of the card and the capture program) but you can
> try.
>
> Bill

[PhysMatt]

Do you remember what any of those capturing programs were or the manufacturer of those programs?

[Bill Choy]

I did it few years ago and forgot the name of those programs. You can search it in yahoo but many of them are demo version. I searched one (http://www.wyetec.co.uk/icsdocument.asp) for your reference. Does anybody suggest us a good image capture library supported ActiveX?

Bill

[mhaag]

Thanks for contacting National Instruments. I just wanted to add a brief comment on this thread. There is definitely some good information on here. Generally if you do need a high performance acquisition and want to do this in LabVIEW or with NI-IMAQ then by far the easiest way to go is to use an NI Frame Grabber to assure that everything will communicate together properly. The NI PCI-1411 accepts S-Video input, so that could be one option if you are looking for other hardware.

With that said, using it in LabVIEW will all depend on the hardware and software of your 3rd party frame grabber and other software you may have available. If the manufacturer provided a VI Library or a set of C/C++ functions for acquiring images from that hardware, then you can try to c
all those in LabVIEW to see if you can get the image that way. If not, then you can try to use ActiveX to communicate with the device as well, but from what I've heard and what people have posted here that does not always provide the best performance. I do not know of any 3rd party software that would provide you with that functionality through ActiveX.

If you have any more questions on our National Instruments products or anything else, then feel free to let us know.

Regards,
Michael
Applications Engineer
National Instruments