Frame grabbing from a Matrox card
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http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal Dear All I have a camera set up on a PC and the card works fine via the intellicam software supplied with the drivers. I am now at a point where I need to frame grab at preset intervals over say 2 hours (maybe one frame every 2 minutes (with a timestamp would be perfect!)). I am looking for a free package that may do this. Does anyone have anything to hand or know of a package that would do this? I have looked at the obvious such as ImageJ but I am can't find a plug-in for this board type. Any help appreciated! Jonathan Professor J.C. Knowles BSc(hons), PhD, FIMMM, CEng, FRSC, CSci Professor of Biomaterials Science Head of Division of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, UCL Eastman Dental Institute, University College London, 256 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8LD. UK. Tel +44 (0)207 915 1189 Fax +44 (0)207 915 1227 Mobile 07785 313615 Skype Me Editor, Journal of Biomaterials Applications Email [hidden email] Eastman website; http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk Personal website; http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/~jknowles This email represents the views of the sender alone and must not be construed as representing the views of the Eastman Dental Institute. It may contain confidential information and may be protected by law as a legally privileged document and copyright work. Its content should not be disclosed and it should not be given or copied to anyone other than the person(s) named or referenced above. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender. |
 
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Craig Brideau |
Re: Frame grabbing from a Matrox card
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I have a colleague who used to work for Matrox. Here's what he had to say about your problem:
Ok, what he wants to do is possible and quite easy. However, a free software package is not likely available. Matrox doesn't generally let other people have access to their drivers and the info they'd need to communicate with the grabber. Pretty well the only software out there that can talk to a Matrox frame grabber is written using the Matrox Imaging Library(MIL). This means that MIL-Lite or ActiveMIL-Lite developers kit (depends on if he wants to write the code in C++ or C# / VB) is his best, and only choice. It isn't free, but as a university prof there might be an educational discount. Don't quote me on that though I was never that involved with the sales side of things. I think its something like $500 US, or was about a year ago. On the other hand if he's got the board working and has intellicam then he's probably got a copy of MIL already. The board drivers are not distributed separately from MIL. Unless he's got some third-party software for it. In that case we're back to him needing a dev kit. Please note that you can have only one (1) copy of MIL per boot partition on a system. Anyway, what he wants to do, grab images at specific times and timestamp them is ridiculously simple in MIL. But he (or a student) will have to write some code. There are three ways to do it, depending on the desired accuracy of the timing and the length of the intervals. 1. Use the Windows (or Linux if that's what he's got) Sleep system call in his program to put the program to sleep for n milliseconds, and whenever it wakes up it calls the MdigGrab() function and grabs another image, then goes back to sleep until it's time to do it again. This method is the least accurate. The Matrox engineers always reacted badly when someone used this method for that reason, but generally those people were trying to time really short intervals. 2. Use the frame grabbers onboard timers to trigger the grab. The program simply keeps calling MdigGrab() with a DCF that's setup to be triggered by the timers, and the timers are set (in the DCF, this is what intellicam is for) to send the trigger at the desired interval. This method is quite accurate, but the timers on the frame grabbers have relatively short maximum durations. Most development, and most demand has been for things that are faster, happening in even smaller slices of a second and the timers reflect this. 3. Use an external clock source that sends a trigger pulse to the board every interval. This is essentially the same as 2, but you're not using the frame grabber's timers. MIL/MIL-Lite have a drawing API which lets you annotate pictures. This is often used to timestamp images. I've included the contact info for both of Matrox's UK distributors below. MVD Ltd Unit 2 Station Approach Wendover Buckinghamshire HP22 6BN Telephone: + 44 (0) 845 603 8284 Fax: + 44 (0) 845 603 8285 E-mail: [hidden email] Matrox Video and Imaging Technology Europe Limited Chaplin House Widewater Place Moorhall Road Harefield Middlesex United Kingdom UB9 6NS Telephone: + 44 (0) 1895 827300 Fax: +44 (0)1895 827301 E-mail: [hidden email] Hope this helped! Craig On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 6:25 AM, ugez323 <[hidden email]> wrote: Search the CONFOCAL archive at |
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Watkins, Simon C |
Re: Frame grabbing from a Matrox card
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Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal didnt Optimas work with the matrox boards? maybe one of us has an old dongle and the floppy disks... we could share? The trouble is finding a computer with a floppy disk drive (well it was the 3.5 not 5.25 disks at least). S Simon C. Watkins Ph.D, FRC Path Professor and Vice Chair Cell Biology and Physiology Professor Immunology Director Center for Biologic Imaging BSTS 225 University of Pittsburgh 3500 Terrace St Pittsburgh PA 15261 412-352-2277 www.cbi.pitt.edu ________________________________________ From: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Craig Brideau [[hidden email]] Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 11:49 PM To: [hidden email] Subject: Re: Frame grabbing from a Matrox card Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal I have a colleague who used to work for Matrox. Here's what he had to say about your problem: Ok, what he wants to do is possible and quite easy. However, a free software package is not likely available. Matrox doesn't generally let other people have access to their drivers and the info they'd need to communicate with the grabber. Pretty well the only software out there that can talk to a Matrox frame grabber is written using the Matrox Imaging Library(MIL). This means that MIL-Lite or ActiveMIL-Lite developers kit (depends on if he wants to write the code in C++ or C# / VB) is his best, and only choice. It isn't free, but as a university prof there might be an educational discount. Don't quote me on that though I was never that involved with the sales side of things. I think its something like $500 US, or was about a year ago. On the other hand if he's got the board working and has intellicam then he's probably got a copy of MIL already. The board drivers are not distributed separately from MIL. Unless he's got some third-party software for it. In that case we're back to him needing a dev kit. Please note that you can have only one (1) copy of MIL per boot partition on a system. Anyway, what he wants to do, grab images at specific times and timestamp them is ridiculously simple in MIL. But he (or a student) will have to write some code. There are three ways to do it, depending on the desired accuracy of the timing and the length of the intervals. 1. Use the Windows (or Linux if that's what he's got) Sleep system call in his program to put the program to sleep for n milliseconds, and whenever it wakes up it calls the MdigGrab() function and grabs another image, then goes back to sleep until it's time to do it again. This method is the least accurate. The Matrox engineers always reacted badly when someone used this method for that reason, but generally those people were trying to time really short intervals. 2. Use the frame grabbers onboard timers to trigger the grab. The program simply keeps calling MdigGrab() with a DCF that's setup to be triggered by the timers, and the timers are set (in the DCF, this is what intellicam is for) to send the trigger at the desired interval. This method is quite accurate, but the timers on the frame grabbers have relatively short maximum durations. Most development, and most demand has been for things that are faster, happening in even smaller slices of a second and the timers reflect this. 3. Use an external clock source that sends a trigger pulse to the board every interval. This is essentially the same as 2, but you're not using the frame grabber's timers. MIL/MIL-Lite have a drawing API which lets you annotate pictures. This is often used to timestamp images. I've included the contact info for both of Matrox's UK distributors below. MVD Ltd Unit 2 Station Approach Wendover Buckinghamshire HP22 6BN Telephone: + 44 (0) 845 603 8284 Fax: + 44 (0) 845 603 8285 E-mail: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]> Matrox Video and Imaging Technology Europe Limited Chaplin House Widewater Place Moorhall Road Harefield Middlesex United Kingdom UB9 6NS Telephone: + 44 (0) 1895 827300 Fax: +44 (0)1895 827301 E-mail: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]> Hope this helped! Craig On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 6:25 AM, ugez323 <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal Dear All I have a camera set up on a PC and the card works fine via the intellicam software supplied with the drivers. I am now at a point where I need to frame grab at preset intervals over say 2 hours (maybe one frame every 2 minutes (with a timestamp would be perfect!)). I am looking for a free package that may do this. Does anyone have anything to hand or know of a package that would do this? I have looked at the obvious such as ImageJ but I am can't find a plug-in for this board type. Any help appreciated! Jonathan Professor J.C. Knowles BSc(hons), PhD, FIMMM, CEng, FRSC, CSci Professor of Biomaterials Science Head of Division of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, UCL Eastman Dental Institute, University College London, 256 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8LD. UK. Tel +44 (0)207 915 1189 Fax +44 (0)207 915 1227 Mobile 07785 313615 Skype Me Editor, Journal of Biomaterials Applications Email [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]> Eastman website; http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk Personal website; http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/~jknowles<http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/%7Ejknowles> This email represents the views of the sender alone and must not be construed as representing the views of the Eastman Dental Institute. It may contain confidential information and may be protected by law as a legally privileged document and copyright work. Its content should not be disclosed and it should not be given or copied to anyone other than the person(s) named or referenced above. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender. |
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Torsten.Fregin |
Re: Frame grabbing from a Matrox card
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In reply to this post by Craig Brideau
Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal Hi, As far as I know, there are (for MS Windows) only commercial packages working together with Matrox frame grabbers (like Matlab with Image Acquisition Toolbox, ImageProPlus V.4, Norpix Streampix, Common Vision Blox, National Instruments IMAQ, to name a few). Probably Matrox employs a strict copyright, and only commercial packages are allowed to use the Matrox Imaging Library MIL distribution. There is an open source driver for Linux, but I have not tried it yet. The cheapest way might be to buy the TWAIN driver for the frame grabber from Ebbosoft. At least you can try it out for free, and I think it works with ImageJ. Some time ago I asked for pricing, it was about 100 Euros. If there is a freeware program running with Matrox frame grabbers under Windows, I'd be happy to hear of it!! :-) Torsten |
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Search the CONFOCAL archive at
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Hi There,
I'm not sure if this will help, but if your institute has a full Matlab license and, as Torsten wrote, you already have the Matrox libraries around, there are some developed tools that might be useful. Here is one: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=6439&objectType=file You could also search the Matlab file exchange (in the upper right corner of the page I link above) for the word, "Matrox." I see there are some other results there as well. Best regards, Nate On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 8:17 AM, Torsten Fregin <[hidden email]> wrote: Hi, -- Nathan O'Connor Graduate Student Weill Cornell Medical College |
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