VideoWrapper API Documentation

This documentation is for the VideoWrapper source code.

Introduction

VideoWrapper is a C/C++ library that provides a single abstract API for interfacing video camera libraries. VideoWrapper is essentially an API adapter: calls to the VideoWrapper API are converted to calls into the camera's native API. The interface is designed with an emphasis on simplicity: just initialize a camera and begin capturing frames.

Key features:

• simultanious capture from multiple native camera APIs;
• add support for new camera types without recompiling;
• easily extensible to adapt additional camera APIs;
• cross platform (presently Windows and Mac OS)

Supported Camera APIs

VideoWrapper currently supports cameras driven by the following camera APIs:

• Windows:
  • DCAM from Videre Design .
    • See VideoWrapper_DCAM Details.
  • PGR FlyCapture from Point Grey Research .
    • See VideoWrapper_PtGrey Details.
  • VidCapture from SourceForge. (Provides DirectShow support.)
    • See VideoWrapper_VidCap Details.
  • RCSDK from Canon. (Support's the EOS line of digital SLR cameras.) See VideoWrapper_EOS Details.
• Mac OS:
  • QuickTime . The QuickTime support is old and doesn't work with the current version of the code, however it should be updated soon.
    • See VideoWrapper_QuickTime Details.

The SDKs for these cameras are not included with the VideoWrapper source. If you wish to compile the VideoWrapper_xxx API adapter for any of these libraries you must acquire the appropriate SDK from the vendor.

Important things to know

• The architecture of the software for which VideoWrapper was originally written did not allow callback functions. Thus, VideoWrapper currently supports only polling for video frame updates (via VIDEO_getFrame()). If your application needs callbacks, please consider extending VideoWrapper!

Building the Source

• Windows - Visual Studio .NET 2003
  • Install the SDKs for all cameras you wish to support (Point Grey, DCAM, etc.).
  • Follow the directions in the SDK for configuring Visual Studio for each camera SDK.
  • If you are interested in debugging the VideoWrapper DLLs you should add the (root directory of source)/bin/windows directory to your PATH environment variable. The VideoWrapper DLLs are copied to this directory as part of the build sequence.
  • Open and release build the solutions for each VideoWrapper_xxx API adapter.
  • Open and release build the VideoWrapper solution.
  • The compiled DLLs are now availible in the (root directory of source)/dist/windows directory.

Using VideoWrapper

For an example of usage, see VideoWrapperExample.cpp.

For documentation of the functions exposed by VideoWrapper, see VideoWrapper.h.

For type and symbol definitions, see VideoWrapperTypes.h.

Where are the binaries?

This is documentation for the VideoWrapper source code. Binaries with documentation are available at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/videowrapper/.

Who's writing VideoWrapper?

VideoWrapper comes out of the Georgia Tech College of Computing's Augmented Environments Lab, where it is a component of DART, the Designers Augmented Reality Toolkit .

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