Image Acquisition Components .NET C++ Class Library ActiveX

IC Imaging Control is a family of image acquisition components that offers developers easy programmatic access to WDM video sources: Set and adjust device parameters Save images and sequences Compress data with codecs Overlay graphics and text on live stream Event controlled image processing Unlimited support free of charge Vast library of sample applications

IC Imaging Control ships in the following four editions:

	Pro Edition This edition works with all cameras, frame grabbers and converters that ship with a WDM Stream Class driver and can be purchased online or by fax.			TIS Edition This edition ships free of charge with all cameras, frame grabbers and converters manufactured and sold by The Imaging Source. [1]
	Sony Edition This edition ships free of charge with all cameras manufactured by Sony and sold by The Imaging Source. [2]			Teli Edition This edition ships free of charge with all cameras manufactured by Teli and sold by The Imaging Source. [3]

	= Feature supported			= Feature not supported

Basic Functionality	Pro Edition	TIS Edition	Sony Edition	Teli Edition
Real-Time Video Preview IC Imaging Control allows real-time preview of video streams up to the maximum frame rate of the video capture device. Furthermore, IC Imaging Control can preview multiple video streams at once, making it ideally suited to surveillance applications.
Overlay IC Imaging Control provides a powerful overlay object that allows text and graphics to be drawn onto a live video stream. An overlay event allows the overlay to be modified for every frame of an image stream. It is therefore possible to draw a frame count, clock or sensor information on the video stream, for example. The overlay can be either rendered on the live display, in the AVI file or in the ring buffer.
Scroll and Zoom IC Imaging Control provides built in scrolling and zooming. The image can be easily steplessly zoomed to fit the size of the control or the entire window.
Acquisition of Single Frames Single image frames can be captured from a live video stream.
Save Image to File (BMP, JPEG) Once images have been acquired to the image buffer, they may be saved as a BMP or JPEG file.
Acquisition of an Image Sequence A predetermined number of frames can be acquired to separate image buffers, which are organized as a ring buffer. Using IC Imaging Control's direct image buffer access, individual frames or sequences may be manipulated and/or saved.
Output Features IC Imaging Control stores image data in an array of predetermined buffers, known as a ring buffer. The first image is written into the first buffer, the next image into the second buffer etc. until an image is written into the last buffer. The next image will overwrite the first image in the ring buffer (and so on).
Event Controlled Image Processing IC Imaging Control fires an event each time it has finished writing to an image buffer. This has the advantage that the end-user application does not have to establish which buffer contains the most recent, complete image. For operations on the overlay, IC Imaging Control fires an event every time a new frame has been delivered by the video capture device. Using this event, an application is able to implement a frame dependent overlay, i.e. a frame counter that appears on the video stream.
Capture Pause Pausing capture allows the CPU load for a variety of applications to be reduced, as long as there is no need to perform post acquisition image processing. Additionally, it offers an efficient means by which to start AVI capture without latency. Applications that occasionally require an image to be captured benefit from this feature, as they may keep the video stream initialized, thus eliminating the need to perform the startLive - stopLive initialization sequence.
Timestamps IC Imaging Control provides timestamps for every frame of the image stream. As soon as an image stream is initialized, a reference timer for this stream is started. The timestamps for each frame are dependent upon this stream timer. The current value of the stream timer can be retrieved from IC Imaging Control. With this information, an application can calculate the point in time at which a frame was sent into the image stream.
Advanced Functionality	Pro Edition	TIS Edition	Sony Edition	Teli Edition
Programmatic WDM Device Selection IC Imaging Control automatically recognizes video capture devices with a WDM Stream Class driver installed on a PC. Newly added USB, Firewire, PCI, PC-Card, DV video capture devices with a WDM Stream Class driver immediately appear in the list. It is possible to select a video source, a video norm (NTSC/PAL), a video format (width, height, color space) and an input channel.
WDM Device Selection with Shipped Dialog IC Imaging Control provides a dialog box that allow the end-user to open a device and configure the video norm, video format, input channel, frame rate and orientation (horizontal and vertical flip state).
Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Gain etc. Video capture devices can be programmatically queried for their settings in order to build customized dialog boxes. Amongst others, the following image settings are supported: brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, gain and exposure. All changes that are made are immediately visible on the live video stream.
Zoom, Focus, Iris, Pan, Tilt and Roll Video capture devices can be programmatically queried in order to build a customized image setting dialog box. Amongst others, the following image settings are supported: zoom, focus, iris, and pan/tilt/roll. All changes that are made are immediately visible on the live video stream.
Support for DCAM and non-DirectX Properties IC Imaging Control 2.0 introduced VCD (Video Capture Device) properties as a generic, hardware independent and extendable way to control the settings of a video capture device which are not defined in DirectShow. With VCD properties, it is possible, for example, to control special DCAM properties, such as white balance red, white balance blue or to trigger the white balance one push function.
Shipped Dialog for Manipulating all Properties IC Imaging Control provides a dialog that allows all properties of a video capture device to be manipulated. The source code for this dialog is shipped with IC Imaging Control, thus allowed programmers to create their own customized dialog box.
Serial Numbers If supported by the video capture device, its serial number can be retrieved with IC Imaging Control. With this feature, the video capture device can be used as a dongle.
Save and Restore all Device Properties A set of functions that allows all settings of the currently opened video capture device to be saved to a file or written to memory. This can be later loaded and the settings of the video capture device restored.
Horizontal and Vertical Flip IC Imaging Control can flip the live video stream horizontally or vertically.
Rotate Live Video Stream IC Imaging Control can rotate the live video stream 90°, 180° and 270°.
Region of Interest (ROI) As well as processing the full video stream, IC Imaging Control allows a region of interest to defined upon which all IC Imaging Control's features can be applied.
DV Drive Control (Play, Stop, Freeze, Fast Forward, Rewind) The drive of DV devices (VCRs and camcorders) can be directly controlled by IC Imaging Control. Most common DV features such as fast forward, rewind, stop are available.
Frame Rate Adjustment All frame rates supported by the video capture device can be set.
Trigger Cameras that are equipped with a trigger can be set to trigger mode by IC Imaging Control. In trigger mode, the camera starts the exposure of the sensor every time a trigger pulse is sent.
Supported Hardware	Pro Edition	TIS Edition	Sony Edition	Teli Edition
The Imaging Source Cameras All FireWire and USB cameras that are manufactured by The Imaging Source ship with a WDM Stream Class driver and are thus compatible to IC Imaging Control.
The Imaging Source Video Converters All video converters that are manufactured by The Imaging Source ship with a WDM Stream Class driver and are thus compatible to IC Imaging Control.
The Imaging Source Frame Grabbers All frame grabbers that are manufactured by The Imaging Source ship with a WDM Stream Class driver and are thus compatible to IC Imaging Control.
Sony Cameras Cameras manufactured by Sony and sold by The Imaging Source ship with a WDM Stream Class driver and are thus compatible to IC Imaging Control.
Teli Cameras Cameras manufactured by Teli and sold by The Imaging Source ship with a WDM Stream Class driver and are thus compatible to IC Imaging Control.
WDM Stream Class Devices from other Manufacturers All devices that ship with a WDM Stream Class device driver are compatible to IC Imaging Control. Typical devices in this category include: DV camcorders, video-to-DV converters and webcams.
Supported Operating Systems	Pro Edition	TIS Edition	Sony Edition	Teli Edition
Microsoft Windows Vista IC Imaging Control runs under Windows Vista Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business and Enterprise editions.
Microsoft Windows XP IC Imaging Control runs under Windows XP.
Microsoft Windows 2000 IC Imaging Control runs under Windows 2000 as of service pack 4.
Mac/OS Currently, IC Imaging Control does not run under Mac/OS.
GNU/Linux Currently, IC Imaging Control does not run under GNU/Linux.
Supported Programming Environments	Pro Edition	TIS Edition	Sony Edition	Teli Edition
Microsoft .NET IC Imaging Control is available as a .NET component supporting Microsoft VB.NET and C#. There is a full set of sample applications for both languages.
Microsoft Visual C++ Microsoft Visual C++ 6 and 7 2003 are supported. IC Imaging Control contains a C++ class library that was especially designed for use with Microsoft Visual C++. The class library consists of a specialized IC Imaging Control grabber class.
Microsoft Visual Basic Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 is supported. All of IC Imaging Control's features are available through properties, methods, and events. There is no need to call 'C'-style functions nor to send API messages.
LabVIEW The IC Imaging Control ActiveX can be used directly LabView. An example of this is the IC LabVIEW Extension.
Macromedia Director The IC Imaging Control ActiveX can be used directly Macromedia Director projects.
Supported Standards	Pro Edition	TIS Edition	Sony Edition	Teli Edition
DirectX / DirectShow DirectX is the umbrella term for a number of APIs that describe audio and video data streams under Windows. As of Windows 98, DirectX has established itself as a standard for multimedia orientated image processing. Using this technology, any image acquisition software product can work together with any multimedia camera.
WDM Stream Class Developed by Microsoft, WDM Stream Class is an abstracted approach to transporting high-bandwidth, time-stamped, latency-sensitive data streams between kernel-mode components or between kernel-mode drivers and user-mode components. All video stream device for which a WDM Stream Class driver is available are compatible with IC Imaging Control.
Supported 3rd Party Software	Pro Edition	TIS Edition	Sony Edition	Teli Edition
ActivVisionTools ActivVisionTools is a library of ActiveX components for machine vision applications that offers an easy to use graphical interface. Using IC ActivVisionTools Extension, all functionality of IC Imaging Control is available from within ActivVisionTools projects.
HALCON HALCON is an extensive software library for machine vision applications. It provides more than 1150 operators with outstanding performance for blob analysis, morphology, pattern matching and many more. Using IC Halcon COM Extension or IC Halcon 7.1 Extension, all functionality of IC Imaging Control is available from within Halcon projects.
LabVIEW LabVIEW is a graphical programming language from National Instruments. It is used for data acquisition, instrument control, and industrial automation on a variety of platforms. Using IC LabVIEW Extension, all functionality of IC Imaging Control is available from within LabVIEW projects.
Matrox MIL Matrox Imaging Library (MIL) is a high-level programming library with an extensive set of optimized functions for image capture and image processing. Using IC MIL Extension, all functionality of IC Imaging Control is available from within MIL projects.

Footnotes:

[1] IC Imaging Control TIS Edition works exclusively with cameras and other image acquisition hardware manufactured by
The Imaging Source and cannot be purchased separately.

[2] IC Imaging Control Sony Edition works exclusively with cameras manufactured by Sony and cannot be purchased separately.

[3] IC Imaging Control Teli Edition works exclusively with cameras manufactured by Teli and cannot be purchased separately.