gevCapture
==========

What is it ?
------------

A program for visualising and saving a 8bpp video stream from a
[GigE-vision][gige] compatible camera. Actually simply a bit of glue
connecting the [Aravis][] library (back-end talking to the camera) to
[MPlayer][] (used as front-end) which displays the image.

Currently allows restricting capture and/or saving to a Region Of
Interest, either interactively or via the command line, and selecting
frame-rate, gain and a few other parameters.

[gige] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GigE_vision
[aravis] = https://live.gnome.org/Aravis
[MPlayer] = http://www.mplayerhq.hu/


Disclaimer (on top of the GPL disclaimer)
-----------------------------------------

The quality of this software is currently rather mediocre. Bits of the
code currently are of no use at all (yet). I am just sharing code I use and
hack as I use it. I appreciate comments and suggestions, but please
understand if I do not react as you would have hoped I would. In
particular, do not expect much assistance in making this work for you.


Licence
-------

This work is copyright Adrian Daerr, the University Paris Diderot (2011,2012).
Bits borrowed from aravis are copyright Emmanuel Pacaud.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


Dependencies
------------

- [Aravis][] and its dependencies; first commit tested with aravis
  0.1.14, try most recent version

- [MPlayer][], (almost) any version should do

- the pthread library


Building
--------

Edit the contents of the Makefile, if needed, then type ./make


Running
-------

For a list of options, execute with --help

The current version is very primitive: 

- it launches mplayer and tells aravis to stream from the named camera
  (or the first camera, if no name is given)

- three files with the given file-name as root (default: test) are
  created (possibly overwritten!), for the raw image date, the
  timestamps, and some meta-data respectively'

- the images are streamed to mplayer for display. The following keys
  are understood:

    q ................ quit
    h ................ show help
    r ................ toggle Region Of Interest selection
    cursor keys ...... move selection as a whole
    e,s,d,f .......... move upper left corner of selection
    i,j,k,l .......... move lower right corner of selection
    g, SPACE ......... start acquisition

The Region Of Interest can be adjusted using the given keys. Pressing
shift or caps-lock increases the step size. It should be displayed as
a blue overlay.

When hitting <g> or the <SPACE> key, streaming also starts to the file
on disc, limited to the Region Of Interest (by default: maximum size),
which becomes red, and possibly at a lower frame rate (using the
"--save-drop-factor N" option which will cause N-1 frames in N frames
*not* to be saved). If you wish to record another sequence, I
recommend quitting at the end of saving the first sequence of frames,
and re-starting the program.