Real-time Video Capabilities in LabVIEW?

[jch303]

"Does Labview contain the ability to display and record live video? My experimental setup requires recording a number of electronic signals in synchornous with a video feed from a digital camcorder via Firewire. This would give me a visual of certain events in the experiment correlated to data I obtained.

Ideally, my VI front panel will have the live video feed in the corner of the screen while displaying recorded signals. I need the ability to have all this recorded in sync with some sort of event markers so that I can refer to data and its corresponding video portion in the future."

[Scott_R]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting National Instruments. Yes, it is possible to acquire and display images from a video feed in LabVIEW. For a firewire camera, it would require that you purchase and install the NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 drivers. However, for this driver to work with your camera, it must be DCAM compliant. Industrial firewire cameras typcically meet this standard. Information about this standard can be found at:

How Can I Tell If My IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Camera is Supported by the NI-IMAQ for 1394 Driver?
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/AFDED7F599E8A73A8625689E007672E5?OpenDocument

If your camera has any kind of trigger inputs on it, then you could use those to trigger the acquisition. When you install the NI-IMAQ for 1394 driver,
LabVIEW examples will be installed to your hard drive. These examples include Triggered Snap, Triggered Grab (with DAQ) and Triggered Grab Async (with DAQ). The latter two VIs would require that you have NI-DAQ and a DAQ device installed. These VIs and several other examples require IMAQ Vision to be installed as well.

Let me know if you have any additional questions on this issue or the software required to perform this task.

Regards,
Scott R.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments