acquiring individual frames from MiniDV tape taken by a Sony trv900 camcorder in 15 frames per second progressive scan mode?

[FraserD]

I require to be able to automaticaly acquire several hundred individual frames from a several minute sequence of continuous progressive scan video.

In the absence of a frame grabber, is it possible to play this tape into a PC through firewire, perhaps saving to disk as an uncompressed digital video sequence, and then use the AVI tools in LabVIEW 7.1 to acquire each frame consecutively and write to file. The video format is Sony's 15 FPS Prog Scan taken by a Sony trv900 camcorder.

Does anyone think this will work or is there a better way?

I thank you in advance.

FraserD

[Brad]

Hello FraserD,

Consumer grade video camcorders don't typically follow the industrial DCAM spec that the NI-IMAQ for IEEE-1394 driver requires. You may have some more success with the new NI-IMAQ for USB driver. Even though the name may be a little misleading since the driver can work with more than just USB imagting devices, it will work with any device that provides a DirectShow filter, which is common among consumer grade devices. I would recommend making sure your Sony CamCorder driver is installed correctly (i.e. you can acquire video using their software), and then install the NI-IMAQ for USB driver:
http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/niepd_web_display.display_epd4?p_guid=ED6942DF78E34659E034080020E74861&p_node=DZ52490&p_source=External

This will install LabVIEW VIs, and Vision Assistant plugin. I haven't ever tried this with a camcorder, but let me know how this works for you.
Thanks,
Brad

[Steven Bird]

Brad,

I believe you could also try and purchase a Win TV card which maybe able to bring in S video in which you will be able to save into an AVI format . You can then use within LabVIEW the NI-Vision functions to process the AVI's.

Hope this helps.


Kind Regards


Steven Bird
Applications Engineer
National Instruments