Remark
This page is no longer maintained but as it can be found by old link references on the web it is not removed.
For new developments visit:
Original page content
This page describes some details about Camstudio and Xnote as we used both products before we started with writing our own solutions using high speed camera’s.
Camstudio
Our first video recording software was based on Camstudio. We chose Camstudio because this is a open source project and allowed us to add our own required modifications. Due to our development process we learned that a real timing systems with an time measurement accuracy better that 0,06 seconds would be hard to achieve with our Camstudio4Xnote solution. Hence we decided to pus the restart button and to develop a dedicated system to achieve an accuracy better than 0,01 seconds
The special editions we build as Camstudio4Xnote which we used in our first events are still available and can be found here:
Camstudio 4 Xnote Install package:
From SourceForge Camstudio’s webssite:
Or download an old and local build Camstudio version here:
When you use the regular release you must define all xNote specific settings yourself. If you decide to download the local build version some new functions or fixes are maybe not included.
Remarks.
Some users on www.Camstudio.org reported that they received “side-by-side configuration” error messages from Windows when they tried to install or to launch the Camstudio application. This behavior is noticed on Vista and Seven systems and as far as we could examine mostly only on Non English Windows versions. If this occurs with you know that the problem can be easily solved by installing :
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) (Eng)
If you don’t want the English version, change the language indication (displaylang=..).
Nick pointed that on Vista or Win-7 you should run CamStudio in “XP Compatibility Mode” :
Right click Recorder.exe > Properties > Compatibility tab.
If you have other issues please Visit Camstudio.org of SourceForge. Users who had problems similar to yours can tell you how to solve it. Although I shall continue with publishing Camstudio on SourceForge and Camstudio.org there may be some occasions that I will publish new Camstudio4Xnote release first here. Especially if the changes are more Xnote or MotionAlerter related. (One of the first to do’s on my list is to release a Camstudio version that do not required additional installation of Microsoft libraries.)
Xnote Stopwatch
Dmitry, the creator and owner of the fine stopwatch program Xnote Stopwatch (xnws.exe) changed his program on request and the last version of Xnote is now broadcasting information about start, snap (lap) and reset.
The required modifications for Camstudio are incorporated in the last 1.60 release on his site. Beware that because this is a little change he did not released it as a new release. Hence, Xnsw v1.60 you can pickup from generic software support sites as download.com and others can lack this for us required function.
You can use the version here:
Or visit the home of Xnote yourself.
With both release it is possible to minimize the flash time, the flash time is the time that the Xnote counter in the screen is frozen to give life audience the possibility to read the time from a monitor. With Camstudio we do not want to have the screen frozen for too long.
With the undocumented Xnote feature we can define our own freeze duration.
- Open : C:\Documents and Settings\[User]\Application Data\XNote Stopwatch\xnsw1.ini
- Goto section [Display].
- Define or change flashtime ( time is in milli seconds, default value is 150)
- Flash=10
In xnote the max ‘skip bounce contact’ time to set is limited to 100 ms. If we want to be sure that we can use a sensor to start and to stop xnote when someone passses this time might be to short. In that case one can can overwrite the max value manual. Beware that max 100ms will be applied again as soon as you configure the external control settings again. To set Skipbounce to 2 seconds.
- Define or change the ‘Skip bounce time’:
- SkipBounce=2000
Camera Viewer & MotionAlerter
We tried many tools but we since quite a long time we are using OpenCV. The program allows you to view multiple camera images at once.
You can download a copy here:
Although multiple camera’s can be useful in some occasions mostly one camera is enough. We decided that solution for only one camera should be much easier to configure and to maintain. Besides that we want to extend the camera vision application with motion detection. Motion detection that would allow us to assign specific functions (Camstudio4Xnote triggers) to different area. The current version is still in development but we you can use our first but very basic version.
MotionAlerter-4-Camstudio-(v0.02)
Install instruction:
- Download file.
- Unzip file.
- Launch MotionAlerter.exe.
Usage instruction:
- Open a local capture device (a USB webcam) or an IP camera that broadcast in JPEG or MJPEG.
- In this state the whole frame is used as a sensitive area. Open “Define motion regions”. Clear all regions first ans set your own “Start” and “Alert” region.
Note: Your current configuration will not be saved. This first version works but lacks many features. For instance; we can set one on more area that are motion sensitive but currently we were not able to apply specific Camstudio4Xnote alerts to individual hot area’s. Disadvantage is that we can can apply multiple alert types to one frame. Currently all defined areas will raise a motion detection alert that will be communicated to Camstudio4Xnote. Not yet exactly what we have in mind for this application. We hope to be able to present a more sophisticated version soon.
Video players
It appeared that the best tool to monitor the AVI recording is Apple’s quicktime.
Quicktime allows you to step through recording frame by frame using the left and right arrow keys. Another benefit of Quicktime is that it can be configured to open new recordings in the last viewer. This way you always have one open viewer instead of many.
If you do not want to use Quicktime you can use any other default editor or else you can instruct Camstudio to open on of its own players.