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2004/April/24

Releases as Open Source under the GNU GPL License.

Remember to give the credits to the Original Author if you are going to use this code.

Thanks to its author, Juergen Dittmer, for releasing it Open Source.

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WebCam/2 ReadMe



Whats new:

 8 Sep 1997 - REMOTE.EXE triggers a running WebCam/2 from another process
19 Feb 2002 - Upload to hobbes, updated email address


WarpTV comes with an application for watching TV in an overlay window.
It has all the controls known from a TV set. It can also take a snapshot of
the screen and save it. But it is not possible to take pictures in intervals
unattended.

WebCam/2 allows to select a video source and a time interval for saving a
snapshot to disk. Primary I wrote this app for myself, but it came out that
many OS/2 users want to have this, too...


Requirements for WebCam/2 

  1. A Video input adapter with drivers (only FAST MMII tested by myself,
     some Haupauge adapters reported to work) 
  2. OS/2 Device driver for the Video adapter 
  3. Optional: WarpTV or equivalent to adjust the video source in real time 


WebCam/2's current developement status: 

New:
After an image snapshot WebCam/2 calls a REXX file named "WCamExit.CMD".
It can be used for an external program e.g. to convert the bitmap into JPEG format.
See example file: It calls GBMREF.EXE to do this convertion.
I added the files GBMREF.EXE and GBM.DLL from Andy Key. For more information look at
http://www.interalpha.net/customer/nyangau/

In the future I want to add JPEG support directly to WebCam/2, but until today I
have not got the GBM library to work with my WATCOM compiler... (any suggestions?)

Unfortunately, I have waste my time with working and therefore a limited free time for my hobbies ;-)
So it can take some weeks for finishing WebCam/2!

You are welcome to test WebCam/2, especially with Hauppauge adapters. Any wish and comment highly
appreciated!


Installation and deinstallation

Copy WEBCAM.EXE to a directory of your choice. After the first program start
a file WEBCAM.INI is created, where WabCam/2 stores its settings. It does
not change your system ini files!
If you want to deinstall WebCam/2, just delete WEBCAM.EXE and WEBCAM.INI, thats it.


Running WebCam/2

Before you can use WebCam/2, you have to configure it using the WebCam Settings dialog:

Video Device:    The system's name of your video-input device, e.g.:Digitalvideo03
Input Connector: Video source of the adapter, video input or TV tuner
TV Region:       Depends on your country and TV source (antenna or cable)
TV Channel:      Your favorite...
Interval:        This is the time between the video snapshots, 1 second to 24 hours.
                 Disabled, if Hours, Minutes and Seconds are set to 0.
Filename Format: WEBCAM.BMP - only one image file will be created and overwritten
                 with the next snapshot.
                 <Time>.BMP - The filename will be created from the current time.
                 Using this selection, you store the images for 24 hours until
                 they will be overwritten.
                 <Date-Time>.BMP- This selection gives every image an individual
                 filename from the actual date and time. Every image will be kept
                 until your disk runs full!


You can manually take a snapshot by either selecting "Click!" from the menu,
pressing ALT-C, or double-click with mousebutton 1 in the window.

It is also possible to "remote-control" WebCam/2 from another program, e.g. a REXX script:
Start WebCam/2 as usual, time interval can be set to zero. Execution of REMOTE.EXE causes
WebCam/2 to update the image. REMOTE.EXE can be located in any directory.
Example: Imagine you want to have the video snapshot controlled by a special event;
this can be e.g. the execution of a web server cgi program or within a script file.
Just execute or call REMOTE.EXE while WebCam/2 is running in a forground session or 
minimized.
For programmers: Post the event semaphore "\\SEM32\\WEBCAM\\CAPTURE".


A note about system performance:
WebCam/2 uses the MCI_GETIMAGEBUFFER command to read out the video source.
This function has a very high thread priority and causes a high system load
during execution time. If you have selected a very short interval (1 second),
WebCam/2 can slow down your system. Between the image snapshots, the program
consumes almost no CPU time, all the threads are waiting.


Have fun!

Juergen Dittmer
os2@dttmr.de
http://www.dttmr.de

