Program for getting line-outs from web cam images

Hello all,

I have tried searching the newsgroups for my question, with no luck.
Though that certainly doesn't mean I didn't miss something. At my old
lab we had a frame grabber card that allowed us to make contour plots
of an image from a ccd camera. I would like to do something similar at
my new job for a demonstration and later for actual use. What we have
are some very nice web cams (Toucam II and StellaCam-EX) that I am
trying to use to image the focus of a HeNe laser. I have LabView
programs that will take a line-out along the x- and y-axis of the image
and fit that to a Gaussian. This is very useful when determining how
well a laser focuses. I am including the astronomy groups, because you
guys play with these cameras all of the time and I'm sure someone
needed to do something similar, like taking an image of a star to see
how well their telescope focuses.

Ultimately my problem is that the software that comes with both cameras
does not allow me to save in the format that I need and I was wondering
if there is software (freeware, shareware) that will alow me to save in
the needed format.

Thanks for the help

Kevin

wrote:
Ultimately my problem is that the software that comes with both cameras
does not allow me to save in the format that I need and I was wondering
if there is software (freeware, shareware) that will alow me to save in
the needed format.

Open, these cameras will support a TWAIN interface, and pictures can be
captured by any program which can use TWAIN. I'm interested, though:
Which formats do your capture programs save in that you can't use?

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

--
http://www.sherlocksoftware.org

Nicholas Sherlock wrote:
wrote:
Ultimately my problem is that the software that comes with both cameras
does not allow me to save in the format that I need and I was wondering
if there is software (freeware, shareware) that will alow me to save in
the needed format.

try ImageJ, its freeware, science oriented, and has a twain
interface.

Steve Roberts

I don't know if this will help, but here is a link to a free image
processing software package intended for robot imaging. It will work
with most USB based web cams, but I am not certain of the exact
software interface.

http://www.roborealm.com/

Joe Dunfee

wrote:
Hello all,

I have tried searching the newsgroups for my question, with no luck.
Though that certainly doesn't mean I didn't miss something. At my old
lab we had a frame grabber card that allowed us to make contour plots
of an image from a ccd camera. I would like to do something similar at
my new job for a demonstration and later for actual use. What we have
are some very nice web cams (Toucam II and StellaCam-EX) that I am
trying to use to image the focus of a HeNe laser. I have LabView
programs that will take a line-out along the x- and y-axis of the
image and fit that to a Gaussian. This is very useful when
determining how well a laser focuses. I am including the astronomy
groups, because you guys play with these cameras all of the time and
I'm sure someone needed to do something similar, like taking an image
of a star to see how well their telescope focuses.

Ultimately my problem is that the software that comes with both
cameras does not allow me to save in the format that I need

Which is ....?

and I was
wondering if there is software (freeware, shareware) that will alow
me to save in the needed format.

There is no way to answer the question since "the format you need" is
unknown....

--
Carsten A. Arnholm
http://arnholm.org/
N59.776 E10.457

Joe is correct. You should be able to save a webcam image in a variety
of formats using RoboRealm. You may also be interested in the focus
module at http://www.roborealm.com/help/focus.php which was built to
help one improve the focus of an image that may act similar to the
LabView procedure.

STeven.
www.roborealm.com

My apologies. What is clear in my head is not always clear on paper!
Ultimately a text file with columnsxrows=total pixels and each entry
being the "intensity" on that particular camera pixel.

Thanks everyone for the other answers despit my lack of clarity.

Kevin

Carsten A. Arnholm wrote:
wrote:
Hello all,

I have tried searching the newsgroups for my question, with no luck.
Though that certainly doesn't mean I didn't miss something. At my old
lab we had a frame grabber card that allowed us to make contour plots
of an image from a ccd camera. I would like to do something similar at
my new job for a demonstration and later for actual use. What we have
are some very nice web cams (Toucam II and StellaCam-EX) that I am
trying to use to image the focus of a HeNe laser. I have LabView
programs that will take a line-out along the x- and y-axis of the
image and fit that to a Gaussian. This is very useful when
determining how well a laser focuses. I am including the astronomy
groups, because you guys play with these cameras all of the time and
I'm sure someone needed to do something similar, like taking an image
of a star to see how well their telescope focuses.

Ultimately my problem is that the software that comes with both
cameras does not allow me to save in the format that I need

Which is ....?

and I was
wondering if there is software (freeware, shareware) that will alow
me to save in the needed format.

There is no way to answer the question since "the format you need" is
unknown....

--
Carsten A. Arnholm
http://arnholm.org/
N59.776 E10.457

wrote:
My apologies. What is clear in my head is not always clear on paper!
Ultimately a text file with columnsxrows=total pixels and each entry
being the "intensity" on that particular camera pixel.

That is a very generic description that would suit almost any image file
format on the planet.

Webcams deliver 8bit AVI files, encoded using a codec depending in the
camera in question. Lots of programs can extract the AVI frames to BMP for
example.

FITS files would perhaps suit your needs more directly, but there are also
many variants of FITS files.

You also have to take into account that webcams are typically equipped with
a colour chip. This also influences the file format. You get 3 intensities
per image pixel after debayering.

Clear skies
Carsten A. Arnholm
http://arnholm.org/
N59.776 E10.457

wrote:
My apologies. What is clear in my head is not always clear on paper!
Ultimately a text file with columnsxrows=total pixels and each entry
being the "intensity" on that particular camera pixel.

Carsten A. Arnholm wrote:
That is a very generic description that would suit almost any image file
format on the planet.

I don't think so. By text is surely meant something like ASCII. Under
that interpretation, something like plain-text PPM, PGM, or PBM would be
acceptable; possibly something like XPM or XBM would work, too. But not
GIF or JPEG or PNG.

There are image file converters available that will convert any of the
image file formats to PPM, which can then be manipulated quantitatively
by a simple script.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

Brian Tung wrote:
wrote:
My apologies. What is clear in my head is not always clear on paper!
Ultimately a text file with columnsxrows=total pixels and each entry
being the "intensity" on that particular camera pixel.

Carsten A. Arnholm wrote:
That is a very generic description that would suit almost any image
file format on the planet.

I don't think so. By text is surely meant something like ASCII.
Under that interpretation, something like plain-text PPM, PGM, or PBM
would be acceptable; possibly something like XPM or XBM would work,
too. But not GIF or JPEG or PNG.

There are image file converters available that will convert any of the
image file formats to PPM, which can then be manipulated
quantitatively by a simple script.

You are right. I missed the "text" part and focused on the
"columnsxrows=total pixels".

But for image processing I would still suggest using something like Fits as
the starting point instead. It is more compact, more efficient, can provide
more precision and there is free programming tools for it (e.g. CFITSIO).

Clear skies
Carsten A. Arnholm
http://arnholm.org/
N59.776 E10.457