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Cameras & Video/ Camera Setup/ Use a Web Camera With DirectShow Integration

Use a Web Camera With DirectShow Integration

  • Note: USB cameras were tested in a lab environment.

Connecting a camera

Enable the camera from the Settings menu.

Click the gear icon.

Settings gears icon at the bottom left of the main menu

Settings menu

Note that the camera integration type is identified, e.g. DirectShow, Spinnaker:

Settings, Cameras page listing Dragon USB 2.0 and Microsoft LifeCam Studio as DirectShow and FLIR Blackfly S BFS-U3-16S2C as Spinnaker

If properly detected the camera will automatically appear in the camera list.

In order to use the camera it needs to be assigned a camera angle, click the “Disabled” icon and select an angle, then flip the “OFF” switch to “ON” to enable the camera.

Angle menu open under Disabled for the Microsoft LifeCam Studio, with Down the line, Top down, Face on right, Face on left and Freehand

Dragon camera is enabled and designated as the face on right camera (meaning it is facing the user from the right).

Dragon USB 2.0 set to Face on right with Use camera switched ON, and the other two cameras OFF

Advanced Camera Settings

The advanced camera settings gives you the ability to change the name of the camera, mirror & rotate, crop, and adjust the video image and make settings changes.

Note: Auto is only available for certain properties, such as white balance, exposure, and focus).

Advanced Camera Settings, Image tab, Processing Amplifier with Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation, Sharpness, Gamma, White Balance (Auto on), Backlight Comp and Gain, and the Restore defaults button

Camera Control section with Exposure set to -7.00, Auto off, Focus on Auto, and the Restore defaults button

If you any erroneous changes, you can revert to default) by clicking “Restore defaults”.

Troubleshooting

Low Frame Rate:

Frame rate may be lowered due to the exposure set on the camera.

By default most cameras are set to auto exposure, if you don’t have enough light, the exposure time per frame will be high, and the camera will be unable to provide the maximum frame rate.

If the exposure is too high, the frame rate will be reduced, and the recording will be blurrier.

Dropped frames:

If the camera is dropping frames (in this case it is not giving the FPS it should be), it can introduce visual artifacts.Capture view with a warning at the bottom: Dragon USB 2.0: Dropped frames (142 last 10 seconds, 1610 total)

  • Make sure that the camera is connected directly to the computer, and ideally to one of the USB ports in the back of the computer.

  • You may have to try different USB ports to find one that works best for you, generally we want to avoid USB ports situated in the front of a desktop PC as the performance is poor (will often give a lower frame rate).

Selecting a different Media Type

Normally DirectShow and Swing Catalyst will automatically select the best media type and changing it shouldn’t be necessary, however some cases / scenarios do warrant this:

  • If you have a web camera that is 60 FPS at 1920x1280 resolution and you’re only getting 30 FPS

  • The video resolution appears smaller / worse compared to other applications

  • You’re experiencing dropped frames and or insufficient data received.

Certain formats use less bandwidth than others. If the camera supports RAW8, GREY8, or other 8-bit imaging formats, these use much less bandwidth than uncompressed RGB formats. Compressed formats such as MJPEG or MPEG use less bandwidth still, but the computer must spend CPU time decoding them, and compression can add visible artifacts.

Options tab with Override Media Type checked and the format list open, showing GRAY16LE, GRAY8, BGR24 and UYVYYY411 formats at several resolutions and frame rates

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