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The FALCONplus frame grabber has connections for monochrome and color cameras. All current video standards like PAL, NTSC and SECAM are supported. The video images are transfered via burst DMA transfer into the memory of the VGA card for displaying or into the systems RAM for image processing. This transfer is done in video real time. All operation modes allowing for image processing and image presentation – also with non destructive overlay are supported by the driver. A scaler can minimize images up to icon size in
x- and/or y-direction. The scaled images can be interpolated. The scaler can be switched off. This will be necessary in most of industrial applications.
Image acquisition
FALCONplus support all current monochrome and color cameras with composite video output. These are high precision digitized (perfectly suitable for industrial measurement applications ) and transferred into the PC. The maximum resulution is 768 x 576 pixels. The driver also supports independent switch-over to all video channels in desired order. With FALCONplus the switch-over speed among the input channels has been enhanced by the modification of the video inputs. With cameras of different brightness levels interfering transient reactions are eliminated.
Multiple board operation
Several applications (as example security and monitoring applications) are dependent on the collaboration of several frame grabber cards in a PC. Up to 4 independent cards can be worked in a PC. Thus within a single PC you can get up to 16 video input channels with a selection of 4 cameras at the same time. The coin of image presentation, image size and other parameters can be independently programmed for each input. Thus expensive video multiplexers and quadrant splits can be saved. Digital video images can be stored as object display or image sequence (Video for Windows with software codec) and transferred via LAN/ISDN.
Settings
FALCONplus allows various regulations of the digital image data like changing the image size, the image section, the contrast, the brightness, the color saturation and many more. So that critical video sources can be grabbed, the FALCONplus has a special mode which compensates for critical synchronization behavior and allows images to be grabbed in a higher quality.
Image displaying
Displaying the digitized video data is always done on the VGA screen of a PC. The images are transmitted via the PCI bus in video real time, without almost any
CPU-load. They are then presented as a live image on the VGA monitor. Precondition is the installation of the DirectDraw driver. It is contained in the scope of delivery in well known VGA card ranges.
Overlay
A commonly used function is overlaying of an image with text and graphics without disrupting the live image. DD (DirectDraw) and the mode DD-Backbuffer and
DD-overlay surface are included in our frame grabber library and thus offer this possibility. The CPU-load is less than 10%. The DD-Backbuffer mode is suitable for all graphic cards, yet with the DD Overlay Surface mode only cards supporting this mode are suitable.
Direct Draw – advantages
DirectDraw is a Microsoft specified interface for the presentation of video data with Windows. Until recently frame grabber cards without individual image memory had two presentation possibilities:
1. Direct transmission into the VGA card- Advantage: Real live image with almost no CPU-load. Disadvantage: Image data overwrote all informations on the screen. The video image would always being in the foreground.
2. Indirect image presentation via the PC system Advantage: Windows controls the image presentation. Overlay to the video image is possible. Disadvantage: Usually no real live image and CPU is working up to 100% towards image presentation. DirectDraw combines the advantages of both varieties. Real live image with the possibility of overlaying the video image with dialogues, text graphics.
Supported color formats with image displaying
FALCONplus supports a number of color modes for the storage and displaying of images. Depending on the modes various amounts of data have to be transmitted via the PCI bus. This results in the PCI-bus-load being dependent on the selected color modes. Color formats with FALCONplus can be chosen from: RGB 32, RGB24, RGB 16, RGB15, Y8 (grey scale), YUV 4:2:2 
Software Development Kit
A comprehensive SDK makes FALCONplus be of unspoken power. Only with this SDK makes the utilisation of all performance features possible. A great number of functions for flexible SDK-functions of image displaying and storage is offered to the user. Image sequences are provided with a ring buffer or a list with interlocked image files. All display modes of Windows are supported today. For the demonstration of effectiveness of the driver a demo program comes with the product. The Microsoft Visiual C/C++ written source code of this applications shows the programming of the card and helps solving the tasks.
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