I thought I share this question before hunting for answers.



I need to be able to capture image every few seconds without human interventions. Previously,I had done this before in DOS and Win32 with Proprietary drivers from the vendor, where a camera is sending analog signals and the card would convert it to digital frames and I could grab a frame and save it.



Now, with new devices, I wonder if I should follow the same route (from Analog to digital), or are there [inexpensive] digital cameras that continuously sends digital frames without the need for conversation and grabbing?

This would be my first choice.



OR



a) Has anyone used any "Video Grabber" (either as USB device or card) to capture single frame picture in .Net?



b) Any suggestion on the brand and model?



c) Is DirectShow my best tool to use, to control the device?



d) Or should I approach it from TWAIN direction



Thanks!

..ßen

Hey Trent;





I'm working with Atalasoft as we speak. I was on the phone with the tech support today.



I was also on the phone with Logitech tech support and he was the one who told me supprt for TWAIN is up to XP, with the older version 8.x and for Vista, TWAIN is no longer supported Version 11.x



I had also sent a message to them:





And the replied:





So, now I need to see, what's being std from this point on. Just wanted to keep you in the loop!

..ßen

Yeah, I would like to know what you learn, but I think that fellow is off-base.  There is the new technology (WIA), but I think TWAIN is far from dead   I have been doing a lot of research lately on scanners, and almost all of the newer scanners support ISIS and TWAIN, including the higher-end models in the $5000-$10000 dollar range.  It is rare to run into any scanners that do not support TWAIN.  Also, the most common web cams, such as Creative, on all of their newer models self-install using exclusively TWAIN...including on the Vista OS.  So even though there is new technology to take advantage of, WIA is not supported by most scanners and cameras at the moment, so just like anything else, it will take some time for things to catch up....and there is still a lot of demand for TWAIN.  Obviously we will have to move along with the industry, but it generally takes 2 generations of OS or more for an embedded technology to die.

Trent I agree with you 100% about the scanners. I had used the ISIS (Expensive, but very good) with scanners, so as TWAIN. But the drop of TWAIN is only about the camera.



I just installed the latest software 10.5.1 from logitech with their new camera and Atalasoft DotTWAIN did not even recognize any TWAIN driver installed on my machine.



On the next email, the guy said Logitech uses DirectShow for their internal software.

..ßen

Then the software/driver they have is very heavy.  DirectX has a huge footprint.  One thing that doesn't make sense about this though, is that I can see how their software uses DirectShow (i.e. Editor or viewer), but a driver or platform (i.e. TWAIN/ISIS/WIA) should not have anything to do with this.  It doesn't make sense to me that the driver is written using DirectShow.  I could be wrong and I am curious now and will look into this deeper, but at the moment it doesn't add up to me