I’m trying to make AVT 1394 Cameras work with OpenCV using the standard VideoCapture recently but got no luck. Briefly speaking, OpenCV’s support for camera input are Operating System and Device Driver aware.
In this post, I will give some basic related concepts related to Firewire(aka IEEE 1394) and AVT software packages, also OpenCV’s VideoCapture workflow.
FireWire
Aka IEEE 1394, it’s a serial bus interface standard for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer, developed by Apple in early 1990s and called FireWire. The main competitor nowadays is USB.
For the official introduction part, you can refer to the wikipedia link above, I want to address two points here.
Standards and versions
The most used must be 1394a and 1394b, and to make things work, do pay some attention to your 1394 Host Controller.
Unlike USB and USB 2.0, the physical interface between 1394a and 1394b is significantly different. As such, users will need to acquire cables with a 1394a (4-pin or 6-pin) connector on one end and a 1394b (9-pin) connector on the other. And a 1394a device would work connecting to a 1394b bus whereas one would fail vice versa.
Pins of connector
As for 1394a and 1394b, there are three kinds of connectors used: 4-pin, 6-pin and 9-pin. Hence there are kinds of cables connecting different styles of connectors list blow:
.
Luck is you may get whatever cable to fullfil your need as long as you are connecting your device to a right bus.
For more details about the interface pinout, read this article FireWire (IEEE1394) bus interface pinout.
AVT Cameras
AVT does manufacture so many cameras and provide great technical support. It’s kind of a choice for you to choose between the software packages,seriously speaking.
AVT Software Selector
Now they are focusing on VIMBA and maintain it actively.
However for the legacy ones, like FirePackage, Universal Package, etc, look into this link Legacy Software (SDKs, Apps, Adapters, and Interfaces).
To select the software that suits you, refer to these links:
Inside FirePackage
Although called legacy SDKs, FirePackage is widely used currently. For the main idea, you can give quick glimps for the documentation after installation and get a basic knowledge of FireClass, FireCtrl, FireGrab and FireStack.
For the package architecture,see this:
AVT and OpenCV
Bad luck that we can’t use AVT cameras just with VideoCapture because that the cameras might use a device driver that OpenCV can’t talk to.
However if your camera compliants with CMU 1394 Digital Camera Driver, probably you will be happy again:–)
OpenCV and Cameras
Quote from this post Getting Started with OpenCV capturing.
Currently two camera interfaces can be used on Windows: Video for Windows (VFW) and Matrox Imaging Library (MIL) and two on Linux: Video for Linux(V4L) and IEEE1394. For the latter there exists two implemented interfaces (CvCaptureCAM_DC1394_CPP and CvCapture_DC1394V2).
Generaly speaking, your camera would probably work if it is VFW or MIL compliant under Windows or it suits to standard V4L or IEEE1394 driver model.
But if not, you can even sub-class the VideoCapture class, and implement your camera driver to make it work seamlessly with OpenCV.