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Imaging Software

Active Dcam is an ActiveX SDK designed to provide developers with a rapid access to FireWire (IEEE-1394) digital cameras. Just drop an ActiveDcam control onto the surface of your application and have it immediately support multiple FireWire cameras. With ActiveDcam your application does not  rely on a specific camera model - any DCAM-compliant 1394 camera will work with it out-of-the-box. You can even insert the control into an MS Word or PowerPoint document and have the live video embedded right into your presentation. 

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Just look at the benchmark figures below and see how ActiveDcam compares with other products:-

Benchmark comparison (CPU Usage) for IEEE-1394 Digital Camera SDKs*

   

Mode	ActiveDcam	Basler BCAM	Carnegie Mellon	NI-IMAQ	Sony IIDC	Unibrain
640x480x30fps, Mono8	3%	10%	22%	22%	15%	27%
640x480x30fps Mono16	7%	N/A	24%	29%	74%	43%
640x480x30fps, RGB24	8%	10%	24%	25%	N/A	27%
640x480x30fps, Raw8, real-time RGB conversion	10%	40%	N/A	32%	43%	34%
640x480x30fps Raw16, real-time RGB48 conversion	22%	N/A	N/A	54%	92%	45%
640x480x30fps YUV422	33%	36%	44%	38%	47%	50%
1024x768x30fps Mono8	4%	15%	57%	33%	46%	54%
1024x768x30fps Raw8, real-time RGB conversion	25%	54%	N/A	58%	71%	65%

 

 *Benchmark comparison was performed on Dell Latitude 1.73 GHz Intel Centrino notebook with Dynex PCMCIA 1394 adapter using ISG-1.3-8-C, Pixelink A741 and Sony XCD-SX-710CR cameras. Manufacturers’ provided viewer applications were used for testing.

Still unsure about the performance of the product or support look at this testimonial from a user:-

"We started using ActiveDcam around October. Prior to that we had been using a LeadTools capture component but we needed to start supporting images greater than 8 bit in depth. At the time I download and evaluated numerous Dcam toolkits but I found that they were either C/C++ only (we use Delphi and .net), didn't support greater than 8 bit or were specific to a particular camera or range. 

When I initially replaced LeadTools with ActiveDcam I found that I could throw away quite a bit of my custom code and things were generally easier and quicker to develop. Fully integrated I had removed about one third of my custom code.

Support from *A&B has been absolutely superb, any queries I've had have been answered within a few hours and if I've requested any changes they have normally arrived over night.

"Recently we had an issue with a particular pair of cameras we had and so we asked A&B Software to look into the problem for us. We shipped them our cameras and they discovered a number of firmware bugs. They relayed these to manufacturer, who have since confirmed them but need time to build a fix. In the meantime they were able to arrange a new version of ActiveDcam for us
with workarounds of the firmware bugs. The most impressive part of all this is it occurred during the Christmas and New Year period, the cameras arrived with them on the 27th Dec and we were sent a fix by the 29th Dec."

We would like to thank Richard Chamberlain of Geotek Ltd in allowing us to use this information.

*ActiveDcam is an A&B software product.

Alrad Imaging, (Trading Division of Alrad Instruments Ltd)Alder House, Turnpike Road Industrial Estate, Newbury, Berkshire. RG14 2NS

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