| FG-33 CardBus Framegrabber |
| Video digitizer for Laptops with CardBus slots |
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| PC requirements |
A CardBus slot is required to use the frame grabber FG-33. A CardBus-controller is a PCMCIA-controller, that has an additional 32-bit-access mode. In this mode a CardBus controller is significantly faster and the functionality of a CardBus slot is comparable to a PCI- Bus slot. Almost all PCMCIA-systems produced later than 1998 use CardBus- controllers. Unfortunually this does not mean, that all drivers for CardBus Slots have really this 32-bit-mode implemented. It is dependend on the operating system used. Starting from May 2003 FG-33 is completely replaced by FG-33-II. FG-33-II has an additional mode: BusMastering on a CardBus slot. This allows on modern Toshiba, TI and O2Micro CardBus bridges to increase the transfer speed from ~6 MByte/s to over 60 MByte/s. On such modern systems this will allow the full framerate up to full resolved true color frames. It is required to install the supplied Software Version 5.xx with WDM drivers.
Setup is easy, because the FG3x-CD handles Microsoft Windows Vista/XP/2000/and 98 systems automatically. Windows 95, NT, 3.x or Dos do not support CardBus controllers. It is possible, that such systems with special drivers will appear, therefore, the installation CD installs drivers and software V.4.xx also for these systems. On request we send a Linux driver. |
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| Signal sources and color quality |
| Videosignals in PAL-, SECAM- or NTSC-Standard can be digitized by the HaSoTec Frame Grabber FG-33. Cameras, video recorder, SVHS, Hi8 or Y/C sources, as well as any other devices with video standard outputs can be connected to 6 inputs selectable by means of software. The FG-33 uses the 4:2:2 broadcast standard in conjunction with a complete digital signal path. FG-33 provides double color resolution in time and chrominance steps resulting in a remarkably better color quality than 4:1:1 standard solutions. |
| Precision pixels |
| Square pixels have advantages for many applications. FG-33 digitizes square pixels for all TV standards. This provides true-to-scale pictures without distortion and without scalings that impair quality. These formats have better resolutions in each line, e.g. 768 instead of 752 or 720 pixels. YUV and RGB modes allow color depths of up to 24 bits/pixel. HaSoTec guarantees full use of 8 bits in each of the 3 color channels. Automatic gain control and black-level reference ensure reproducible accuracy as is needed for measurements. The Frame Grabber FG-33 has, in addition, a manual gain-control mode, which has advantages for many image-processing applications. |
| High resolution |
| FG-33 can work with variable resolutions based on a fixed grid of 768x576 pixels for European standards and 640x480 pixels for US standard. On board video RAM is organized to supply 1024Kx8 bits, 512Kx16 bits or 256Kx32 bits, as required by the respective mode. Programmable hardware can pass a cropped windows on to this RAM, which is scaled 1:1 or 1:2 in relation to the basic grid. |
| Grey-scale images |
| A special mode allows the efficient capture of grey-scale images. Four pixels with 256 grey values can be transferred by a single CPU read cycle without wait states. This allows a variety of real-time applications. |
| Variable memory access |
To use the full performance of modern PCs for image processing, image data has often to be transferred into the PC memory. Due to the pipelined data transfer, the FG-33 is able to supply image data at high speeds. After the first line is digitized, an image can be transferred into RAM simultaneously to further digitizing. It is not required to buffer the image again in PC's memory, the data stream can directly be processed in analysis loops.
 Detailed structure of FG-33 |
| Software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Windows Me/98 (supplied with all cards) |
The application FG3xCLIP in its 16- and 32-bit versions works under MS-Windows Vista/XP/2000, Windows Me/98. Image files can be loaded and saved in most commonly used formats (BMP, TIF, PCX, GIF ...). Images and parts of images can be copied into other programs by using the clipboard. Thanks to error diffusion dithering and optimized palettes, image monitoring is possible on all graphic boards, even in 16- and 256-color modes. Independent of display capabilities, all operations use a memory-based image with full pixel depth (16.7 mio colors / 256 grey levels). Numerous useful functions are build in, such as capturing frames with averaging or look-up-table manipulations.
FG3xCAP allows one to capture AVI sequences both compressed and uncompressed into RAM or to hard disk. Time-lapse records are possible. The FG-33 software furthermore includes a 16-bit and a 32-bit driver for the image-processing development package "Ad Oculos" and a Twain driver.The program FG32VGA, running under Dos, captures grey-scale and color images using any VGA board. Many image file formats are implemented. SVGA chipsets are supported by an additional Dos program. |
| Writing own programs... |
At no additional charge each package contains a toolbox with programming examples in source code and laguage-specific libraries for MS-Windows Vista/XP/2000/NT, Windows Me/98/95/3.x, Dos and OS/2. The sample application FGIMAGE has 6 dialog boxes for making all manner of adjustments. Furthermore it displays the video source in a dialog box and shows in source code how to capture and display images in a Window. FGIMAGE is included in 9 versions for 32- and 16-bit-compilers, see the table below.
Overview... |
| Quellcode Beispiele für |
Win Vista/XP/2000/NT |
Win Me/98/95 |
Win 3.x |
OS/2 |
DOS |
| Microsoft C |
2.x - 6.x |
7.0 - 1.52c |
7.0 - 1.52c |
IBM C/2 |
7.0 - 1.52c |
| Microsoft C++ |
4.x - 6.x |
4.x - 6.x &
7.0 - 1.52c |
7.0 - 1.52c |
- |
- |
| Borland C, C++ Builder |
5.x, 6.0 |
3.1 - 5.x |
3.1 - 4.x |
2.0 |
3.1 - 4.x |
| Turbo Pascal |
- |
7.0 |
7.0 |
- |
6.0 - 7.0 |
| Borland Delphi |
2.x - 6.x |
1.0 - 6.x |
1.0 - 3.x |
- |
- |
| Visual Basic |
4.x - 6.x |
1.0 - 6.x |
1.0 - 4.x |
- |
- |
| Quick Basic |
- |
- |
- |
- |
4.5d + 4.5e |
| Twain driver |
32-bit |
32-bit |
16-bit |
- |
- |
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