Video capture software for photomicroscope

[Net Llama!]

On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Joel Hammer wrote:
> At work we are going to buy a fancy digital camera and photo microscope.
> We have no experience with digital photography.
> This will have a firewire connection. We will be buying our own computer
> and the assumption is it will run windows and we will use the software
> supplied by the vendor for video capture and editing.
> Roughly, the steps you have to do are the following:
> 1. Focus the image on the computer screen. A nuisance since the computer
> lags a second or two behind the camera focus.
> 2. Snap the image (a mouse click)
> 3. Review the captured image. (takes one or two mouse clicks)
> 4. Save the captured image by clicking the correct icon. You then have
> to type in a unique name for the image, which will be something like:
> 02-S-8000-1. Then, hit save again.
> Repeat as often as needed.
> 5. Run a program to burn the photos to a CD.
>
>
> This software is a nuisance to use. Physicians will be taking pictures with
> this thing, and they have a very low threshold for bother. I wasn't too
> impressed by the presentation by the vendor, who really didn't seem to think
> all these steps were a bother. Believe me, they were.
>
> So, my question are:
> 1. Should we expect that there s a good way to synchronize the camera
> and ocular focusing. We do this with our film camera. Why not with with
> a video camera?
> 2. Is there a piece of video capture software out there, any OS, since
> we will buy any computer we want, which will:
>   1. Allow one click video capture to the hard drive?
>   2. Allow the files to be saved with automatic naming, say in a sequence
> like: 02-S-8000-1  02-S-8000-2 and so on, once you set the base number
> 02-S-8000?
>   3. Automatically edit the image as it is saved to place the base number,
> 02-S-8000 in a convenient spot in the image?
>   4. Allow easy erasing of the last photo taken (one click), since there is
> always a chance for error with a one click method?
>   5. Allow easy (one click) review of the photos taken so far, with easy
> erasure of undesirable images?
>   6. Allow one click burning of the photos to a CD?
>
> Now, with linux, I imagine all these things could be arranged with a
> bash script and a nice command line video capture program. I could  get
> linux installed on this thing, certainly as a dual boot, since I will
> be having a major say in what we get and how we do this.

I know of a few different tools under Linux that would accomplish all of
this, although no single tool that will do everything.  For example, my
Philips webcam has software that lets me take snapshots (even timed, if i
want), and name them with whatever scheme i like.  It really all depends
on whether you want a single integrated package, or youre' willing to work
with multiple packages that each specialize in a single task.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman				netllama at linux-sxs.org
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo		     http://netllama.ipfox.com