═══ 1. General Help ═══ Help is available any time you press the F1 key from anywhere within the program. Because this is context sensitive help, the help information that is displayed depends on where in the program F1 was selected. Press Esc at any time to view the previous help window or to return to the main Help window if there are no other help windows. ═══ 2. Using Help ═══ For information on how to use help press F1 now. ═══ 3. The Help Menu ═══ The help menu contains choices for quick access to sections of this help information. The following choices are available:  Help index...  General help...  Keys help...  Using help...  About... ═══ 4. Index to the Help Topics ═══ Displays the index to the help topics ═══ 5. Help Contents ═══ Displays the contents list to the help topics. ═══ 6. Help for Set Exposure ═══ This slider sets the camera exposure. The scale corresponds to approximately 1-1000ms exposure time. Changes only take effect when a new Snapshot is taken or if Continuous capture is in effect. ═══ 7. Help for Set Contrast ═══ The image contrast can be adjusted using this slider. This is controlled by the camera and is sensitive to adjustments. The default value is 104 on the slider scale. Changes only take effect when a new Snapshot is taken or if Continuous capture is in effect. ═══ 8. Help for Gamma Adjust ═══ The image brightness is adjusted using this slider. This is not a camera control, it changes the current greyscale palette to create the appearance of an increase in whiteness or blackness. Changes only take effect when a new Snapshot is taken or if Continuous capture is in effect. ═══ 9. Help for Set Defaults ═══ Use this to set the default values for all camera settings as well as some program settings. Now to be found on the Advanced page of the Settings notebook. Note that this does a complete initialisation of the camera and should be used with caution. The procedure includes scanning the parallel ports for a camera and initialising it with default settings. The whole process can take a few seconds to complete. The defaults are: ■ Image size: 324x243 (maximum) 16 greys B&W and 16M for colour ■ Brightness: 128 (scale 1-255) ■ Exposure: 128 (scale 1-255) ■ Contrast: 104 (scale 1-255) ■ Hue: 128 (scale 1-255) ■ Saturation: 100 (scale 1-255) ■ Black level: 128 (scale 1-255) ═══ 10. Help for Set 16 greys ═══ This sets the camera to 16-greys mode. The image quality is slightly reduced from 64-greys but the frame-rate will be faster. ═══ 11. Help for Set 64 greys ═══ This sets the camera to 64-greys mode. The image quality is better than 16-greys but the frame-rate will be slower. ═══ 12. Help for Set 64k colours ═══ Currently 64k colour mode is not enabled until we receive details on its proprietary compression technique from Connectix. ═══ 13. Help for Set 16M colours ═══ This sets the (colour) camera to 16-million colours mode (24-bit). It is best displayed using a desktop which has at least 64k (16-bit) available colours. The conversion to 256-colours is too slow to give decent performance and in this case is converted to a greyscale. ═══ 14. Help for Snapshot ═══ Use this to take a snapshot using the current Exposure, Contrast and Brightness settings, as well as size and number of greys/colours. ═══ 15. Help for Picture Quality ═══ There are 3 modes which the camera will operate in with regard to the size of the image, in pixels, returned and therefore the quality. ■ Full quality - 320 x 240 ■ Half quality - 160 x 120 ■ Quarter quality - 80 x 60 ═══ 16. Help for Test Pattern ═══ This displays a test pattern 320x240 pixels in size and comprises a set of moving bars of 64-greys or blocks of red, green and blue for colour. Its useful to check the palette and correct camera operation as the pattern is generated by the camera hardware. The Contrast and Exposure settings have no effect but the Brightness control does. ═══ 17. Help for Continuous ═══ This starts and stops continuous capture. Its identical to taking individual Snapshots with current camera settings, continuously. ═══ 18. Help for Stop Continuous ═══ This stops continuous capture. ═══ 19. Help for Dump Frame to File ═══ The current picture can be written to a file in OS/2 bitmap (BMP) or JPEG format. The usual file dialog is displayed to allow the file to be saved. ═══ 20. Help for Dump Frame to Clipboard ═══ Copies the current picture to the clipboard as a bitmap. ═══ 21. Help for Set Brightness ═══ This is a fairly sensitive camera control which adjusts image brightness. The defaults for B&W seem to vary with older cameras having values in the region of 180 and newer ones around 90. ═══ 22. Help for Keys and Clicks ═══ The following keys can be used as shortcuts. F1 Get help about this program F2 Show the About box F3 Exit this program 1 Set 16-greys 6 Set 64-greys or 16M colours s Take a Snapshot spacebar Take a Snapshot t Display the Test Pattern o Start/Stop continuous capture d Set Default camera settings f Save current image to a file c Copy current image to the clipboard Ctrl-a Toggle Exposure Auto-calibration Ctrl-b Toggle Calibrate brightness Ctrl-f Toggle low-light filter Ctrl-g Toggle spatial filter Ctrl-o Toggle float-on-top Ctrl-p Toggle Keep Aspect Ratio Ctrl-q Print the current picture Ctrl-s Toggle Stretch to window Ctrl-n Set minimum frame-rate Ctrl-r Set reduced frame-rate Ctrl-l Switch palette Ctrl-m Set maximum frame-rate Ctrl-z Shrink/Expand window Ctrl-1 Picture quality - Full Ctrl-2 Picture quality - Half Ctrl-3 Picture quality - Quarter Alt-f Spatial Filter dialog Alt-g Gamma Adjust dialog Alt-p Printer Setup dialog Alt-s Settings dialog Alt-t Snapshot scheduler Mouse clicks on picture window. Left Image sizing Right Drag bitmap image Left double-click Reset image size to maximum Mouse clicks elsewhere. Right Context menu ═══ 23. Help with Printing ═══ The current picture can be printed in three ways, by dragging it to your printer, from the menu or from the keyboard using Ctrl-q. From the menu or keystroke the picture is sent to the default printer. Setting up the default printer and various printer job properties is available from the Printer Setup... option. ═══ 24. Help with Desktop Lockup ═══ This simply allows the current image shown by the viewer to be kept on the desktop when the lockup kicks in. Of course this is only available when QV2 is running. A couple of tips. First the image size and state is honoured by the lockup. This means that the size of the image and whether its static or running continuously, is retained. This opens up the possibilities because a tiled series of images will vary according to size and appear as a sort of animation if its running continuously. Currently there is but one which allows interaction while its running and that's the Zoom Fullscreen where PageUp and PageDown change the image size. ═══ 25. Help with Settings ═══ The Settings notebook allows you to choose which settings are saved to the INI-file and the current state of some of those settings. The first page (Save) turns these on or off and the second page (Settings) changes the current state. The check boxes on the Settings page are the same as those on the context menu and the Picture pull-down menu. The third page (Lockup) has a list of lockup types to choose from. The fourth page (Text) controls how text is written on a saved picture. And finally there are some Advanced settings.  Save  Settings  Lockup  Text  Advanced ═══ 26. About QuickCam Viewer ═══ This displays a panel with the application copyright, version and name. Also shown are Device-Driver and QuickCam ROM versions. Software updates and up to date tips are available from: http://www.cix.co.uk/~elad/qv2.htm http://www.2d3d.com/qv2.htm ═══ 27. Advanced Settings ═══ Note that these settings should only be used with a full understanding of the consequences. Incorrect usage can degrade image quality and performance of the Quickcam Viewer. Calibrate brightness is a toggle (Ctrl-b) which allows or prevents the camera brightness control from being changed during Auto-exposure. Brightness is only adjusted during Auto-exposure so this has no effect if it is off. Owing to the way the auto-exposure is performed, specifically on the B&W camera, brightness is adjusted with exposure and must be changed to get a good image. However, under some lighting conditions (eg. flourescent) or where the optimum setting is on the edge of two values, the auto-exposure calibration may cause this to oscillate. For the colour camera, this is a 'white level' which is adjusted up with increased exposure times where the image would otherwise become grainy. Technical note: on the B&W camera this control is a DC offset adjustment, of the CCD video signal, which varies slightly with changing exposure. Camera auto brightness is the value the hardware calculates as the optimum DC offset. This is shown for information and for B&W cameras only, it has no meaning for colour cameras. Average intensity adjustment allows the mean point, at which the auto-exposure will settle, to be changed. Auto exposure needs an average intensity to home in on, this control allows that to be changed. The effect is that the image can be made darker or brighter. Palette allows toggling between a Gamma corrected and a Linear palette. This feature is available for B&W cameras only. Set Defaults has been moved here from the front panel to discourage frequent use. Use with care, see Help for Set Defaults for more details. ═══ 28. Camera Controls ═══ This is a brief outline of the effects you should expect when adjusting the sliders representing camera controls. Brightness: Adjusts the picture brightness. Exposure: Adjusts the Exposure time in much the same way as a familiar camera does. Varies from about 1/1000th of a second to 1 second. Contrast: Adjust the light to dark contrast of the picture. Black Level: (colour only) Adjust the picture's black level. Might need adjusting if the picture becomes yellow. Hue: (colour only) Adjusts the blue level. If the picture is too Red, increase the value. If its too blue, decrease this value. Saturation: (colour only) Adjusts the anti-blooming level. This appears on the picture as vertical streaks around areas of bright light. ═══ 29. Camera Settings ═══ Camera settings encompasses the picture size and number of greys, the current frame-rate and the state of the auto-exposure toggle. ═══ 30. Colour controls ═══ Shows a dialog with Hue, Saturation and Black level sliders. Note that the three sliders normally used for Brightness, Exposure and Contrast also double up as Hue, Saturation and Black level. Click on the icons to the right of the sliders to toggle between them. Moving the mouse pointer over the icon will show its current state and what its alter ego is. ═══ 31. Device Driver ═══ The device-driver takes the following command-line parameters: /b Use bi-directional parallel-port mode /u Use uni-directional parallel-port mode Note that omitting one of the above means the driver will auto-detect the parallel-port mode. /p:378 Force the driver to use this parallel port eg. 378h (in hex only). This disables auto-detection and is useful if it affects a printer or where the camera is always on the same port. /v Verbose mode, display banner on driver loading. ═══ 32. Float on top ═══ Toggles whether the viewer will attempt to stay at the top of the Z-order on your desktop. ═══ 33. How to Register ═══ You can register this copy by sending e-mail to either: senja@shadow.net (in the USA) or qv2@elad.compulink.co.uk (UK, Europe and the rest) Registration will allow unlimited use of the program and will enable all features. Any updates until the next major version release will be free too. The nagging About box won't show up each time you start it up either. Please use the order form in the file order.txt, also viewable from the Help menu. ═══ 34. Hints for getting a good picture ═══ A few hints for getting the best picture for the ambient lighting conditions, manually. This should be used if, for some reason, the Auto-Exposure calibration isn't up to it. ■ Click on the Set Defaults button, this will initialise the camera and set some default values for Brightness, Exposure and Contrast. The viewer will then either run Continuously or Pause, depending on the Startup option setting. ■ Turn off Auto-exposure (Ctrl-A) which disables Exposure and Brightness calibration. ■ Make sure the viewer is running continuously and adjust the Brightness slider (top) until an image appears and then simply fine-tune the Exposure and Brightness until the best picture appears. ■ The Advanced page of the Settings should show a Brightness value, for B&W only, which is that calculated by the hardware. This is a good starting point but it is recommended that it be increased by a value of about 5-10 to get a good picture. ■ See Camera Controls for more information on what effect each of the Brightness, Exposure, Contrast (and Hue, Saturation, Black) sliders have. ■ Image Settings can be saved in the Viewers INI-file by using the Save button in the Settings notebook, or on exit from the Viewer by checking the appropriate Settings box, this is the default. The Settings can also be reloaded using the Load button in the Settings notebook, or by using /L as a command-line parameter which loads them on startup, this is the default. ═══ 35. Known problems/Disclaimer ═══ Problems or comments on this application are gladly accepted by: qv2@elad.compulink.co.uk Software updates and up to date hints and tips are available from: http://www.cix.co.uk/~elad/qv2.htm http://www.2d3d.com/qv2.htm ═══ 36. License Agreement ═══ End User License Agreement This QuickCam Viewer Software, QV2, is owned by Spheredata Ltd. and distributed by Spheredata Ltd in Europe and by 2d3D Inc. elsewhere. Spheredata Ltd grants to the user a nonexclusive license to use this Software solely for its internal business purposes and on a single QuickCAM (tm) camera. The user may not commercially distribute, sublicense, resell, or otherwise transfer for any consideration, or reproduce for any such purposes, the QV2 software or any modification or derivation thereof, either alone or in conjunction with any other product or program. Further, the user may not modify the QV2 Software, other than for its own internal business use. THIS QV2 SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED TO THE USER "AS IS". SPHEREDATA LTD AND 2d3D INC. MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THIS QV2 SOFTWARE AND/OR ASSOCIATED MATERIALS PROVIDED TO THE USER, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR AGAINST INFRINGEMENT. SPHEREDATA LTD DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE FUNCTIONS CONTAINED IN THE SOFTWARE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, OR THAT THE OPERATION OF THE SOFTWARE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT DEFECTS IN THE SOFTWARE WILL BE CORRECTED. FURTHERMORE, SPHEREDATA LTD. DOES NOT WARRANT OR MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR ANY DOCUMENTATION PROVIDED HEREWITH IN TERMS OF THEIR CORRECTNESS, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE. NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE GIVEN BY SPHEREDATA LTD. OR 2D3D INC. SHALL CREATE A WARRANTY OR IN ANY WAY INCREASE THE SCOPE OF THIS WARRANTY. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY -- SPHEREDATA LTD. AND 2D3D INC. ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIMS OR DAMAGES WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING PROPERTY DAMAGE, PERSONAL INJURY, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INFRINGEMENT, LOSS OF PROFITS, OR INTERRUPTION OF BUSINESS, OR FOR ANY SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, HOWEVER CAUSED, WHETHER ARISING OUT OF BREACH OF WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE. QUICKCAM IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF CONNECTIX. OS/2 AND WARP ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF IBM CORPORATION. ALL OTHER TRADEMARKS AND SERVICE MARKS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. ═══ 37. Load Settings ═══ The Load button allows the current settings to be loaded from the INI-file. ═══ 38. Lockup Settings ═══ Lockup settings are pretty straightforward. Pick the type of lockup you'd like to use from the list by highlighting it. To test or use, open the desktop context menu (RMB on desktop) and choose Lockup now. To disable the Desktop Lockup facility, uncheck the Allow lockup box. Now why would anyone want to do that! ═══ 39. Low-light Filter ═══ The low-light filter attempts to remove the specks which appear on an image when the lighting level is low, some call it a despeckle filter. The specks are as a result of elements of the CCD leaking current when the exposure times are long. Electrical noise contributes as well, but is minimal by comparison. The effect manifests itself as bright or white pixels on the B&W camera and bright red, green or blue pixels on the Colour camera, usually scattered randomly around the image. Someone, kindly I think, described it as looking like a star field. Basically it gets in the way, hopefully the filter will reduce the interference and enhance (or should that be restore) the image. Its most effective on Colour cameras which I've found are more susceptible. The effect on B&W is much less noticeable and hardly warrants any attention, but its there to use as appropriate. ═══ 40. Parallel ports ═══ Parallel ports can be configured in too many ways due to varied implementations. There are really only two important modes of operation, they are uni-directional and bi-directional modes. Most PC BIOS setup facilities allow the port mode to be changed. The original uni-directional mode is often labelled AT-mode. The most commonly used bi-directional mode is EPP. For the purposes of this application it is recommended that the port be set to AT or EPP mode. EPP is preferred as its bi-directional and will give at least double the throughput compared to uni-directional mode. Both these are know to work with QV2. Others known to cause problems are PS/2 mode and ECP mode. ═══ 41. Picture Settings ═══ Picture settings include whether the picture is stretched to fit the window and whether to keep the aspect ratio when stretching. The Compress saved picture toggle also allows compressing the picture when its saved to a BMP file. Without compression the file is saved as a basic BMP file which is probably the most portable. With compression the picture data is compressed using RLE8 for greyscale and RLE24 for colour. This generally results in a much smaller file. ═══ 42. Save ═══ This page allows selective saving of settings. Where the checkbox is selected the settings will be saved, where it is not selected the settings are not saved.  Camera settings  Picture settings  Window position  Scheduler settings  Save on exit The two buttons allow the settings to be loaded and saved immediately.  Load Settings  Save Settings ═══ 43. SaveAs ═══ Choose the file format to use when saving a picture. There are two choices, OS/2 Bitmap (BMP) or JPEG. BMP saves all image data and will use RLE8 compression for greyscale and RLE24 for colour. JPEG saves files using lossy compression, which means some information is lost. But the saved files are generally about 20x smaller than BMP depending on the quality. A higher quality results in a bigger file. ═══ 44. Save on exit ═══ Saves settings when the program terminates. This ensures that the most recent settings are saved to the INI-file. Remember that starting QV2 with the /L command-line parameter will load settings on startup. The installation program will set this by default. This combined with Save on exit means not having to worry about it! ═══ 45. Save Settings ═══ The Save button allows the current settings to be saved to the INI-file. ═══ 46. Scheduler Settings ═══ All scheduler settings are saved if this box is checked. For more details see Snapshot Scheduler. ═══ 47. Settings ═══ The settings on this page are the same as those on the context menu and the Picture pull-down menu.  Camera Settings  Startup Settings  Picture Settings  SaveAs ═══ 48. Shrink and Expand ═══ Toggles the size of the application window from its normal expanded full size to that of the picture window. ═══ 49. Snapshot Scheduler ═══ The Snapshot Scheduler provides a means of taking snapshots and saving them to a bitmap file. The trigger for taking a snapshot is either time or motion. Time-based means taking snapshots at pre-defined intervals and between given times of day. Motion-based snapshots are taken when motion is detected in the frame. The snapshots saved to file(s) are the same as that seen on the viewer at the time. For time-based triggering, if the viewer is not in continuous mode, a snapshot will be taken using the current settings. Motion-based triggering requires the viewer to be in continuous mode. Note that if enabled, auto-exposure will still work while taking single snapshots. But it may take longer to catch up with changing lighting conditions. See Stutter for an alternative and more on this. The scheduler will also continue to operate while the viewer is minimised. Snapshots will be taken between the Start and Stop times, in hours, minutes and seconds, and set using the spin buttons. The Frequency at which they are taken is entered in the same way. For motion triggering this changes to Sensitivity to allow control over the amount of movement before triggering. The scheduler has two modes of operation: ■ Once means the scheduler will stop running at the Stop time, ie. snapshots will be taken between the Start and Stop times and then the scheduler will stop. ■ NonStop forces the scheduler to run continuously, it will never stop only taking snapshots between the Start and Stop times. There are two check boxes, one only visible when the trigger is for motion: ■ Stutter ensures the exposure is good before taking a scheduled snapshot. This is useful if the Frequency is low and the light may have changed significantly since the last scheduled snapshot was taken. It forces a number of preview snapshots to be taken before one is saved to a file. Exposure is not guaranteed to be perfect but it should be close. ■ Sound is enabled only for motion triggered snapshots and simply beeps when motion is detected and a snapshot is saved. The directory and filename can be set using the Change push button. There are three modes of operation: Timestamp: The scheduler will save each snapshot in unique files named QChhmmss.BMP in the selected directory, where hhmmss is the current time. Note that this can use up a lot of disk space as a unique file is written each time. Same name: This will always save consecutive snapshots to the same specified file. The file will be overwritten with a new one each time. This is useful for keeping an updated file for use on a Web page, for example. Cycle: This will save to a sequence of files. Here the filename is the key, it must contain a sequence of one or more zeros. The zeros will be substitued with sequential numbers and will cycle around. It's simpler to explain using an example. Using the filename QUICK00.BMP will result in files being written named QUICK00.BMP through to QUICK99.BMP, a total of 100 files. A filename of QUICKCA0.BMP will generate a sequence of 10 files with the zero cycling from 0 through to 9. Note that time, filename and path values may be changed on-the-fly. As long as the scheduler is running it will pick up changes to Start, Stop and Frequency times immediately. The Filename and Directory entries, however, are only updated by clicking on Continue or by using the Change button and selecting OK on the file dialog. ═══ 50. Spatial Filter ═══ There are many applications of this type of filter, a few of which are predefined. It may be worth noting that chapters of textbooks are dedicated to this subject, so there are no plans to go into much detail here. The Spatial Filter implemented is restricted to 3x3 masks. The simplest explanation of its operation is that the Mask consists of 9 weighting values. The Mask is passed over the entire image and the value of the pixel under the centre element is adjusted in intensity according to the normalised sum of the weights. This means that the pixel intensities for each element are weighted by the value shown and summed. The result is normalised and then used to adjust the intensity of the centre pixel. Note that the filter computation requires a lot of floating point processing time and can have a big impact on the frame-rate. So its suggested that it only be used while taking single snapshots. The default filter provides a High Boost effect which sharpens up the image. The High Boost filter is actually a variation on a High Pass filter, which is also predefined. There is an Amplification Factor which varies the amount of boost. All values are floating point and for this reason all spin-buttons are shown multiplied by a factor of 100. So, the actual value used is the value shown divided by 100. Futher to these two filters there is a Low Pass filter which has limited but interesting use. Finally there is the Custom setting which allows all of the mask entries to be set. ═══ 51. Startup Settings ═══ The Startup paused check box changes the way QV2 behaves on startup. When this is checked QV2 will startup and take a few snapshots to get the exposure right. When not checked it will start up and run continuously. ═══ 52. Text Settings ═══ This page configures the text that is written onto a picture. Note that the text can be turned on and off from the pull-down or context menus. Camera settings are the current values shown on the sliders, eg. Brightness and Contrast but not Exposure, see below. Exposure the current value for Exposure. Date and time puts the current date and time on the picture. Show on Viewer turns text on the viewer display on and off. Text allows the text entered in the box below it to be written on the picture. Display as - Actual value puts the camera control value in its actual range of 0-255 on the picture whereas Percentage displays them as percentages or in the case of Exposure, in seconds. Justify selects how the text is horizontally justified at the picture left, right or centred. Align chooses whether the text is written from the top of the picture downwards, or from the bottom up. Text font allows the font to be selected. Note that any text in the Custom text box is displayed using the currently selected font. ═══ 53. Window Position ═══ Saves the Window position. If left unchecked QV2 will always start centred on the screen.