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Setup Assistant...
This item brings up the Setup Assistant, which can get your basic WebCam setup going with a
minumum of information on your part. The assistant will even create the HTML and upload it to
your desired web page. First time users should consider using this for their
initial WebCam setup. For more information, see the Setup
Assistant description.
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Document...
This dialog allows you to control some of the display options for your document.

The Document Dialog
- Video Source:
Choose which camera to use with this popup menu. If you have more than one
camera, you can choose to cycle through selected cameras.
- Show Preview in Window
Choose to show the webcam image in the Main Document window, or you can choose
just to display the status bar.
- Show Preview Before Upload
With this set, Oculus will display a live image in the main window for the last
five seconds before upload.
- Show Frame Difference
Setting this option will present you with a graphical representation of the area of
the image that has changed.

Main Window showing Frame Difference
This can be very useful for adjusting the Trigger...
settings when you are using Motion Detection.
Note the red rectangle. This is the "Similarity Zone" that is the most different in the image.
You can change the number of Similarity Zones in the
Trigger... dialog.
- Size
By default, Oculus creates a WebCam at 320x240 pixels (or as close as it can get to it).
Sometimes, you may want to use a larger or smaller image on your web site. Use the
Document Size popup menu to select double, full, half, or quarter sized
documents, or a custom size. If you know the specific size that you would like your
images to have, you can type the values in here.
You can also change the size of the document simply by dragging the grow box in the
main Oculus window. If you hold down the shift key while dragging the grow box, the
document will snap to double,
full, half or quarter size. Normally, Oculus will try to keep the image in the correct
proportions. If you hold down the option key while dragging the grow box,
you will be able to size
your document without constraints. This may cause your image to look stretched.
- Active Times
The Active Times option allows you to specify what to do when your document becomes
inactive. A document can become inactive when you Quit, or when it is set to be inactive
through the Schedule... dialog.
- Upload Inactive Picture on Quit
When this option is chosen, Oculus will upload a final picture upon quitting.
What the picture is depends on the following two settings.
- Use Inactive Caption
When creating captions, you can choose
to create captions to be used for when
the document goes inactive. By doing this, you can have your Inactive picture
be the last photo that was taken, but with some different captions such as
Gone for the day!.
- Use Custom Picture
When this option is chosen, you can select any picture on your computer to
use as the final picture.
- Inactive size
Certain video cameras may shut themselves down after a period of time. When
this occurs, the image usually turns completely blue or black. If you do not
want to upload a blue or black image, you can indicate to Oculus that you
do not want to upload a small picture. When the picture is completely blue or
black, then the compressed image is particularly small. With this popup menu,
you can choose how large the picture must be to be uploaded.
- Schedule...
The Schedule dialog allows you to choose times that you would like for your
webcam to be active.

The Schedule Dialog
Dragging and selecting within the grid controls
which times are considered active and which are not. Areas shaded
black are times when the camera is active.
Clicking in the time areas to the left or the right of the area,
allows you to select or de-select that time for the entire week.
Clicking on the days of the week will select/deselect the entire
day.
If you have a camera which is pointed outside, you may want to
have it be active only when the sun is out. Select Daytime
from the popup menu, and Oculus will automatically calculate for each
day when the camera should be active. If you find you are seeing more or
less of the daytime than you would wish, you can adjust this up or
down by entering a positive or negative number into the "extended by"
field. You can also select Nighttime to create a camera that is only
active at night.
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Sunrise and sunset calculations are based upon the settings in the
Map control panel. If you have not installed this control panel,
you may need to install it from your original System Software CD ROM.
If you don't set the location with the map control panel, the sunrise
and sunset times will be incorrect.
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- FTP...
Use the FTP Dialog to specify which FTP site Oculus should use to store your
images and movies.

The FTP Dialog
- Host:
Input your FTP Hostname here. For example: ftp.earthlink.net
- Username:
Input your FTP account username here. For example: joeuser
- Password:
Input your FTP account password here. For example: secret.word
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Some FTP sites assume that if you are connected (ie. via a dialup modem) then
you have already input your username and
password. They will not accept the username or password. If your FTP site works like
this, leave the Username and Password blank. (German Telekom (t-online))
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- FTP Mode:
Allows you to use Passive mode for FTP Transfers or Active mode. Usually,
Passive mode works best. If it does not work well for you, de-select the
Passive option.
- FTP Port:
Oculus defaults to the normal FTP communications port: 21. If you wish to
change this to a non-standard port, select the FTP Port option and
input the desired port number.
- FTP Proxy:
If you are using an firewall which requires you to use an FTP Proxy, define
what the FTP Proxy machine is named here.
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The FTP Proxy support is through FTP Proxy servers that support the format
wherein the hostname is the proxy server name and username is presented
as <username>@<destinationserver>. The FTP Proxy field is a shortcut
to defining this information.
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- Change File Permissions:
If you wish to change permissions to restrict who can see the images and
movies that you upload, choose what permissions to set here.
The default settings are good for most WebCam applications.
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Some FTP Sites do not allow the change permissions command CHMOD
to be used. Oculus will recognize this failure and operate as if
Change File Permissions were not set.
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- Use Persistent Connection:
With this option set, Oculus will keep the connection to your FTP server open
for up to 10 minutes beyond the last point of activity.
By doing this, Oculus bypasses the time necessary to make the FTP connection
and provides for quick updating of images when you are capturing frequently.
Some ISPs (and those users with pay per minute dial-up connections) may not wish
Oculus to keep these connections open. If you disable this option, Oculus
will close the FTP connection after each upload.
- Safe Upload (use .tmp):
Oculus also normally uploads
into a temporary file (which is your selected file name plus .tmp) and then renames
the file to your desired name. This is done to avoid having your users download
partially uploaded images. Some FTP servers don't support the rename command,
and while Oculus will normally detect this and disable safe uploading automatically,
you can control the option manually here.
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Trigger...
The Trigger Dialog allows you to change when Oculus takes a picture. Oculus has several
options to control when a picture is taken - time, motion, or sound level. You
may specify any or all of these criteria for capture of pictures.

The Trigger Dialog
- Time
This option will indicate to Oculus how often to take a picture. This
picture will be taken at the interval selected while the camera is Active.
You can use a time preset or choose Other... to choose your own time span.

The Other Time Dialog
The Other Time dialog allows you to type in
the time that you wish. You can just type in the number of seconds (including a decimal
value) or you can type in the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds.
- Motion Detection
Oculus can be set up to check for motion detection. You specify a time for how
often Oculus checks for motion and a sensitivity level. By using the
Show Frame Difference option in the
Document Dialog you can see the
effects of your settings.
Small sensitivity values cause the picture to be taken when there is the slightest
movement in the room. You may find that for very small numbers, video noise from the camera
will be enough to take the picture. If this is the case, increase the sensitivity value.
The Zones menu controls how many areas of the image Oculus examines to determine if
the image has changed. Oculus breaks the image into a number of zones. Motion is checked for
in each zone. If you have only one zone, it will take a large change in the image to trigger
a change. If you have many zones, a change in any of the zones will cause the trigger.
- Compare with last saved image
Oculus will check for motion by comparing two images. By setting this option,
Oculus will check for motion with the last image that was saved or uploaded.
If this option is not selected, then Oculus will compare the image with the
last image that it used for comparison. Gradual changes such as a lightening
of a room during pre-dawn hours will not be noticed if this setting is not
checked.
- Use Mask
If your view from your camera has a area that often has motion
that you are not
interested in (such as a window that looks out onto a busy street),
Oculus allows you to ignore motion in any area through the Motion Mask
dialog. You enable the motion mask dialog by selecting Use Mask
in the Trigger dialog, and then set the mask area itself through
the Motion Mask dialog.
- Sound
With a microphone connected to your computer, you can have Oculus
listen for sound and take a picture if the sound level exceeds
the level that you specify. The Sound Level: indicator
in the Main Window will allow you
to monitor the current sound level.
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Users who are setting up Oculus to perform Time Lapse capture for security or
room monitoring purposes will probably wish to set the Sound level value,
turn on Motion Detection with a small sensitivity value, and also specify
that Oculus check for motion fairly often -- such as one second.
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Photo...
Use the Photo Settings dialog to specify options about the webcam image's
destination location, compression type, orientation, and visual filter.

The Photo Settings Dialog
- Orientation
Using the buttons in the Orientation section, you can flip or rotate
your images. Below this section is a sample image to show the orientation.
- Options
The Options section allows you to choose what type of compression you wish
to use for your images, and whether you wish to have a Filter applied
to your image before it gets uploaded. Pressing the Select... button
allows you to choose any of the installed QuickTime filters (such
as Film Noise) to be applied to your image before saving.
Pressing the Settings... button allows you to set the compression
options for the Photos with the Compression Settings dialog.

The Compression Settings Dialog
This dialog allows you to set the video compressor, video depth, and
quality of the final output. If you move the cursor over the sample image, it will
turn into a hand to allow you move the preview image to view the result of your
settings. For typical webcam applications, you will probably want to use the
JPEG compressor at Medium quality or better.
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Make sure that the name that you give to your file matches the compressor type
you choose, or your website visitors will not be able to view your images.
For example: a JPEG image should have a .jpg extension. A BMP file
should have a .bmp extension.
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- Thumbnail
You may want to upload a small copy of the image to your website when you
upload the normal image. If you are creating a large history of images,
this can be very useful as you can display many small images that will
download quickly with links to the full size images.
You need to specify a size to use, a name (remember to include the filename
extension) and whether to include captions.
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Unless your captions are large, you will probably want to turn the
Use Captions option off. When the captions become too small
they become unreadable.
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The thumbnail image uses nearly all of the same settings as the main image.
The compression settings, whether it is saved to file and/or FTP site, filter,
and number of images to cycle.
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- Destination
You can choose to have your image uploaded to an FTP site, saved to a file, or
both. Use the checkboxes next to the FTP Path: and File: to
select where you want your images saved.
If you check the
Cycle last N pictures option, you can have Oculus save your previous
pictures with a number after them, such as "MyCam2.jpg" through "MyCam9.jpg".
You can also choose to use Wildcards to
put time or date stamps on your files, as well as mark them with the day of
week, etc.
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When you select OK and you have changed the FTP Path, Oculus will attempt to
connect to your FTP Site and find the directory where you want to save your
images. If Oculus can not find the directory that you have specified, it
will notify you of this. See the Troubleshooting
section for details on how to resolve this.
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Movie...
Brings up the Movie dialog. Like the Photo settings dialog, the Movie
dialog allows you to adjust how time-lapsed Movies are created by Oculus.

The Movie Settings Dialog
- Create Movie
To create time-lapsed movies from Oculus, you must turn on the Create Movie
option. If this option is turned off, Oculus will not capture images for a movie.
Movie frames are collected in a folder called Oculus Temporary Files which
is located in the same folder as the Oculus application.
- Time or Frame span
You can have Oculus create movies after an elapsed time or number of frames.
If you want Oculus to create a movie every hour, with a movie length of two
hours (to provide overlap), you would specify 1 hour for when
to create the movie, and a length of 2 hours.
- Schedule
You can have Oculus create movies on an arbitrary weekly schedule. This schedule
can be different from the main schedule.
Click on the Schedule icon to choose a schedule.
You can have Oculus create one movie each day, at the end of the last scheduled
time segment, or you can have Oculus create a movie after each separate time
segment on the schedule. You may want to do this if you have Oculus scheduled
to capture images at sunrise and sunset.
- Create Movie on Quit
Oculus captures images to create a movie and will create the movie when the
specified time to create the movie has arrived. If you want to create a movie
with the captured frames when you quit Oculus, select this option. If you'd
like to create the movie only occasionally when you quit Oculus, set the
Ask before creating option and Oculus will ask you if you wish to
create the movie when you quit.
- New Frame
Oculus can gather frames for the movie at the same time that the photo images
are being taken, or it can have it's own settings. Like the
Trigger dialog for photos, you can specify
how often pictures should be taken for the movie. You can also indicate whether
the movie frames should be gathered only motion is detected.
- Size
If you wish to have your movie created at a different size from your images,
indicate the size here.
- Destination
You can choose to have your movie uploaded to an FTP site, saved to a file, or
both. Use the checkboxes next to the FTP Path: and File: to
select where you want your movies saved.
If you check the
Cycle last N movies option, you can have Oculus save your previous
movies with a number after them, such as "MyMovie2.mov" through "MyMovie9.mov".
You can also choose to use Wildcards to
put time or date stamps on your files, as well as mark them with the day of
week, etc.
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When you select OK and you have changed the FTP Path, Oculus will attempt to
connect to your FTP Site and find the directory where you want to save your
movies. If Oculus can not find the directory that you have specified, it
will notify you of this. See the Troubleshooting
section for details on how to resolve this.
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- Compression Settings
The Settings... button allows you to control the compression settings
for the Movie.

The Movie Compression Dialog
Your Movie compression settings will probably be different than Photo,
especially if you are uploading the resulting movies for display on the
Web. Cinepak is a good choice, as is the JPEG.
You can choose how many frames per second you want the final movie run
at, and how often you want a key frame inserted into the movie. If your
chosen compressor supports it, you can also specify a data rate limit for
that compressor.
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Scripts...
This item brings up the Scripts dialog, which allows you to specify AppleScripts that will execute
as various events happen within Oculus.

The Scripts Dialog
This is a very powerful feature and can be used for:
- playing a sound when motion is detected
- notifying via email or pager when pictures are uploaded
- modifying a captured picture via another application
In order to use your own scripts, you must put your AppleScripts into the Oculus Scripts
folder that resides beside to the Oculus application.
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Crop
This menu item enables or disables cropping of the video source. This can
be useful if your image contains areas that you don't want to show on your
webcam. Once you have selected Crop, you can adjust the crop areas
using the blue handles that appear in the main window. Only the cropped portion
of the image will be compressed and saved or uploaded. The blue portion will
not be included.

Cropping an Image
When dragging the handles to size the cropped portion of the image, a blue
size display will occur showing you the left, top, right and bottom coordinates
of the cropped area. It also shows the width and height. You can use this
indicator to precisely adjust the cropping area and size.
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Motion Mask
Oculus allows you to set an area of the image that will be ignored
when checks are being made for motion.
If your view from your camera has a area that often has motion
that you are not
interested in (such as a window that looks out onto a busy street),
you can draw a mask over the areas that you woudl like to be ignored.
You enable the motion mask dialog by selecting
Use Mask
in the Trigger dialog, and then set the mask area itself through
the Motion Mask dialog.

The Motion Mask Dialog
Use the line tool to draw any number of polygons that represent
the area of motion you wish to ignore. Click to define corners
for the polygon. Double-click to complete the shape. Use the
reshape tool to adjust these polygons. Use the invert tool if
you wish to flip
the meanings of the polygon (ie, areas once ignored will be
considered while those considered will be ignored). Oculus
will ignore any motion within the area that is obscured.
You can move a polygon by clicking on it. You can delete a
selected polygon by pressing the <delete> key. You can
move selected polygons by using the arrow keys. If you use
shift-arrow, you can move the area by 5 pixels at a time.