Oculus 3 Photo Output

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Subtitled: Your Basic Webcam

Oculus has many options for saving images. This allows Oculus to work with the wide variety of FTP servers that are used on the Internet today. Most users won't need to modify many of these options, but it's good to know they are there in case you need them.

Before setting up your FTP options, you should make sure you have the required information from your server or ISP. Since there are many possible options, Oculus has a limited ability to automatically choose these options for you. We have found that it can be helpful to use an FTP client such as Fetch to examine your server's setup and directory layout. By using an FTP client, you can verify that the information you have to set up the FTP options is correct.

The FTP Setup Dialog

The most important three settings in this dialog are the FTP server name (such as ftp.earthlink.net), the user name (such as joeuser) and the password. For most users, these are the only values you need to fill out in this dialog.

When you select OK, Oculus will try to log on to your FTP server using the settings that you specified. If Oculus can not access the FTP server, it will alert you and give you the opportunity to change your settings. If you are connected through a dialup connection, Oculus will not try to verify your settings.

By default, Oculus uses Passive FTP transfers as this is the most compatible method. If your FTP server does not work well with Passive FTP, you can disable this option. Oculus also defaults to the standard FTP port and connects directly to the server. If your FTP server uses a non-standard port, or you must connect to your server through a proxy, Oculus allows you to enter these options here.

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.

Oculus normally uploads images so that they can be read by anybody, and modified only by you. If you want to modify these options, Oculus allows you to do that as well. For example, you might have images be writable by anyone in your group, so that the webcam picture can be uploaded in rotation from several different people.

Oculus attempts to change the file permissions using the SITE CHMOD option that is supported by many FTP Servers. If your server does not support this option, Oculus will recognize this and stop trying to use the feature.

Finally, Oculus has two more uploading options that you can control. Normally, Oculus will keep the connection to your FTP server open for up to 10 minutes without 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. 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, you can control the option directly here.

The FTP dialog controls the online destination for all files created by this document. This includes both pictures and movies. If you need to upload pictures to one FTP server and movies to another, you can create multiple documents, each of which use the same video source but have different FTP destinations.

Choosing a Destination

To store your webcam photo, you must tell Oculus where to save it. Oculus can save your image to a FTP Site or to a local file. You use the Photo Settings dialog to define where the photos should be saved.

The Photo Setup Dialog

The Photo setup dialog is accessed from the Settings menu. This dialog is used to control all of the basic settings about the photo that will be created by Oculus. The dialog shows a preview of the image to be saved on the left hand side. The compression settings for the saved image (which default to JPEG: the most standard on the Internet) can be access from the Settings button. Oculus can upload images in any format supported by QuickTime, which includes GIF, JPEG, PNG, and many other formats.

In order to ensure that the images are displayed correctly by your viewer's browsers, make sure that the file name specified contains a filename extension that is appropriate for the file format (ie. <name>.gif for GIF files, <name>.jpg for JPEG files, etc.).

The most important setting in the dialog is the FTP path or local file name. The FTP path should specify the location of the file to be saved, complete with the path and file name itself. The path should not, however, contain the FTP server name, user name, password, or other URL related option. These options are specified in the FTP dialog. Notice that there is a check box next to the FTP and file options. These check boxes allow you to chose to have Oculus save the file locally, to the remote FTP server, or both.

When you select OK, Oculus will attempt to verify that your FTP Path is correct. It will try to log on to your FTP server with the FTP information that you have specified. If Oculus is unable to connect or find the directory that you've specified, it will advise you of this and allow you to make corrections. If you are connected through a dialup connection, Oculus will not try to verify your settings.

If you wish to save your image as a file on your local disk, select the File checkbox. This will bring up the standard file dialog where you can navigate to the directory you wish to save your file, and where you can specify the name of the file. If the checkbox is already selected, you can press the Select... button to select a new file.

Looking for time and date stamp options? Oculus allows for considerable variation in the way you name files (including adding time and date to the names.) See the Advanced section for more details.

Archiving Images

You may want to store the last few pictures as a running history of what has been seen by your webcam. You can do this by using the Cycle last [n] pictures option. Oculus will save images rotating through any number of images. Oculus will always capture the first image into the name you specify in the Destination section of the Photo Dialog. Older images will have a number added between the file name and the file type extension. For example, if you specify name.jpg as your file name, Oculus will rename the image name.jpg to name2.jpg, name2.jpg to name3.jpg, and so on.

Thumbnail Image

Sometimes, you may want to have a smaller thumbnail image uploaded along with the main image. You may want to use this for a preview, or to provide an image to link to the actual image. By selecting the Thumbnail check box, you can enter another file name (such as thumb.jpg) for a file which will be saved in the same directory as your main webcam image. Typically, you make this image smaller than the main image, and by default, Oculus won't save any captions into this image. Because it's so small, the captions probably will not be readable.

Thumbnail images are archived in the same way as the main image. If you've set the main image to Cycle, then the Thumbnail images will be cycled as well.


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