Frame Grabber Blends JPEG Compression and Digital I/O

Article from Cots Journal

What used to require a whole crate of separate subsystems is now possible in a single board. A case in point is Sensoray’s Model 617-4 card that combines the functions of a frame grabber, hardware JPEG compression and digital I/O into one PCI board. The 617-4 accepts four composite video inputs and routes them to separate video decoders for digitizing. The use of four decoders eliminates losing frames during channel switching.

Model 617-4 has a capture rate of 30 frames/s at 640x480 resolution (25 fps for PAL) or 120 fps at 320x240 resolution (100 for PAL). Model 617-4 executes hardware JPEG compression to greatly reduce the amount of memory needed to store images, as well as reducing the CPU and PCI bus loading. Sensoray’s software supports multiple 617-4’s on the same PCI bus. Four video inputs are routed to four output channels for display on video monitors. The 617-4’s caption buffer allows overlaying text on each frame. The text is within a transparent box that may be positioned in one of 4 possible locations of the frame. The text size and color are programmable. The 617-4 is supplied with a software developer’s kit that includes drivers for Linux and Windows 98/NT/2000/XP.