Snow leopard Support?

[Steve Sisak]

At 1:38 AM +0900 2/16/10, Guillermo Enriquez wrote:
>Thanks for your quick reply

No problem.

>I see the problem now.
>As you said, I am using a IIDC FireWire camera and uses Bayer color.
>I also tried HackTV application and as you said I can see 3 cameras
>Built-in iSight,
>Point Grey (probably using ioxperts drivers?) and
>camera (Which is also Point Grey camera but color rendering is correct)

Your assumptions are correct: "Point Grey" is the IOXperts driver and 
"camera" is the Apple driver -- if you switch between them, the image 
should be B&W for the Apple driver and color for the IOX driver.

>Also tried QTRecorder (see below link) and also can see 3 cameras but
>Point Grey  shows only grey colors and
>the third one "camera" does not render well colors (as you said). In 
>fact it shows pure black frames.

QTRecorder uses the new QTKit API and can only see the Apple driver.

>  > If you're writing your own code and use the (old) Sequence 
>Grabber (or VDIG) API, you will see both our drivers and Apple's as 
>separate inputs and can choose freely between them.
>>  Unfortunately, 3rd party driver developers cannot ship drivers 
>>based on the new API (this has been the case for several years) and 
>>the new API and many applications on them, do not provide a means 
>>for switching between drivers for the same device.
>>
>I might be misunderstanding it but, current QT is X  so it means 3rd 
>party can develop with QT 7? Or this affect all QT?

IIRC, the old API is supported for 32-bit but not 64-bit -- in 
practice, this should not be a problem. Otherwise you can develop 
with QT 7, which will run on QT X.

As long as you use the (older) Sequence Grabber API, rather then 
QTKit, everything should work just fine.

Here is another sample which definitely works on 10.6 and uses CoreGraphics:

<http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/samplecode/BrideOfMungGrab/index.html>

>  > At the moment, the only way to reliably support 3rd party drivers 
>is to use the old API -- hopefully this will change, but the issue 
>is entirely in Apple's hands. This should also explain why we 
>haven't been doing many driver updates.
>>
>I see
>
>Also I have I new idea but, I don't know it will work, (It might 
>take some time to test it) and also this might not the right place 
>to ask about libdc1394.
>
>If I try libdc1394 do I have chances to get correct color frames 
>from my camera?

I'm pretty sure that libdc1394 has a Bayer decoder, but you will need 
to write to its API, which doesn't integrate with Mac OS X all that 
well (but can be made to work).

>I did a search and found that there are some private frameworks 
>that if used, one could get correct behavior (maybe)?(Jun 2007)
>http://macdaddyworld.com/2007/07/13/quicktime-72-brings-leopard-functionality/
>Perhaps this is the way HackTV is done?
>I wonder if there is a place I can get HackTV code?
>
>It would be a good idea to write some requests or bug report to 
>Apple. but what exactly should i write? That QuickTimeX does not 
>render well color that come from a camera with RGB Bayer color 
>frames?

Since Bayer has been part of the IIDC spec for a long time, you 
should definitely file bug reports that:

1) The Apple IIDC driver doesn't support Bayer (or get out of the way 
on a Bayer-only camera)

2) CoreGraphics doesn't support Bayer directly.

It would be nice if CoreImage supported Bayer directly as Bayer is 
1/4 the size of the equivalent RGB and, since there is a trade-off 
between speed and quality, it would be good to carry the raw bits 
around so that a higher quality codec could be used on faster 
machines or with non-real-time conversion.

HTH,

-Steve
-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
Steve Sisak, CTO                                 steve.sisak at ioxperts.com
IOXperts, Inc.                                            +1 617 876-2572