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Viewers

In order to see something, you must open a Viewer. A Viewer is just what it name implies: a window that displays the image stream from a live video source like a webcam or TV card.
To open a viewer, hit Ctrl-V or use the menu File -> New... ->Viewer.... You will then see the dialog on the left.

You can select a video device from the drop down list, and the initial size that you want to use. The device is identified either by its name or the device node. If you don't specify a size, the current size of the device will be used.

(Never mind the odd colours: this is my default colour palette. CamStream will use your system palette.)

Once you have selected a device from the list, click the Ok button and you will get something like the next image.

The Viewer window



This is a snapshot of CamStream with a viewer from my TV card, showing the lovely wheather presenter from CNN pointing out the highs in the Middle East. As you can see the viewer is a subwindow of the main window with its own minimize, maximize and close buttons.

Although the window has a resize handle in the lower-right corner, you cannot change the image size this way. You must use the settings dialog, activated by the button on the toolbar.

Each viewer has its own toolbar (displayed at the top) and a statusbar. You can drag the toolbar around and dock it to any of the 4 sides. The titlebar of the window displays the name of the device (in this case that of my TV card).

The statusbar has only one item: a time field which shows a count down during timed snapshots. When not in use, it shows "--:--".

Multiple viewers

If you want, you can open multiple Viewers and display the results simultaneously, like this:



In fact, you can open the same device more than once! Not that it's very useful, but it's a nice demonstration of what you can do with C++ and a little bit of designing :) The devices are not completely independant, though. Changing the size of one viewer will change the size of the others too.

You can do the usual stuff with these windows: move them, hide them, etc. The Window menu has a Tile and a Cascade option, which will re-arrange the windows.

The toolbar

Each window has its own toolbar, which is shown enlarged below:

The toolbar has 5 buttons, which are described here from left to right:

You can drag the toolbar around to any of the 4 docking positions (top, left, bottom, right). The window-size will be adjusted according (Note: the docking position isn't saved yet).