tcam-capture

tcam-capture is the general purpose image retrieval application of The Imaging Source under Linux.
It is considered an application for debugging/testing purposes.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The following is a complete list of shortcuts tcam-capture offers.

keyboard shortcuts
Shortcut Action
Ctrl-Shift-Q Quit tcam-capture
Ctrl-U Open format dialog Requires a device to already be open.
Ctrl-I Open info dialog
Ctrl-O Open device dialog
Ctrl-P Open property dialog Requires a device to be already open.

Commandline Arguments

tcam-capture has several optional arguments to change its behavior:

-h, --help

Show this help message and exit.

--help-all

Display Qt specific options.

--serial <serial>

Open device with serial immediately.

-v, --version

Display version information.

Additionally GStreamer arguments can be passed to retrieve debug information about the streams. The following GStreamer commandline arguments are currently supported:

--gst-debug
--gst-debug-level
--gst-debug-no-color

For more information concerning gstreamer debugging/logging, see Logging

Dialogs

The following is a description of all dialog windows tcam-capture may open.

Device Dialog

The device dialog will list all The Imaging Source devices that are supported by tiscamera.

To see which devices are supported by tiscamera, see supported devices.

Property Dialog

The property dialog allows interaction with all device properties.

Properties on the same tab are refreshed when:

  • The active tab is switched
  • The Refresh button is clicked
  • The user presses F5.
  • A property is changed

Caps Dialog

The caps dialog allows a full configuration of the used device format.

Info

Stream

Displays information about the current stream. These include:

  • Pipeline: The GStreamer pipeline used by tcam-capture.
  • Device caps- The GStreamer caps given to the source element by tcam-capture.
  • GstMeta - TcamMetaStatistics for the current stream.
Versions

Lists version information about tiscamera and other The Imaging Source packages.

tiscamera will only be listed as installed when installed as a debian package.

State

The state tab will display the current json property description.

Clicking Reset will update the the description.

Clicking Apply will apply the string to the tcambin.

Options

General

Conversion Element

Default: Auto

Selector for the tcambin property conversion-element.

See tcambin properties for details.

Image Saving

These properties are used to configure

Image Type

Default: bmp

Type in which images shall be saved.

Possible values are:

  • BMP - Windows Bitmap
  • GIF - Graphic Interchange Format
  • JPG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
  • JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
  • PNG - Portable Network Graphics
  • PBM - Portable Bitmap Read
  • PGM - Portable Graymap Read
  • PPM - Portable Pixmap
  • XBM - X11 Bitmap
  • XPM - X11 Pixmap

Image Save Location

Default: /tmp/

Directory to which images shall be saved.

Image Filename Structure

Default: tcam-capture-{serial}-{caps}-{timestamp}.{extension}

The filename is a generic string that has to be a legal filename.
The following strings will be replaced by tcam-capture:
image filename replacements
string substitute
{serial} long serial of the device in use
{caps} simplified caps string Will be filename friendly and as short as possible
{timestamp} Timestamp in the format yyyyMMddthhmmss_zzz
{extension} filename extension compatible with the selected image type

Video Saving

Video Type

Default: h264

h264 will be saved as mp4.
mjpeg will be saved as avi.

Video Save Location

Default: /tmp/

Directory to which video shall be saved.

Video Filename Structure

Default: tcam-capture-{serial}-{caps}-{timestamp}.{extension}

The filename is a generic string that has to be a legal filename.
The following strings will be replaced by tcam-capture:
video filename replacements
string substitute
{serial} long serial of the device in use
{caps} simplified caps string Will be filename friendly and as short as possible
{timestamp} Timestamp in the format yyyyMMddthhmmss_zzz
{extension} filename extension compatible with the selected video type

Configuration File

tcam-capture has a config directory that can be found at $XDG_CACHE_DIR/the_imaging_source/.

The default is: ~/.cache/the_imaging_source/