Monday, June 7, 2010

Interview on .Net Rocks!

About a month ago Richard Campbell asked me if I'd like to give an interview about SLARToolkit on the .Net Rocks talk show. Of course I agreed right away. .Net Rocks! is the largest .Net developer podcast out there and Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell always have great guests. It's a real honor for me to have been on show #564.
We mainly talked about the Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit (SLARToolkit), but also about some of my other projects and articles.
You can download the podcast in various formats from here. I hope you like it. Also make sure you subscribe to .Net Rocks!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Push and Pull - Silverlight Webcam Capturing Details

Photo (CC) by  MShades
It's not a secret that one of my favorite Silverlight 4 features is the webcam support and I already played endless hours with it. There are many blog posts out there demonstrating how to use the webcam and how to take a screenshot with the CaptureImageAsync method. Only a few cover the VideoSink.
This blog post will show how to use the webcam, the CaptureImageAsync method and also how to implement and use the VideoSink. But most important I'll cover what the differences between the CaptureImageAsync and VideoSink are and when to use which.



Silverlight Webcam 101
The Silverlight 4 webcam API is pretty easy to use and just a few lines of code are needed to show a webcam video stream on screen.
Silverlight's CaptureSource class provides the webcam stream that is used as the source of a VideoBrush, which in turn fills a Rectangle with the video feed from the webcam. It's also possible to use any other Shape with a Fill property.
The CaptureDeviceConfiguration class can be used to retrieve a list of all installed video and audio devices on the system. Most of the time it's sufficient to use the GetDefaultVideoCaptureDevice to get the default device. The user can specify the default video and audio devices with the Silverlight configuration; he or she only has to press the right mouse button over the Silverlight application, click "Silverlight" in the context menu and select the "Webcam / Mic" tab to set them.

Silverlight Webcam / Mic configuration dialog.

The following C# code initializes the webcam (captureSource) in the Loaded event of the page and fills a rectangle (Viewport) with a VideoBrush:
// Member variable (webcam reference)
CaptureSource captureSource;

private void UserControl_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
   // Initialize the webcam
   captureSource = new CaptureSource();
   captureSource.VideoCaptureDevice = CaptureDeviceConfiguration.GetDefaultVideoCaptureDevice();

   // Fill the Viewport Rectangle with the VideoBrush
   var vidBrush = new VideoBrush();
   vidBrush.SetSource(captureSource);
   Viewport.Fill = vidBrush;
}

Now that the webcam is initialized, the streaming can be started. This is done in an event handler of a Button because RequestDeviceAccess has to be called from an user initiated event. Otherwise it would be possible to start the webcam without the user's permission. Of course nobody wants to experience something like what happened to the students with their MacBooks provided by their high school.

Here's the C# code:
private void StartButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
   // Request webcam access and start the capturing
   if (CaptureDeviceConfiguration.RequestDeviceAccess())
   {
      captureSource.Start();
   }
} 

This will open a webcam permission dialog asking the user for the device access. This setting is consent and Silverlight can remember if the user has previously allowed that certain application.

Webcam permission dialog

Capturing The Webcam 
There are two different approaches to capture the webcam in Silverlight. The CaptureSource's CaptureImageAsync method and CaptureImageCompleted event provide a snapshot on demand and can be considered as a pull-based technology. A custom VideoSink implementation on the other hand constantly gets the raw stream from the webcam and can be considered as a push-based approach.

Pull: CaptureImageAsync Webcam Capture
When the CaptureSource's CaptureImageAsync method is called an asynchronous capturing task is started. After the snapshot is completed, the CaptureImageCompleted event is fired. The event provides a WriteableBitmap as EventArgs.

The following C# code should be added after the captureSource initialization code above:
// Wiring the CaptureImageCompleted event handler
captureSource.CaptureImageCompleted += (s, e) =>
{
   // Do something with the camera snapshot
   // e.Result is a WriteableBitmap
   Process(e.Result);
};

Another button is used to start the asynchronous capturing:
private void SnapshotButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
   // CaptureImageAsync fires the CaptureImageCompleted event
   captureSource.ImageCaptureAsync();
} 

Push: VideoSink Webcam Capture
The other capturing approach constantly pushes every frame from the webcam into a VideoSink. The abstract VideoSink class has four methods that have to be implemented in an own subclass in order to use it.

The basic set-up of a custom VideoSink looks like this:
// MyVideoSink is derived from Silverlight's VideoSink
public class MyVideoSink : VideoSink
{
   VideoFormat vidFormat;
   
   // Could be used to initialize a container for the webcam stream data
   protected override void OnCaptureStarted() { }
   
   // Could be used to dispose a container for the webcam stream data
   // or to write a header of a video file format
   protected override void OnCaptureStopped() { }

   // Is called when the VideoFormat was changed
   protected override void OnFormatChange(VideoFormat videoFormat)
   {
      this.vidFormat = videoFormat;
   }

   // Is called every time the webcam provides a complete frame (Push)
   protected override void OnSample(long sampleTime, long frameDuration, 
                                    byte[] sampleData)
   {
      // Process the webcam snapshot 
      // sampleData contains the raw byte stream
      // according to the videoFormat from OnFormatChange
      Process(sampleData, this.vidFormat);
   }
}

The following C# code initializes MyVideoSink with the webcam. It should be added after the captureSource initialization code above:
// Wire the VideoSink and the webcam together
var sink = new MyVideoSink { CaptureSource = captureSource };

The VideoSink's OnCaptureStarted and OnFormatChange are raised after the captureSource.Start() method was called. The OnSample method is constantly called as long as the webcam is activated. The actual interval OnSample will be called is defined in VideoFormat.FramesPerSecond which is provided through the OnFormatChange method. The OnCaptureStopped is raised after the captureSource.Stop() method was called.

Push vs. Pull
Obviously the two approaches have different characteristics.

Pull: CaptureImageAsync

Push: Custom VideoSink
  • Direct usage of the raw byte stream
  • Less overhead
  • OnSample is called on a background thread
  • Automatically called for every frame
  • Might support more than one PixelFormat in the future
  • More information like frame number and duration (accurate sample times)
  • Slightly faster than CaptureImageAsync if every frame is needed
  • Push: Constant sampling

Please note that the CaptureImageAsync method can also be called periodically. Thereby it's possible to get a snapshot in a defined interval which might be faster than using a VideoSink that fires every 30 or even 60 frames per second (fps).

The following C# code calls CaptureImageAsync every 100 milliseconds, which means every 10 fps a snapshot is taken:
var dispatcherTimer = new DispatcherTimer();
dispatcherTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 100); // 10 fps
dispatcherTimer.Tick += (s, e) =>
{
   // Process camera snapshot if started
   if (captureSource.State == CaptureState.Started)
   {
      // CaptureImageAsync fires the CaptureImageCompleted event
      captureSource.CaptureImageAsync();
   }
};
// Start the timer
dispatcherTimer.Start();

Conclusion
Both approaches are helpful for different scenarios. The pull-based CaptureImageAsync method is useful for taking single snapshots, whereas a push-based custom VideoSink can be used for capturing complete sequences and encoding the webcam stream.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Filled To The Bursting Point - WriteableBitmapEx 0.9.5.0

We're slowly getting to the first feature complete release of the WriteableBitmapEx library. The last version (0.9.0.0) brought the parametric curves, optimizations and other features. This new version 0.9.5.0 focuses on filling routines, transformations, bug fixes and more optimizations.
The new Fill* extension methods are equivalent to the Draw* shape functions. The FillRectangle and FillEllipse methods use specialized implementations to get the best performance. FillPolygon and the other functions use a simple scanline conversion algorithm with the even-odd-rule. The implemented algorithm supports concave and convex shapes.

New features
  • Fast FillRectangle method that uses Buffer.BlockCopy.
  • Optimized FillEllipse and FillEllipseCentered functions to draw a filled ellipse / circle.
  • FillPolygon, FillTriangle and FillQuad methods that use a scanline conversion algorithm. 
  • FillCurve, FillCurveClosed to draw a filled Cardinal spline similar to the GDI+ API.
  • FillBeziers draws a filled Cubic BeziĆ©r spline.
  • Resize method with support for Bilinear and Nearest neighbor interpolation.
  • Fast Crop method to cut out a portion of the WriteableBitmap.
  • GetPixel and GetPixeli methods to get the color as Color struct at a specified x, y coordinate.
  • FromResource method to load an image from the application's resource only by passing the relative path without the need of the full Pack URI syntax. Example: "Data/flower2.png" instead of "MyAssemblyName;component/Data/flower2.png".
  • Optimized Clear(Color) method that uses Buffer.BlockCopy.
  • Renamed BlendMode "AlphaBlend" to "Alpha".
  • Fixed the clipping of the DrawEllipse methods.
  • Fixed some missing alpha pre-multiplications.
  • Other minor tweaks and bug fixes.
  • Updated the solutions to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
    The code listing on the project's CodePlex site was updated to demonstrate how to use the new methods.
      Live
      As usual I also wrote a new sample application that shows the Fill* methods in action. The sample starts with a real-time demo that animates the Cardinal spline's tension of the FillCurveClosed method, plus some random animated filled ellipses. The sample also contains a static page showing some of the possible filled shapes.

      Go and grab it
      The WriteableBitmapEx library is hosted at CodePlex. You can find the new binary release here and the samples in the Subversion repository.