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This chapter explains the "Image Processing" settings in the Camera Tracker in Widget Designer.

The image processing section allows adjusting the camera BW image to get the best point detection, depending on your lighting conditions and your setup. Therefore there are no recommended settings; you will always have to modify different parameters to get the best result.

Please note:
The point detection will take effect for the white parts of the black & white image, not for the black parts.

Color Tracking
The tracking can be done with two different methods:
1. Based on all colors in the camera image,
2. Based on a color you picked.

The default setting is based on all colors in the camera image. If you want to use the Color Tracking, please tick the check box "ColorTracking".

To set a color that should be tracked, activate the "CAM"-Mode in the camera settings section so that you see the colored camera image above.

Picking a color directly from the camera image:
Proceed a mouse-click on the desired color in the camera image. The box next to the ColorTracking check box will overtake this color.

Picking a color from the color picker box:
Click on the colored box next to the ColorTracking check box. Now you may choose a color from the list.

Threshold
Set up here the value for the threshold. The threshold defines which parts of the camera image will be converted into white and which ones into black parts when turning on the BW-Mode. It is related to the camera images luminance value by default. When Color Tracking is enabled, it is related to the special color chosen.

 

Example

 

In the setup above the Color Tracking is enabled. The color was picked from the darker yellow plane inside the camera image.

The two pictures below show the tracking result depending on the threshold value.

Blur
Use this option to smooth the detected areas, so that rough pixels become smooth spots (0 = minimum blur, 15 = maximum blur).

Please be aware that increasing the blur value takes more performance!

Invert

The inverted mode is enabled by default. In BW-Mode all lighter parts of the camera image will be shown in black, the darker parts will be shown in white, depending on the Threshold value. To disable the color inversion please remove the check.
As already mentioned above: The point detection will take effect for the white parts of the black & white image, not for the black parts.

Use Lookup

Loads the Camera Lookup file with the type .dat.

Inflate

This option inflates the detected areas (0 = minimum inflation, 15 = maximum inflation).

Shrink

The result of the (eventually blurred and inflated) areas will be shrunk when using this option (0 = minimum shrinking, 15 = maximum shrinking).

Please note:
There are no recommendations which values would be best to enter for Blur, Inflate and Shrink. It depends on your setup and especially the lighting conditions.

Motion Filter

Tracks only the movement when this option is enabled. Static objects will be ignored and have no influence on tracking.

 

Use Mask

This enables the option to load a BW mask. The black parts cover the active regions in the video input and the white parts remain active.

Save Frame

Opens the file browser under the path C:\Christie\content\projects to save the image as PNG with the same pixel dimensions as the chosen video format.

Load Mask…

Opens the file browser under the path C:\Christie\content\projects to load a mask file. The types Bitmap, Jpeg, PNG or GIF can be used. Please note that the loaded mask must match the size of your chosen format.

Create Mask

Captures the current frame and inverts this image. The file browser under C:\Christie\content\projects opens automatically to save the mask as PNG.