Re: Video Capture Software

[Dennis.E.Krause@williams.edu (Dennis Krause)]

> A colleague is planning to puchase a Power Macintosh
> and the trimmings in order to perform video capture and analysis.
>
> I know that things change quickly in this field and so if anyone can offer
> experience regarding the best software and configuation it would be very
> much appreciated.  The focus of the use, hopefully, will not be how to
> use the software...but instead the physics of the captured moment...
>
> Thanks!
>
> Tim

> If your colleague, who wants to purchase a Power Mac, does not want to be
> invoved in technical problems of adding a capturing board I would suggest
> that an audio-visual Mac is the best way to go. It comes with everything
> needed. That what I did last fall and I am not sorry.
>
> LUDWIK KOWALSKI

Hi, Tim,

        I agree with Ludwik.  This week I'm doing a video lab for the first
time here with my course for pre-meds.  We are using a PowerMac 7100/80 AV
which works beautifully and easily.  I'm using a program called
FusionRecorder (which I believe comes with the AV PowerMac) to make the
movies, and then using CamMotion (a program which someone bought some time
ago and works very well) to acquire position and time information.  In our
labs, we use Kaleidagraph to plot and analyze data, so we cut and past the
data from CamMotion into a Kaleidagraph spreadsheet.
        The lab I am using involves two experiments.  The first involves
analyzing the motion of a tossed wiffle ball.  The second investigates the
velocity dependence of air resistance on dropped coffee filters.  For the
latter, I have the students drop 5 stacks of large coffee filters (first
just one filter, the second 2 filters, etc.), determine the terminal
velocity for each, and then plot terminal velocity vs n (coffee filter
number)to find the speed dependence of air resistance.
        The major problem I have encountered is that the PowerMac crashes
2-3 times a lab session when the students are transferring their movies to
their own Macs for analysis while other students are making movies.
Otherwise, both hardware and softwore work very well, and the students have
no difficulty in using both.

                                        Dennis


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*  Dennis E. Krause                       Phone:         (413) 597-3306  *
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