Most of you probably are familiar with video analysis applications such as
VideoPoint and World in Motion. I have written a simple Windows
application, DataPoint, which does some of what these commercial
applications do. I'm giving away this version of DataPoint to physics
students and educators. I only ask that you let me know how the program
meets your needs and how it can be improved. DataPoint can be downloaded
from my website at www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics.
DataPoint allows the user to step through each frame of a standard AVI
video file and display each frame as a still image along with frame rate,
image size, and total number of frames extracted from the AVI file. The
user then uses the mouse to position the cursor on the still
image. Clicking the mouse button causes the time and x- and y-coordinates
(in pixels) to be written to a comma-delimited text file. The text file
can be imported to a spreadsheet or graphical analysis program for further
processing. Both the text file and the grabbed frame can be saved to
disk. The frame is saved as a bitmapped (.BMP) file.
Currently the program only reads AVI files (no MPEG, Quicktime, or animated
GIF, yet) and only runs under Windows. I wrote it using Windows 98, but it
also runs under Win2000. Also, the program has no internal graphing
capability, nor does it calculate velocities or accelerations, or perform
scaling. Tracking multiple objects must be done manually. No
documentation is currently available, but the program is very simple to
use. I may soon add some simple instructions to the website. I also hope
to soon have a small library of AVI files on my website for the students to
use. My students may also take their own videos.
I'm calling this version 0.5 since it only does half of what I really
want. Version 1.0 will read MPEG, Quicktime, and GIF files and will handle
the scaling. More automatic tracking of multiple objects will also be part
of the next version. I will probably never add internal graphing
capability to any educational version, because I want students to have to
think about this process rather than letting the computer do it for
them. Similarly for calculations of velocity and accelerations, since
there are many ways to calculate v and a, I want students to also have to
think about this step rather than letting the computer do it for them.
Feel free to try out DataPoint. Any feedback is appreciated.
Glenn
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Glenn A. Carlson, P.E.
St. Charles Community College
St. Peters, MO USA
www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics
PGP Fingerprint E88D 2AB8 C5A8 D231 06B9 1597 3C72 5CC2 7D87 5519
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