Recording Equipment
The analog camera signals from any of our benthic video camera systems are recorded directly onto a hard drive by a computer using the open source software iSpy and two usb video capture devices. The live video signal can be viewed directly on the computer monitor. During the live recording, a video overlay unit can be used to stamp each frame of the video with time and position data. The video files which are generated can be viewed using Windows Media Player. For the purposes of video analyses when a dual camera system is used, the forward-looking and downward-looking videos were combined into a 2 x 2 quad format, with the forward-looking camera in the upper left position and the downward-looking camera in the lower right position. Shown below is the layout for two-camera recording on the DVR.
Video Signal Processing
After the video data has been recorded, a number of post-processing options can be applied to the video data. These include video format conversion, video enhancement, deinterlacing, and image stabilization. Individual images can be extracted from the video footage and used for a variety of analyses.
