Digital Photography

  

Figure 3: GIF results of a digital photograph; note live video input, and video control panel.

WWWeasel's ``Media $\Rightarrow$ Photo From Indycam'' menu entry takes a single snapshot of the current video input on the SGI Indy and makes that the current selection in the Media Browser (a subsequent ``insert'' command will add the photograph at the current cursor location in the document). By default the ``Photo From Indycam'' action takes a 320*240, 225 color, GIF snapshot from the SGI Indy's digital camera - useful for photographing mechanical assemblys, design prototypes, illustrations of assembly or production errors, design drawings on a physical whiteboard, or even a schematic drawn on paper.

The ``Windows $\Rightarrow$ Video Control Panel'' and ``Windows $\Rightarrow$ Video Input Monitor'' menu entries allow the engineer to set the video input, adjust brightness and shutter speed, and monitor the live results in a video window.

Digital photographs may be input from sources other than the computer's digital camera - an S-VHS video input allows the engineer to hook up a video tape recorder, video microscope, etc, using the Video Control Panel to adjust the input accordingly. Having such capabilities well integrated allow a wide variety of real-world inputs into the engineer's notebook, including digital microscope photos of semiconductor wafer fabrication errors, time-lapse tapes of production or assembly lines, etc.

Figure 3 shows the GIF results of issuing the command ``Media $\Rightarrow$ Photo From Indycam'', showing a digital snapshot of some integrated circuits, the live Video Input Monitor window, and a Video Control Panel by which the video input sources may be adjusted. Note that the Video Input Monitor and Video Control Panels are part of the SGI Indy's built-in media software - WWWeasel simply controls launching and termination of these external applications.