Capturing from the camera

In this recipe we will learn how to capture and display frames from a camera.

Getting ready

Include the necessary files to capture images from a camera and draw them to OpenGL textures:

#include "cinder/gl/gl.h"
#include "cinder/gl/Texture.h"
#include "cinder/Capture.h"

Also add the following using statements:

using namespace ci;
using namespace ci::app;
using namespace std;

How to do it…

We will now capture and draw frames from the camera.

1. Declare the following members in your application class:

       Capture mCamera;
       gl::Texture mTexture;

2. In the setup method we will initialize mCamera:

       try{
           mCamera = Capture( 640, 480 );
           mCamera.start();
       } catch( ... ){
           console() << "Could not initialize the capture" << endl;

3. In the update method, we will check if mCamera was successfully initialized. Also if there is any new frame available, copy the camera's image into mTexture:

       if( mCamera ){
           if( mCamera.checkNewFrame() ){
        ...