Displaying video on a form

Ok, a quick paragraph of history before my problem.

Some, maybe a lot, will know of the DVR cards being sold on Ebay, I have bought one with 4 ports and have found the software supplied with it is a copy of out of date beta software, v.1.8, that doesn't work too well and looks awful, eg a screen sized box that pops up on exit asking if you wanting to exit yes/no. Investigation of the s/w Pico 2000 reveals it is written by a company called Novex in Canada and they are NOT happy about the situation ! Unfortunately their site doesn't give a download link for the latest version ( 2.3 I believe ) nor is there any pricing info, it would appear they don't actually want to sell the s/w !

So, given all this I thought I would write my own and then make it available to all the poor souls out there that have been ripped off by unscrupulous sellers on Ebay.

My question(s) is this :-
What controls do I need to use to display the camera output on the screen, what do I need to be able to record the same data. How do I detect the pci DVR card and collect it's output. I've searched through this forum and not found info relating directly to what I want though I found enough info to tell me I may need to use the API. I'm pretty new to VB and haven't used the API before and am a bit lost with it, I do have an API viewer that I found in a corner of the net.

Any help in this area would be appreciated, I'm not actually looking for code on this as I enjoy scratching my head, pulling the splinters from under my nails and eventually getting the code to work, though some code if offered wouldn't be refused ;)

Thanks in advance
Keith :thumb:

I'd buy a new card with the newest software.

can you not use netmeeting? :)

dglienna

I don't want a new card plus I can't really afford one, this one is fine and the s/w is ok to an extent, what I want to do is write some software for it, firstly for the enjoyment of doing it, programming is a hobby and secondly I want to produce some s/w that is legal to use for the poor unfortunates like myself that have been ripped off on Ebay.

BodwadUK

I 'spose most of what I said above applies to your reply also. Reasons for not using Netmeeting = the card can handle 4 cams with an option for 16 plus there are no options available like movement detection, preset recording times etc etc on Netmeeting.

Guys, I really do need some genuine help on solving the problem I have outlined by writing a VB prog, I don't really need suggestions on how to get around the prob by other methods.

All the same thanks to both dglienna ( you've helped me in the past too :) ) and to BodwadUK for replying

Keith

You will have to look for a video capture control.

Look on PlanetSourceCode. If its like a webcam then there are API's to access video but I dont know any of them.

:)

Look into this API command:
CapCreateCaptureWindow

Can anybody expand on this please ! I really need to get this going if I can.

Thanks
Keith