                 David's WebCam - Web-enable a PC Video Camera

David's WebCam is a very simple CGI application, written in Borland's Delphi 3, 
which allows you to incorporate live images from a Connectix Color Quick Cam (or 
similar camera configured under Video for Windows) as a live picture feed into 
your Web pages.

Extract WebFrameCapture.exe from the zip file to an executable directory on your
Web server, and create an image link pointing to it.  You need no other files 
from the .ZIP, they are provided for your interest.

The program is written with Borland's Delphi 3.02, and most source is included.  
You do not need access to Delphi 3.02 to run David's WebCam, which runs on 
Windows NT 4.0.  It should also run on Windows 95 but has not been so tested.

If you don't already have Borland's run-time library, you will also need to 
download the file VCL30.zip from any site offering it.  For example:
  http://www.user.globalnet.co.uk/~hermes02/Freeware/VCL30.zip
Extract the file VCL30.DPL from this archive and copy to your Windows System
folder (e.g. \Windows\System or \WinNT\System32).  

Purpose:

To provide a CGI interface allowing a live WebCam picture to be obtained an
installed VideoForWindows device - a Connectix Color QuickCam in my case.  This
program produces a Win32 "console" application, like an old DOS program, that
uses a handle to the desktop Window to capture a frame of video.  This video is
then processed into a JPEG file returned to the browser.  Since the program is
executed, it must be placed into a Web server folder that allows execution of
files.  This would be the /Scripts folder on Microsoft's IIS.  The image URL
would then be something like:

  <img  src="/Scripts/WebFrameCapture.exe?"
  alt="[please while live image loads]" border="4">

URL Parameters:

You can use parameters on the URL to control the execution of the program.
In particular, you can change the size of the image that is returned, and you
can cause a timestamp to be added to the iamge.  Without parameters, an image
sized 160 x 120 with no timestamp is returned.

  src="/Scripts/WebFrameCapture.exe?medium"  - 320 x 240 image size
  src="/Scripts/WebFrameCapture.exe?large"   - 640 x 480 image size

  src="/Scripts/WebFrameCapture.exe?timestamp"      - add timestamp
  src="/Scripts/WebFrameCapture.exe?boldtimestamp"  - add BOLD timestamp

 sample URL using both sets of parameters :-

  <img src="/Scripts/WebFrameCapture.exe?medium?timestamp"
  alt="[please while live image loads]" border="4">


Revision history:

V1.0.0  1997 Jun 07  First version
V1.0.2  1997 Jul 04  Delete intermediate files after use
V1.0.4  1997 Oct 18  Allow parameter on URL of SMALL, MEDIUM or LARGE
V1.0.6  1997 Nov 29  Add optional date and time stamp on the image,
                     Enabled by TIMESTAMP or BOLDTIMESTAMP in the parameters
                     Add functional description notes
                     Re-organise folders into separate source folder


Contacting the author:

This program is Freeware, but remains copyright of David Taylor, Edinburgh, 1997.  
This program is provided "as is", without any support.  Whilst I cannot answer 
queries relating to the use of this program, I'd welcome any comments or 
suggestions for improvements you may have.

Borland's JPEG unit, used in this program comes from the Independent JPEG Group.
(IJG)  IJG source code copyright (C) 1991-1996, Thomas G. Lane.


david.taylor@gecm.com
1997 November 29
