WebCam Basics

There are lots of wonderful things you can do with a webcam, but before you can even do something as simple as using Flash’s built-in motion detection functions to trigger actions when something moves in front of the camera you have to learn how to make Flash talk to the webcam and start pulling a video stream from it, and how to differentiate between a USB webcam and any other video capture devices than are detected on the system.

This file demonstrates how to:

• get the names of all video devices installed on the system.
• automatically initialize a USB Video Class webcam in preference to a TV Tuner or other device.
• set up a menu of all available devices for the user manually to select from.
• set your camera to deliver video at various resolutions.

The user interface is a right-click menu on the video window so you also learn:

• how to modify Flash’s default main context menu, including:
• remove some of the default menu options.
• add new single items to the context menu (the available video stream resolutions)
• dynamically create a list of available devices (adding to the menu as they are detected)

All the “help” is contained in detailed comments in the compact code ( Check the 1kb file size )

This file is written in Actionscript2 on CS3 and published as a Flash 8 fla.

I have an Actionscript 3 class version ready with all the functioality except the contex menu, which I will finish and make available for free to any buyers of this file who want it.

I will support all the advertised functionality, and for any buyers interested I will provide code samples and limited support towards the next step: basic motion-triggered actions, which I will announce here as I develop it.