Synchronization of a projector and a camera

Hello,

I am developing an application where images consecutively projected with a video projector are captured with a camera. Freeglut is used for displaying the images. I am not able to synchronize image refreshing and camera triggering properly. No matter what I tried, the cameras always trigger while the glut window is being refreshed, the refresh artifacts are visible in the shot image. I already tried the following:

  • synchronous application: I use the keyboard loop to start the acquisition. Instead of calling glutPostRedisplay, the glutDisplayFunc is called manually before triggering the camera
  • asynchronous application: I use glutPostRedisplay to redraw the contents of the glut window and trigger the camera in the glutIdleFunc

Since there is only 1 thread involved, the second method is not really asynchronous, but I guess you get what I mean.

For both methods I tried:

  • The use of double buffering with glutSwapBuffers() at the end of my glutDisplayFunc
  • The use of single buffering with glFinish() at the end of my glutDisplayFunc, which I thought should block until the screen refreshed

None of the above worked. Any comments or ideas how to solve this?

Regards,
Joe

glFinish() blocks until commands are complete that is not the same think as a screen refresh. You could try waiting an additional 1/60th of a second for a full refresh cycle. Also I would check on photographing screens I remember on old CRT’s it was almost impossible because the pixels where not continuously light. I don’t know about LED screens.