What is the current state of virtual camera device support in LightBurn (v1.7.0.6 when I write this)? Is there a doc page or official post by LightBurn that gives more details on the current state? This Camera Selection Helper - LightBurn Documentation does not mention virtual cameras.
I’m asking since reading previous forum posts gives mixed messages. Some posts say that only directly connected real USB cameras will work. But on the other hand in November 2024 a team member wrote “Please try the latest LightBurn-v1.7.04 release candidate, since there have been recent changes relating to virtual cameras”
has there been any discussion about adding an option where LightBurn reads an image from a folder instead of reading it from a camera device? With such an “image file” mode the user could themselves have whatever custom camera setup they want outside of LightBurn and make it so that the image at some fixed filepath (to be set in LightBurn settings) is created. LightBurn would read that image and then perform dewarping logic and show the image inside LightBurn just like with images read directly from usb cameras. LightBurn would not need to know anything about the camera nor include any special camera hardware support.
(Furthermore, such an image file mode might even open up the possibility for the user to do custom calibration and dewarping themselves via whatever programming or software steps they prefer and just provide LightBurn with a finished image to be scaled and overlayed (underlayed) to the laserable area in LightBurn e.g. x0, y0 to XN, YN. )
As background I’ve tried to improve calibration results for the Gweike Cloud laser’s built in camera, with no success.
I’m now looking for a replacement camera. I’m in the EU which makes buying from LightBurn’s US store a bit of a hassle (customs fees and wait times). I’d like to use a Raspberry Pi device with one of the Raspberry Pi cameras, which can be had with a 120 degree lens and 12 megapixel resolution. I might get that to work via OBS (see question 1) but from my research so far it might be difficult to get the full resolution images that way. In comparison it is quite easy to have a script that e.g. uses SSH to the raspberry device and saves (and overwrites) a full resolution image to a folder every N seconds.
As far as I know, virtual cameras (at least the ones that were working like OBS,SplitCam,ManyCam) should be still working in the current 1.7.06 version, but I think that support may be lost by some virtual cameras (if they still rely on the ‘Default Capture System’ using DirectShow) with the update to LightBurn 2.0. @JediJeremy is the best person to comment about this and your 2nd question which sounds interesting.
The current state can be summed up as “best effort”. The whole point of virtual cameras is they’re supposed to be indistinguishable from normal cameras, and sometimes they are, in which case they’re technically just USB cameras with extra steps.
Practically, they often cause enough issues we have to release bugfixes to stop the app crashing when people use them, because they sometimes have whacky modes that don’t generally exist on real cameras. (like alpha channels) We had a couple of those on MacOS.
So use them if you must, but expect problems. And especially on Windows there’s going to be a major bump from LightBurn 1.7 to 2.0 as we deprecate the old DirectShow API’s that most windows Virtual Cameras were based on, and upgrade to the newer Windows 10 APIs.
(So that >4K cameras will work correctly)
You may still be able to use your virtual camera of choice with 2.0. but possibly only with the Fallback drivers, which will hurt in other ways.
We have been working on several ideas to open up the camera system to more external sources. We have already incorporated the ability to talk with HTTP cameras on specific machines, and it would be a small step to generalize that feature, if there is interest.
Also @krono I’m surprised you’ve been having such difficulty with the AprilTags, they’ve tended to work better in nearly every condition, though focus is still important… the only other time they’ve failed completely is when someone managed to “mirror” their virtual camera.
The dots pattern is symmetric, but tags will not recognize if seen in a mirror. Is the camera in a weird mode? We only figured it out by writing ‘ABC’ on a big piece of paper.
Thanks @NicholasL and @JediJeremy for virtual camera answers. I’ll keep an eye on the forum after v2.0 release to see what users with virtual camera setups report on what’s working before I buy a new camera and try the virtual camera route.
Nice, looking forward to that!
I don’t think the camera is in any special mode. At V1.7.04 Camera calibration issue: April Tags not detected (circles detected) - #3 by krono I have screenshots and also a higher res image captured with the camera outside of LightBurn. As noted there I got OpenCV to detect some april tags in the image but LightBurn detects none. Can you spot anything in that image that might explain that difference?