Webcam Capture in C#: Easiest Way to Take Images from Your Webcams

Aug 28, 2013

Webcams, as an easy & cost-effective way to take images from video stream, is widely used in the business world. To save your time & energy to integrate webcam capture to your WinForms application, Dynamsoft developed the Dynamic .NET TWAIN SDK. With it, you can develop a web camera capture module in C# with a few lines of code. If you use VB.NET, please check out this blog post.

Step 1. Create your C# application for Webcam Capture

Create a simple Windows Forms Application in C#. Add Dynamic .NET TWAIN to the Toolbox: Assume you have it installed, you can browse and add DynamicDotNetTWAIN.dll in the installation folder of Dynamic .NET TWAIN (C:\Program Files (x86)\Dynamsoft\Dynamic .NET TWAIN Trial\Redistributable).

Add Dynamic .NET TWAIN Component Dynamic .NET TWAIN in Toolbox

Step 2. Add .NET TWAIN component, picture box and the necessary buttons

Drag & drop DynamicDotNetTwain to your form to create a control: Add a picturebox to the form as the video container. Add buttons for selecting cameras, acquiring images, and removing images. See below: Webcam Capture Windows Form

Step 3. Add code for the buttons

Select a web camera and start the video stream

//Select a source
private void btnSelect_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    try
    {
        dynamicDotNetTwain1.SelectSource();
        dynamicDotNetTwain1.SetVideoContainer(pictureBox1);
        dynamicDotNetTwain1.OpenSource();
        //List the source name and resolutions
        txtSourceName.Text = dynamicDotNetTwain1.CurrentSourceName;
        int count = dynamicDotNetTwain1.ResolutionForCamList.Count;
        for (int j = 0; j &amp;amp;lt; count; j++)
        {
            string tempHeight = dynamicDotNetTwain1.ResolutionForCamList[j].Height.ToString();
            string tempWidth = dynamicDotNetTwain1.ResolutionForCamList[j].Width.ToString();
            string tempResolution = tempWidth + "X" + tempHeight;
            comboResolution.Items.Insert(j, tempResolution);
            comboResolution.SelectedIndex = 0;
        }
    }
    catch (Exception exp)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(exp.Message);
    }
}

Acquire an image from the video stream

//Acquire an image
private void btnAcquire_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    try
    {
        dynamicDotNetTwain1.EnableSource();
    }
    catch (Exception exp)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(exp.Message);
    }
}

Save the acquired images locally

Dynamic .NET TWAIN provides internal encoder for BMP, JPEG, PNG, (multi-page) TIF and (multi-page) PDF.

private void btnSave_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    SaveFileDialog saveFileDialog = new SaveFileDialog();
    saveFileDialog.FileName = "test.pdf";
    saveFileDialog.Filter = "pdf files (*.pdf)|*.pdf|All files (*.*)|*.*";
    if (saveFileDialog.ShowDialog() == System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK)
    {
        dynamicDotNetTwain1.SaveAllAsPDF(saveFileDialog.FileName);
    }
}

Get Sample Code Now

To build your own webcam capture module using the SDK, download the 30-day free trial of Dynamic .NET TWAIN.

This artice was originally posted on CodeProject.

If you are interested in embedding webcam capture in a browser-based application, you may take a look at Dynamsoft Webcam SDK.