Acquiring Signals

Acquiring Signals

After you configure your hardware and select your video input, you can load video signals into the video buffer either by acquiring live video signals or opening a saved video binary file (VBF). You must acquire whenever you want to load new video material into NI VMS.

Acquiring a live signal

1. If hardware is not initialized, click Initialise on the Acquisition tab.
2. Click either Acquire Once or Continuous Acq. to acquire the specified number of frames into the video buffer, either one time or in a loop, respectively. To stop continuous acquisition, click Continuous Acq. again. Notice that acquisition of multiple analog and digital frames is limited by digitizer memory, so you should limit the number of frames or limit the number of lines in frames you acquire at one time.

Loading signals from a video binary file (VBF)

1. On the File tab, click Open to select a saved .vbf file and load it into the video buffer. The display on the Waveform tab shows the first available line from the file. The opened .vbf file automatically populates the controls on the Acquisition and File tabs.

   Note  Clicking Open browses by default to several sample test signals. Refer to the NI Video Measurement Suite Readme for the location of these sample test signals.

Viewing the acquired signal

Complete one of the following steps to view the acquired signal:

• Click the Waveform tab to view a single line specified in the Meas. Line control as a waveform.
• Click the Picture tab to view all acquired lines as a picture.

Related Information

Refer to Locating Test Signals for Measurement for the next step in getting started with NI VMS.