Installing videoIO on Windows

This file describes how to set up the videoIO toolbox on a 32-bit or 64-bit Windows platform. See README.txt for a more general description of this library and tips on using it.   See INSTALL.ffmpeg.txt for GNU/Linux installation instructions.

If you are (a) using Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista, (b) using Matlab 2007a or later, and (c) have downloaded a videoIO package that already includes prepackaged binary .mex* files, you may skip to the Matlab Path section.  If you experience any problems running the basic tests or if you wish to build the library from its source, read this whole document.  You must download the full videoIO package to build the library from source.  If you downloaded a .zip file with "Bin" in its name, you have the wrong .zip file.

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Contents

• Prerequisites Overview
• Environment Variables
• Operating System Updates
• Visual Studio
• Windows SDK
• Platform SDK
• DirectX SDK
• Building the Library
• Matlab Path
• Testing
• Usage

Prerequisites Overview

Environment Variables

If you do not know what environment variables are or how to permanently change them in Windows, see FAQ.txt.

In these instructions, some directories will need to be added to various environment variables. Many of these folders will not exist until later in the instructions; however, we will modify all of the environment variables now. This makes the installation process faster and less complex.

INCLUDE

Create the "INCLUDE" system environment variable (if it does not already exist) and add the following paths to it.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Samples\Multimedia\DirectShow\BaseClasses

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Include

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1\Samples\Multimedia\DirectShow\BaseClasses

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1\Include

%DXSDK_DIR%\Include

When using path-like environment variables on Windows, place a semicolon between each string. For example, if the current INCLUDE variable is "C:\foo" and you wish to add "C:\bar\baz", the new INCLUDE variable will be "C:\foo;C:\bar\baz" (without quotes). It is important to have no extra spaces before or after the semicolons. We have placed each path on a separate line in this document for readability purposes.

Note: DXSDK_DIR is an environment variable which will be created when the DirectX SDK is installed.

It's important that the include directories be in the order given above (i.e. the BaseClasses directory must appear before the base SDK's Include, and that before the DirectX's Include). Microsoft likes to create stub headers (.h files) with the same names as the real ones and if the stubs are found first, they break the compilation.

Add the appropriate one of the following strings to the "PATH" system environment variable (remember to omit " (x86)" if you are using 32-bit Windows).

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 7\VC\bin

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9\VC\bin

Visual Studio

First, install Visual Studio:

1. Purchase Visual Studio
2. Use user an account with administrative privileges
3. Start the installer; if you want to compile 64-bit versions, when choosing the custom installation options, check

   Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional → Language Tools → Visual C++ → X64 Compilers and Tools

   You may uncheck all .NET and all non C++ options if you want to save space and installation time. If you get an Vista incompatibility warning, ignore it and tell Vista to run the program anyway.

Now, we get to configure Visual Studio so it can find the SDKs we'll be installing. As was the case with the environment variables, it's easier to do it all at the same time, so we'll do it now. In Visual Studio, go to

Tools → Options... → Projects and Solutions → VC++ Directories

1. Select "Win32" in the Platform pulldown
   1. In "Include files", add the following, without quotes: "$(INCLUDE)"
   2. In "Library files", add the following, without quotes: "$(LIB32)"
2. Select "x64" in the Platform pulldown (you may skip this step if you are using 32-bit Windows or are only using 32-bit Matlab)
   1. In "Include files", add the following, without quotes: "$(INCLUDE)"
   2. In "Library files", add the following, without quotes: "$(LIB64)"

DirectX SDK

1. Download the latest DirectX SDK. Microsoft has historically released new versions every 3-6 months. As of Sept. 2008, this download was nearly a half a gigabyte.
2. Install the SDK. The default options are fine.
3. See if the DXSDK_DIR system environment variable was created (see the FAQ.txt for instructions on viewing and modifying environment variables). If it was not created by the installer, set DXSDK_DIR to

   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2008)

   (modify this directory to point to your SDK's base directory).

Building the Library

1. Start a new Matlab session. You must relaunch Matlab so that it can see the new values of the environment variables you have created and/or modified. Any time you modify environment variables used by Matlab (or programs it calls), you must completely exit Matlab and restart it.
2. In Matlab, run the following if you have not already done so:

   mex -setup

   Follow the on-screen instructions. If you have multiple compilers installed, choose the one that was configured in the Visual Studio section of this document.
3. Edit the file

   %APPDATA%\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2007b\mexopts.bat

   replacing "R2007b" with your Matlab revision.
   • on the COMPFLAGS line, add the following:

     -D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE 

     This eliminates a number of spurious warning messages.
   • if using Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 (but not 2003), on the COMPFLAGS line, add the following:

     /Zc:wchar_t-

     This provides proper treatment of the character data type.
   • if using Visual Studio 2003, on the COMPFLAGS line, add the following:

     /EHsc

     This adds VS2003 exception support.
   • if using Visual Studio 2003, on the LINKFLAGS line, add the following:

     /NODEFAULTLIB:LIBCMT.LIB

     This fixes a VS2003 duplicate-linkage problem.
   • on the INCLUDE line, move

     %INCLUDE%

     to the beginning of the list (it's at the end by default). This corrects for some interface changes Microsoft has made to its SDKs. Make sure there's a semicolon between "%INCLUDE%" and the next entry in the list.
   • if you are using 32-bit Matlab, on the LIB line add

     ;%LIB32%

     to the end of the line (with no whitespace).
   • if you are using 64-bit Matlab, on the LIB line add

     ;%LIB64%

     to the end of the line (with no whitespace).
4. In Matlab, go to the directory where you've placed the videoIO source files and run

   buildVideoIO

   If the build fails, recheck that you followed all of the previous instructions in this file exactly. You may also want to look at the FAQ for solutions to common problems.

Matlab Path

File → Set Path... → Add Folder...

Do not add directories recursively: the @videoReader/, @videoWriter/, and private/ directories are handled automatically by Matlab's object system. The tests/ subdirectory contains files that are essentially private (e.g. a function named testAll could easily appear in other toolboxes or in the user's own code).

Testing

In Matlab, go to the tests/ subdirectory and run testAll:

% if this fails, you forgot to add the videoIO directory to your matlab path.
cd(fullfile(videoIODir, 'tests')); 

% This will take a long time (perhaps up to a few hours) to complete, but the 
% most basic and most critical tests are run first.  
testAll 

Usage

help buildVideoIO
help videoReader
help videoWriter
help videoread

Also consider looking at tests/videoWriterDemo.m and tests/addFrameDemo.m for examples of writing videos.