Multicast

Description

Enables/disables the multicast mode.

Syntax

[VB]
objActiveGige.Multicast [= Value]

[C/C++]
HRESULT get_Multicast( bool *pMulticase );
HRESULT put_Multicast( bool Multicast );

Data Type [VB]

Boolean

Parameters [C/C++]

pMulticast[out,retval]

Pointer to the Boolean that is TRUE if the multicast mode is enable, or FALSE otherwise

Multicast [in]

Set to TRUE to enable the multicast, or set to FALSE to disable it.

Return Values

S_OK

Success

E_FAIL

Failure.

Example

The following VB example sets the camera into the multicast mode and starts the video acquisition:

ActiveGige1.Multicast = True
ActiveGige1.Acquire = True

Remarks

The Multicast mode allows multiple computers and applications on the network to receive the video feed from the same camera. An ActiveGige based application that first opens the camera becomes the master application. Once the master application enables the Multicast mode and starts the acquisition, all other ActiveGige based applications launched in the network will acquire and display the video in the slave mode.

Multicast is usually used for distributed monitoring or distributed processing. In the latter case one computer may record video to the disk while another one can process and analyze images.

A default IP address of the multicast end-point is assigned by the IP configuration utility, but can also be set programmatically with the SetDestinationIP method.

Note that each computer that needs to receive the video feed from a camera must be able to "see" the camera on the network. This is usually done by connecting the camera and computers to the same Gigabit switch and setting the IP address of each network card to the subnet of the camera (typically 169.254.x.x).

Note that any change in the image format performed by the master application in the Multicast mode (such as Format, SizeX, SizeY, PacketSize) are not transferred to the slave applications and can cause image corruption and errors if done during the video acquisition.

Note that certain GigE Vision cameras may not support Multicast.