• Grab frames and timing data from any standard AVI video file.
  
• Use mouse to track objects with crosshair cursor.  Step through video file frame by frame.
  
• Click mouse button to write t,x,y coordinate data to a comma-delimited text file ready to be imported into your favorite spreadsheet or graphical analysis application.
  
• Individual frames can be saved as bitmapped (.bmp) files.

Screen Shot

Click on image for larger version.

User Guide
(Really doesn't need one.)

I'm pleased that so many students, educators, and researchers at high schools, colleges, and universities all over the world (Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, South Africa, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.A.) find DataPoint useful in their work.

While I hope to continue improving the program, DataPoint is currently at version 0.62 with only the bare minimum of features.  I wrote DataPoint to give my students an inexpensive video analysis tool, but without the bells and whistles of other programs, which they might be tempted to use thoughtlessly at the expense of developing analytical and critical thinking skills.  

Future revisions to DataPoint will include frame zooming, multiple-object tracking, and support for other video formats (e.g., QuickTime^TM, MPEG, etc.) and other operating systems (Mac^TM and Linux^TM).

"Bouncing Ball"

"Cannot open file _frame.bmp"

When DataPoint extracts a video frame from the avi file, it stores the frame data in a temporary file named _frame.bmp (the filename begins with the underscore). DataPoint expects to the find the frame data in a particular place in the avi file.

If you get the "Cannot open file _frame.bmp" error message, keep DataPoint open and search for the file _frame.bmp. The file _frame.bmp should be in the same directory as the video file. When DataPoint closes, it deletes _frame.bmp. If you can't find _frame.bmp, it means DataPoint can't find the frame data in the avi file. In that case, it can't create _frame.bmp, and it gives the error message.

DataPoint was not intended to be a particularly intelligent program, but it should work for any "standard" avi file. I've noticed that some video-capture programs do not create standard avi files. E.g., the avi files at the TAMU website were recorded with a JVC^TM digital video camera that seems to have used a proprietary Sony Digital^TM codec (FOURCC code DVSD). DataPoint does not work with Quicktime (.mov) video files.

Use DataPoint to open the following videos of the Pacific Ocean surf and see how DataPoint handles (or does not handle) standard and non-standard avi files. I recorded the non-standard file with a Fuji^TM digital camera. I used AVIedit to convert the non-standard file to a standard avi file.

Non-Standard avi file (2.5 MB)

Standard avi file (1.7 MB)

To use avi files that are non-standard or use proprietary codecs, there are two alternatives:

• Find another video-capture program that creates standard avi files (if your video-capture program uses compression, try creating an "uncompressed" avi file) or
• Find an avi file conversion program that can convert your non-standard avi files to standard avi files. I don't endorse any particular video editing application, but one shareware program with which I've had some success is AVIedit (http://www.am-soft.ru/). Unfortunately, as of 10/20/2008 AVIedit does not include the DVSD codec.