Zoomtext Camera Feature - Webcam - CCTV

Camera Fun with Zoomtext V10

In this post I'm going to cover one of the more recently introduced features in Zoomtext. Providing you have V10 or over you may have noticed some of the new features situated in the Tools menu (ALT T). If you have the “Magnifier only” version of Zoomtext you'll find two items in the Tools menu, namely “Camera...” and “Launch Camera”. But if you have the full “Magnifier and Reader” installation then you'll find another few items such as the Text Recorder and Background Reader - in fact, I covered the latter in a post a while back here. In this post though I want to play with the camera feature and see if my old webcam can be given a new lease of life.

So, what's the deal here? Well, the basic idea is that if you have a semi-decent USB webcam (or, in my case, a really old poor quality USB webcam) you can drive this camera from inside Zoomtext and treat it like a portable CCTV. No great shakes there you might be thinking, until you recall the sobering fact that most CCTVs have a wince-inducing price tag! So, while you don't get all the bells and whistles of a top-flight CCTV, you do get some basic, functional CCTV ability. Additionally, if you are running on a laptop, you can factor in the portability of the solution too. Not bad, considering you have the Zoomtext software and the webcam already anyway.

Setting Up the Webcam

1. Plug in your USB webcam, if it isn’t already attached to your PC.
2. Ensure that your webcam is placed on a stand, or at the very least is suitably supported to enable you to focus appropriately on an example printed page.
3. Access the Tools menu (ALT T) in the main Zoomtext user interface and choose the Camera... option. 
   
4. In the Camera dialog box use the TAB key to move around the options. Notice the Active Camera field - this should contain the name of the camera you are using - although, if you have more than one camera, then you will need to select the correct device here.
5. Also, notice that you can set the View Mode for the current Camera, choosing between a "Full Screen" or a "Docked Screen" style of view. If you choose the latter then you can Dock the camera view to the top, bottom, left or right hand half of the screen by default.
6. When you have finished exploring, set the options in the dialog box as required and use TAB to move to the OK button. Use the SPACEBAR to confirm and close the dialog box.

Toggle the Camera On and Off

Now that you have run through the main Camera settings dialog box the final step is to launch the camera. You can do this by either:

• Opening the Tools menu as before and choosing one of the camera views from the Launch Camera submenu.
• Activating the Launch Camera button in the Camera… dialog box via the Tools menu.
• Pressing the keystroke of ALT WINDOWS M, this toggles the camera display on and off.

Now that you can launch the camera function, grab a page of printed text and place it in the range of the webcam.

Using the Webcam to Read Text

Just how much control you can have over your webcam through Zoomtext really depends on the camera hardware itself. For example, the webcam I have is a simple fixed focus affair so I have to manually move it to an optimal distance away from the material I want to read - in my case around 17-18 centimetres away.

If you have a manual focus webcam then you can make focusing adjustments via the Focus option in the Camera toolbar or by using the following keystrokes:

• Manually Focus In: CONTROL WINDOWS RIGHT ARROW
• Manually Focus Out: CONTROL WINDOWS LEFT

With some suitable material in place, you can now change a few settings to suit your requirements.

Keyboard Control of the Camera

As you might expect, there's a whole bunch of keystrokes that can be used to switch between the different modes of operation and to alter various settings.

First, you can choose between running in Full Screen Mode (which will also remove the specific Camera Toolbar from the screen) and a half-screen Docked View (where the specific Camera Toolbar is available). You control these display options with the following hotkeys:

• Toggle Full Screen and Split View: ALT WINDOWS V
• Cycle through Split View Settings: ALT WINDOWS S

Depending on the material you are trying to read and the position of your webcam, you may also need to rotate the display. This will work whether you are in "full" or "split" screen modes:

• Rotate camera screen (full and split views): ALT WINDOWS R

On most CCTV systems you have various colour and clarity options that you can choose from to increase contrast levels. The settings here are no different, with a bunch of colour schemes that you can cycle through and choose from. Also, when you have set your preferred colour scheme, you can choose to customise the brightness and contrast levels as required. Doing this gives you complete control over the clarity of the image and can be the difference between reading something comfortably - or not!

• Toggle the Colour Scheme View On and Off: ALT WINDOWS SPACEBAR
• Cycle through available Colour Schemes: ALT WINDOWS C
• Decrease image brightness: ALT WINDOWS UP ARROW
• Decrease image contrast: ALT CONTROL WINDOWS DOWN ARROW
• Increase image brightness: ALT WINDOWS DOWN ARROW
• Increase image contrast: ALT CONTROL WINDOWS UP ARROW
• Reset to the default clarity settings: ALT WINDOWS B

An Example Scenario

In this example, I want to use my webcam to read some text on a bottle label. I will use the black and yellow colour scheme and manually set the contrast levels to enable an easier read. Let's go:

1. Connect the USB camera.
2. Position the camera and the material to be read on a suitable surface - obviously, I will have to move both around in due course.
3. In Zoomtext, turn the camera mode on with ALT WINDOWS M.
4. I'm in one of the split views to begin with which is fine, so now I cycle through the colour schemes (ALT WINDOWS C) to get to black and yellow.
5. At this point I move the bottle a little bit so that it appears sharper. I also increase the contrast with ALT CONTROL WINDOWS UP ARROW.
6. Now I zoom in slightly to focus more on the text using ALT WINDOWS NUMBERPAD PLUS.
7. After a few more manual adjustments of moving the bottle (the ambient lighting is not balanced on all sides so I have to move it around) I switch to full camera view (ALT WINDOWS ) and read the text.
8. With the job done, I set it back to split view (ALT WINDOWS V) and reset my clarity changes back to their defaults with ALT WINDOWS B.
9. Finally, I turn the colour schemes off with ALT WINDOWS SPACEBAR then turn the camera feature feature off completely with ALT WINDOWS M.

And there you go! A pretty nifty feature - especially if you have a semi-decent webcam kicking around in the back of a drawer in the first place. But, either way, it's definitely worth taking some time out to experiment with it. Until next time, have fun!