16 Chapter 1: Introduction
Data transfer
All versions of the Matrox Meteor-II board allow transfer of live
video to Host memory or off-board display memory. To prevent
loss of data during long bus-access latencies found in heavily
loaded computer systems, the Matrox Meteor-II boards (except
Meteor-II /1394) feature 4 Mbytes of SGRAM for temporary
frame storage. All boards except Matrox Meteor-II /1394 are
also equipped with the Matrox Video Interface ASIC (VIA).
All PCI form factor boards (except the Meteor-II /1394) also
have a VMChannel interface (non-bus controller), which is used
to send data to other VM devices found on other Matrox imaging
boards (for example, Matrox Corona, Matrox Genesis main
board, or Matrox Genesis processor board)
1
.
Software
You can purchase one or more Matrox Imaging software
products that support the Matrox Meteor-II board. These are
the Matrox Imaging Library (MIL) and its derivatives
(MIL-Lite, ActiveMIL-Lite, and Matrox Inspector). All Matrox
software is supported under Windows; consult your software
manual for supported Windows environments.
MIL MIL is a development library which provides an extensive list
of commands used to capture, process, analyze, transfer,
display, and archive images. Processing and analysis
operations include: spatial filtering operations, morphological
operations, measurements, blob analysis, optical character
recognition (OCR), pattern matching, matrix/bar code reading,
and calibration.
MIL-Lite MIL-Lite is a subset of MIL. It includes all the MIL commands
for image acquisition, transfer, display control, and archiving.
1. Since the Matrox Meteor-II boards cannot perform the
function of bus controller, they must be connected with at least
one board which is bus controller capable, in order for VMChan-
nel transfers to operate correctly.