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xiFastMovie is a command-line tool to record movies from Ximea cameras. It is efficient at taking movies at high framerate and of large size.
Movies are stored in a custom uncompressed format (.raw/.rawm) that is fast to save to the disk compared to other formats. Movies can be loaded in Python or Matlab for analysis with the provided scripts. The CorrTrack software can also be used as a movie player for .raw/.rawm movies.
When launching xiFastMovie in a prompt with appropriate parameters, it starts recording a movie to the RAM. The program uses the Ximea API to communicate with the camera. Once finished xiFastMovie saves two files: a stream that contains the frames data (.raw file), and an XML file that contains information on the camera, recording settings and the frame timestamps (.rawm file).
xiFastMovie works on Windows 7 and 10, and is expected to work on other systems such as Unix and Mac.
Binaries are only provided for Windows. For other systems, you should compile the sources.
Latest release: xiFastMovie 1.4 for Windows x64 download (7.5 MB)
You should also install xiAPI, which can be done by installing the Ximea software package from here. Once installed, either add C:\XIMEA\API\x64 to your PATH environment variable, or simply copy the xiapi64.dll file from this folder to the folder containing xifastmovie.exe.
Using xiFastMovie is pretty straightforward. Make sure a Ximea camera is connected. On Windows, execute cmd.exe and type
xifastmovie.exe -n 100 -r 20 -e 5000 -w 400 -h 300
to record 100 frames of 400x300 pixels at 20 frames per second, with an exposure time of 5000 microseconds.
For a complete description of the command parameters, type
xifastmovie.exe --help
See the "utils" folder for scripts to load the movie files in Python and Matlab. You may also consider using CorrTrack to play the movies or extract them as TIFF images.
xiFastMovie is released under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence v3.
Feedback on and contributions to this project are welcome!