•Edge-triggered monoshot acquisition: The VIA (Video Interface ASIC) waits for the rising/falling edge to capture a single frame.
•Edge-triggered continuous acquisition: The VIA waits for the rising/falling edge to start a continous grab.
•Level-sensitive "continuous" acquisition: The VIA grabs continuously while the level of the trigger is high/low.
✁The polarity of the active and inactive levels of the trigger signal is software programmable.
Matrox Meteor-II /Camera Link can also operate in asynchronous reset mode. In this mode, the digitizer resets the camera to begin a new frame when the trigger signal is received.
Data interfaces
Video Interface ASIC
The Matrox Meteor-II /Camera Link board has a VIA, which acts mainly as a video-to-PCI bridge. The VIA is capable of high-speed image transfers to Host memory or other PCI devices across the PCI bus. It uses 32 Mbytes of video transfer memory (SDRAM) to store data until the PCI bus becomes available. On the PCI form factor, the VIA also supports image transfers across the VMChannel to one or more Matrox Imaging boards for accelerated image processing or display.
Matrox VIA can manage up to two simultaneous data streams. For example, it can grab into video transfer memory, and concurrently transfer data over the VMChannel (for PCI form factor only) or PCI buses.
The VIA is capable of separating image data into two, three, or four 8-bit or two 16-bit components (for example, RGB packed to RGB planar). This mechanism is also used to merge line segments of monochrome multi-tap cameras.
