We have just deployed CardExchange to start taking images ready for our new student intake in September.

During setup, testing, and training, using the camera in Twain mode worked fine, although the quality was quite poor.

When we actually came to using it in a production environment, clicking Take Photo when using the camera in TWAIN mode takes a long time to bring up the image dialog, if it doesn't kill CardExchange first.
I tried switching to using Video-for-Windows to see how that worked. The dialog takes 5-10 seconds to come up every time and intermittently, we will have a black video feed or the camera feed will flip continuously between right side up and upside down, so it then becomes an issue of clicking the acquire button at the right time to get the image the right way up!
I then tried PhotoExchange. When I try to run this, an icon appears in the taskbar and system tray, but no window every appears and CardExchange is completely locked up waiting for PhotoExchange to initialize. At this point you have to log out of CE and manually kill PhotoExchange, or sometimes just manually kill both. If I try to right-click the system tray icon, I get the outline of a context menu but nothing ever appears. If I leave it long enough, PhotoExchange just shuts itself down, but this can take 10 minutes or more.

So far I have tried the following:
Repair installation of .net 3.5 SP1
Install CE 6.0.2.1
Uninstall camera and drivers completely and reinstall.

Following the camera uninstall\reinstall, the camera no longer works in TWAIN mode and has the same issues with Video-for-Windows and PhotoExchange.

We are using:
Windows XP SP3 (another machine has SP2 with same issues)
Logitech QuickCam Orbit\Sphere MP with QuickCam 10.5
CardExchange 6.0 (6.0.2.1 on one machine)
.net 3.5 SP1.

Our previous system, ID Works, is still installed on the machines and is now also having trouble with the webcams despite having no issues before CE was installed, so I am convinced it is a webcam issue rather than a CE issue, but am at a loss as to what else to try.

I know from the setup\testing phase just how good CE is and how much of a leap forward it is beyond our previous system, but these problems are making it look like a dead duck to the users and is actually making it worse than the old system!

Dear AlanParr,

I understand your concern and we have to do whatever possible to get the system working fine. First of all, it should be noted that camera handling requires quite some system resources and that it is important to work with a state of the art system. The startup time of PhotoExchange is known to be considerable on slow systems. On modern systems, the first time PhotoExchange is called can still take several seconds, but after the first time it should appear quickly.

The black screens you are getting with Video for Windows is due to the fact that modern cameras are not supported anymore by Video for Windows, but require its successor DirectShow. The PhotoExchange module (when it works) offers both LogiTech support via their SDK and DirectShow support.

The most likely cause of the problems on your system is a conflict between different pieces of software. It is known that different camera support systems can influence each other. Taking that into account, it would be instructive to install CardExchange on a system where IDWorks is not installed, nor any other specific camera software aside from the camera drivers. You should also check in the Task Manager whether there are no processes that consume an excessive amount of CPU. Did you test PhotoExchange in the test environment? DirtectShow usually gives a better result than Twain.

Hi Rutger, thanks for the reply.

We have CE installed on 3 laptops, 2 of which are within the minimum spec and one is admittedly a little on the borderline but the same issues are being experienced on all machines so I don't think it is an issue of system resources in this case.

When the system was setup it was initially using Video-for-Windows, which performed as we wanted so no testing was done using PhotoExchange. It was only when we got in to the situation of actually using the system live that all these problems appeared.

Would you be able to send me a trial license for CE Ultimate so I can install on another laptop and test your theory out?

Alan

Hi Alan,

Can you provide me the serial number of the licenses so I can see what edition you have in order to provide you with some trial functionality for the PhotoExchange® product.

Thanks.

Hi Alan,

PhotoExchange is always available in trial mode. It prints "Demo" over the photo, but for testing that doesn't matter.

That is correct. Forgot that one...

Thanks for reminding me.

Alan, you can simply select this option when opening the Photo options in the Photo tab to experience this functionality.

Thanks.

Great, thankyou guys.

Will give this a go asap and report back on this thread.