How to start/stop video recording on Canon camera via SDK?

Question

I have a Canon 7D digital camera and I'd like to have an ability to control video recording from PC. I've downloaded Canon SDK 2.8, read all the document it contains but still cant figure out how to start or stop video recording on the camera.

Is there any possibility to control video recording via Canon SDK?

Thanks.

The offical answer from Canon DIDP team is: "Unfortunately, the current SDK does not support the movie recording function." — Dmitrii, Nov 05 '10 at 11:34
It has to be possible, since the EOS Utility that comes on the CD with the camera supports it. — Dax Fohl, Oct 09 '11 at 15:42

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 23 '12 at 12:30

6

the latest canon camera sdk document contains an answer:

6.4.3 Begin/End movie shooting You can begin/end movie shooting with the following operations.

EdsUInt32 record_start = 4; // Begin movie shooting 
err = EdsSetPropertyData(cameraRef, kEdsPropID_Record, 0, sizeof(record_start), &record_start); 
EdsUInt32 record_stop = 0; // End movie shooting 
err = EdsSetPropertyData(cameraRef, kEdsPropID_Record, 0, sizeof(record_stop), &record_

answered Jun 23 '12 at 12:30

Dmitrii

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6
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This is good news. I used to do this with a hack I reverse engineered, but now I can switch to this. – Shachar Weis Nov 02 '12 at 18:10
care to share your hack? The t5i does not seem to listen to this command while connected in PC mode. – Michael Brown Sep 30 '13 at 01:26

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

Take a look at gphoto i'm not sure ( and it's for unix like systems )

http://www.gphoto.org/doc/remote/

And only hack around which i know works is using usb-ir transmitter which send the signal used by a Canon Remote , u can check signals ( start , stop ) by usb-ir transmitters , receiving signal from Canon Remote then , send it whenever u want with-in your program

Edit

Seems someone else figure it out first

Need to record video with a DSLR using an SDK

Edit 2

Breezesys found a solution it's seems there is an undocumented command , but Chris breeze won't give the info up as u can see here

http://www.breezesys.com/DSLRRemotePro/help/index.html?video_capture.htm

some hex or reverse engineer guy should look into it :/

Edit 3

As long as out here people saying :

it's undocumented look into functions for yourself

Here is list Of Commands and Functions , also u can extract them for yout self with dll export viewer ,

Also out here some n@sty tools do n@sty things with dlls i hope u know those , cause naming them here is illegal

gphoto does not have the ability to start/stop video capture on a canon DSLR. That other thread was opened by me and also has no answer. — Shachar Weis, Nov 24 '11 at 00:10

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 17 '11 at 09:38

Unfortunately, I don't think it is feasible at this moment (by looking at the given API). Although I do believe that Canon has the API, but is not releasing it for one reason or another.

On a side note, I have seen cases where people grab live view frames and make those a video.

How to start/stop video recording on Canon camera via SDK?

3 Answers3

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