Using DirectShow with multiple cameras

The following article provides users with information on running multiple cameras with third-party DirectShow applications.

The DirectShow interface is installed for the whole instance, not per camera. Therefore, you only see one camera device at a time. 

Note: You cannot run two cameras at the same time in the same instance of software; however, you can run two instances of software and select different cameras in each.

When you try to select the camera in the Image Acquisition Toolbox, or try to connect to the camera via code, a camera selection dialog appears This dialog lists all the cameras and allows you to select which one to use.

The camera selection dialog is not ideal, especially when trying to access the camera through the API. To help with this, there is a registry setting to disable the camera selection dialog.
 
If you cannot see a second camera, the issue is probably one of two possibilities:
 
1. A connection has not yet been made to the camera, so only the first camera instance is seen.

or

2.  The registry setting is set to disable the camera selection dialog.  Check this with either:

a. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Point Grey Research,Inc.\FlyCapture2\DirectShowHideCameraSelectionDialog
 
b. In the RegistryControl utility, select the DirectShow tab.

Start-> All Programs-> Point Grey Research-> FlyCapture2-> Utilities-> RegistryControlUtility (or in the bin folder)

This issue is the same for all DirectShow supported software (Matlab, NI, MSN, AmCap, Graphedit, etc.).