First Light C-RED 3 - Tag Generation; Frame Marker Configuration

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It is possible to arbitrate between the readout noise and the dark level.
Usually for short integration time, this parameter must be set to 0 and for long integration time to 100.
To read the current dark optimization value, use the command: “darkoptimlevel”
Tag generation
The C-RED 3 camera offers the possibility to replace the first 4 pixels of acquired images by information
generated by the camera.
This function is controlled by the “set imagetags on” and ”set imagetags off” commands.
When enabled, the first and second pixels of the camera are used to store a frame counter that
increments by one for each frame acquired from the sensor. This counter can be used to check if some
frames are lost during acquisition.
When the USB3 interface is used (for C-RED 3 USB only), the USB3 acquisition software uses this
information to check the frame grabbing and eventually resynchronize the flow. So, when the USB3
interface is used, it is strongly advised to keep the image tags on.
The third pixel value depends on the current readout mode of the camera.
In CDS mode and in HDR mode, it is set to 0x0000.
The forth pixel of the image is used to reflect the frame marker signal value and the integration
capacitor used to acquire the image.
Bits 15-3
Bit 2-1
Bit 0
RFU (set to 1) Integration capacitor
0: high gain, small capacitor size
1: medium gain, medium capacitor size
2: low gain, large capacitor size
3: HDR composite image
Frame marker signal
Frame marker configuration
On firmware version 1.0.0, the frame marker signal corresponds to the signal trigger_in of the Lemo®
connector. On firmware versions 1.1.0 and above, on C-RED 3 CL camera, the frame marker signal can
also be configured to correspond to one of the camera link control signal (CCx) located on the camera
link connector #1.
The selection is done using one of the following commands:
“set extsynchro source external”: selects trigger_in signal on the Lemo® connector
“set extsynchro source cc1”: selects CC1 signal on the cameral link connector #1
“set extsynchro source cc2”: selects CC2 signal on the cameral link connector #1
“set extsynchro source cc3”: selects CC3 signal on the cameral link connector #1
“set extsynchro source cc4”: selects CC4 signal on the cameral link connector #1
The current configuration can be retrieved using the “extsynchro source” command.