Download And Installation

Windows

Getting the Dependency

• Emgu CV use WCF(Windows Communication Foundation) therefore requires .Net 3.0
• For Version 2.0+, the bundled OpenCV 2.0 binary is build with Visual Studio 2008, you will needs to installed MSVCRT 9.0 SP1 to resolve the dependency issue.
• For Version 1.5, the bundled OpenCV pre1.1 binary is build with Visual Studio 2005, you will needs to installed MSVCRT 8.0 SP1 to resolve the dependency issue.

Building the Examples

• Follow this link to the file server on Source Forge.
• Download and extract the windows installer.
• Install the software
• Go to the Solution folder
  • If you are using Visual Studio 2005, browse to VS2005_MonoDevelop
  • If you are using Visual Studio 2008, browse to VS2008
• Open Emgu.CV.Example.sln and build the solution. At this point, you should be able to run the example programs.

Creating a New Project in Visual Studio

To use the framework in Visual Studio, you need to

• Download and extract the binary files package Emgu.CV.Windows.Binary-{version}.zip (They are compiled from source on Windows using MsBuild)
• Create a new Visual Studio project or use an existing one
• Add the 3 files zlib.net.dll, Emgu.Utils.dll and Emgu.CV.dll to References of the project. If you needs to use the Machine Learning library, include Emgu.CV.ML.dll to References as well.
• Copy the OpenCV dll files: cvXXX.dll, cvauxXXX.dll, cxcoreXXX.dll, highguiXXX.dll, opencv_ffmpegXXX.dll, mlXXX.dll and cvextern.dll to the execution directory, where XXX is the OpenCV version number.
• Optionally put the following lines in the top of your code to include the Emgu.CV namespace.

using Emgu.CV;
using Emgu.CV.Structure;

If you use the Machine Learning library, you mights wants to include the following as well

using Emgu.CV.ML;

• Follow the Tutorial to learn how to use Emgu CV. The "Hello, World" Example is a good starting point.

The type initializer for 'Emgu.CV.CvInvoke' threw an exception.

If you see this exception, please check the following

Have you installed MSVCRT?

• For Version 2.0+, the bundled OpenCV 2.0 binary is build with Visual Studio 2008, you will needs to installed MSVCRT 9.0 SP1 to resolve the dependency issue.
• For Version 1.5, the bundled OpenCV pre1.1 binary is build with Visual Studio 2005, you will needs to installed MSVCRT 8.0 SP1 to resolve the dependency issue.

Have you copied the OpenCV dlls to the execution directory?

• Make sure the unmanaged DLLs are in the execution directory.
  • For Emgu CV version <= 2.1, this means the following dlls: cvXXX.dll, cvauxXXX.dll, cxcoreXXX.dll, highguiXXX.dll, opencv_ffmpegXXX.dll, mlXXX.dll and cvextern.dll where XXX is the OpenCV version number.
  • For Emgu CV version >= 2.2 this means the following dlls: opencv_calib3dXXX.dll, opencv_contribXXX.dll, opencv_coreXXX.dll, opencv_features2dXXX.dll, opencv_highguiXXX.dll, opencv_imgprocXXX.dll, opencv_legacyXXX.dll, opencv_mlXXX.dll, opencv_objectdetectXXX.dll, opencv_videoXXX.dll where XXX is the OpenCV version number.

• The best way to set up your project is:
  • Copy the unmanaged DLLs to your project folder
  • Right click on the project, click Add->Existing Item and select all unmanaged DLLs. Add them to the project.
  • For each of the included Dlls, left click on it, find the "Copy to Output Directory" option and select "Copy if newer"

Are you running a 32-Bit OS?

The windows installer is only available for 32-Bit windows. If you are using a 64-bit OS, there are three possible ways to resolve this issue:

• You can download the 64bit binary only zip package from sourceforge and add it to your project.
• You can also recompile OpenCV from source for 64-bit platform. See the instruction for building from SVN
• Alternatively you can force your .NET application to run in 32bit mode, even on a 64-bit OS. To do this, in the configuration page of your executable project, select Platform Target as 'x86'.

Are you missing any dependency?

Download Dependency Walker and use it to open the "cvextern.dll" file. Check if any dependency is missing.

I have checked all of above but I still got the Exception

In this case, please try to build and run the examples. After building the examples, try to run the "Hello World" Program.

If "Hello World" runs without any problem, compare it with you project, find the difference in configuration and fix it.

If "Hello World" get the same "The type initializer for 'Emgu.CV.CvInvoke' threw an exception." message, try to find out the InnerException and report it to the discussion forum

Building from SVN

If you wants to build the development version of Emgu CV from source code, you can to get it from SVN following instructions on This page.

Prerequisite

• You will need to install CMAKE in-order to build the unmanaged C++ code (OpenCV and cvextern.dll).
• You will need either Visual Studio 2010 / Visual Studio 2008 / Visual Studio 2005 to build the Managed code (Emgu CV)

Building the unmanaged code

32-Bit Windows

Run Build_Binary_x86.bat script located in the trunk folder of SVN.

64-Bit Windows

Run Build_Binary_x86-64.bat script located in the trunk folder of SVN.

Building the managed code

• Browse to the Solution Folder
  • If you are using Visual Studio 2005, browse to VS2005_MonoDevelop
  • If you are using Visual Studio 2008, browse to VS2008
• Open Emgu.CV.sln and build the solution.

At this point, the Emgu CV dlls should be available under bin folder in the top most directory.

Linux

Getting the Dependency

Fedora 14

• OpenCV
  • We will build a custom version of OpenCV in the next step. It is recommended to remove any OpenCV package if it is installed on your machine. You should remove OpenCV by running as root

     yum remove opencv 

• Mono
  • You will need Mono >= 2.4.
  • Emgu CV library use WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and therefore also requires mono-wcf.

• CMake

Emgu CV has adapted to use cmake to compile all it source code (as well as OpenCV). Make sure you have cmake installed.

• Installing the dependencies

You can install the dependencies by running as root

 yum install mono-core mono-extras mono-devel mono-wcf gcc-c++ cmake svn libpng-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel jasper-devel libtiff-devel libgeotiff-devel gtk2-devel OpenEXR-devel libv4l-devel eigen2-devel libdc1394-devel qt-devel

Ubuntu 10.10

• Mono
  • You will need Mono >= 2.6
  • Emgu CV library use WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and therefore also requires libmono-wcf3.0-cil.
• OpenCV
  • We will build a custom version of OpenCV in the next step. It is recommended to remove any OpenCV package if it is installed on your machine.
• CMake

Emgu CV has adapted to use cmake to compile all it source code (as well as OpenCV).

• Installing the prerequisites

You can install the prerequisites by running

sudo apt-get install build-essential monodevelop libmono-wcf3.0-cil libtiff4-dev libgeotiff-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libavcodec-dev libswscale-dev libavformat-dev libopenexr-dev libjasper-dev libdc1394-22-dev libv4l-dev libqt4-opengl-dev libeigen2-dev cmake-curses-gui svn

Building from Source

• To build from source, you will need a SVN client to check out the source code from SourceForge. For more information, see SVN. The following command can be used to check out the source:

svn co https://emgucv.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/emgucv/trunk emgucv 

• Go to emgucv directory

cd emgucv

• Use cmake to generate make file

cmake -DBUILD_NEW_PYTHON_SUPPORT:BOOL=FALSE -DBUILD_TESTS:BOOL=FALSE -DBUILD_DOXYGEN_DOCS:BOOL=FALSE .

This will generate make file for Emgu CV

• Build Emgu CV by calling

make

Sit back and wait as this will build OpenCV, as well as cvextern.so, Emgu.Util.dll, Emgu.CV.dll, Emgu.CV.UI.dll and Emgu.CV.ML.dll

• Now go to the bin folder

cd bin

• make sure mono can load the dynamic library from the current location by typing

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

• Try to run the example

mono Example.PlanarSubdivision.monoexe

You should see the planar subdivision window

• Follow the instruction on Compiling with Monodevelop, as the environment has been setup by cmake

System.DllNotFoundException

If you encounter this exception during

mono Example.PlanarSubdivision.monoexe

Your OpenCV build might be incomplete (e.g. GTK+ 2.x devel library is missing). To trace the cause of the error, run

MONO_LOG_LEVEL=debug mono Example.PlanarSubdivision.monoexe

and exam the error message.

Building Installable Package

RPM Package for Fedora 14

• Make sure the dependency is satisfied.
• Make sure that cmake >= 2.8.1 is installed. You can do this by running as root

  yum --enablerepo=rawhide install cmake

• Check out the source from SVN and go the the emgucv source folder
• Configure the package with

  cmake -DBUILD_NEW_PYTHON_SUPPORT:BOOL=FALSE -DEMGU_CV_EXAMPLE_BUILD:BOOL=FALSE -DBUILD_TESTS:BOOL=FALSE -DBUILD_DOXYGEN_DOCS:BOOL=FALSE ..

• Create a rpm package by running as root

  make package

• You should get a libemgucv-{VERSION}.{SUBVERSION}-{arch}.rpm file which includes
  • OpenCV library and documentations
  • Emgu CV library and its dependencies (including ZedGraph and zlib.net)

Debian Package for Ubuntu 10.10

• Make sure the dependency is satisfied.
• Check out the source from SVN and go the the emgucv source folder
• Configure the package with

  cmake -DBUILD_NEW_PYTHON_SUPPORT:BOOL=FALSE -DEMGU_CV_EXAMPLE_BUILD:BOOL=FALSE -DBUILD_TESTS:BOOL=FALSE .

• Create a debian package with

  sudo make package

• You should get a libemgucv-{VERSION}.{SUBVERSION}-{arch}.deb file which includes
  • OpenCV library and documentations
  • Emgu CV library and its dependencies (including ZedGraph)