The Color Image Stream

Kinect has two cameras: an IR camera and a normal video camera. The video camera produces a basic color video feed like any off-the-shelf video camera or webcam. This stream is the least complex of the three by the way it data produces and configuration settings. Therefore, it serves perfectly as an introduction to using a Kinect data stream.

Working with a Kinect data stream is a three-step process. The stream must first be enabled. Once enabled, the application extracts frame data from the stream, and finally the application processes the frame data. The last two steps continue over and over for as long as frame data is available. Continuing with the code from Listing 2-1, we code to initialize the ColorImageStream, as shown in Listing 2-2.