Cam software for measurement?

Hi folks,

With the ubiquity and cheapness of web and other video cameras these days, and their usefulness for recording rapidly evolving events in the lab, I was wondering if there's any utilities to help use them in a lab setting. I'm thinking of software that makes it easy to obtain measurements from the recorded video, or from stills of that video. Examples might be measurements of time elapsed, measurements of angles, easy calibration of an image to a scale. Other things that might be useful would be direct control of gain on a webcam during the capture phase such that one could make estimates of relative intensity for flames, glows, or incandescence. Even if it were possible, a color calibration such that one could get rough and ready spectrographic estimates.

I'm just thinking that a simple webcam would be a highly useful investigative instrument if such software tools existed to make handling the analysis easier.

It would also help us cheapasses with ancient $20 hamfest oscilloscopes, trying to do stuff that yer $3000 digital storage scope is optimised for. (Although yes, I know about scope software for soundcards)

So, anyone know of anything at all that makes lab video or cam usage easier in any form, or is a "killer app" for this kind of stuff?

Thanks,

Flashman.

(BTW, haven't got specific uses yet, just trying to stock the "arsenal" so I can better plan future campaigns as it were)