How to make a picturebox transparent?

Question

1.00/5 (1 vote)

See more:

I'm using direct show to capture video the problem that I faced that I have to to put a picturebox over the picturebox which displays the live video (call it camerabox). I tried to make the picturebox background transparent and the camerabox the parent of the picture box but when I run the code the picturebox disappeared. Also, I tried to make a custom control and override the background to make it transparent but when I run the code I found that I have to refresh the form with a timer. When I refreshed with a timer the customcontrol disappears and appear (make like flashes).
I don't know what to do. My question is there any way to make a transparent picturebox over the camerabox(the picturebox that displays the live video) ???

Posted 18-Apr-13 13:20pm

Haytham.Breaka

Updated 18-Apr-13 13:23pm

v2

Add a Solution

Comments

Thomas Barbare 19-Apr-13 1:46am

Little question, why do you need two pictureBox ?

1 solution

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Dave Kreskowiak · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-18T15:10:00

You really can't do that. Controls in Windows Forms are never really transparent. The Transparent color only tells the control that it should take on the background properties of the control that is hosting it, giving the ILLUSION of transparency.

The problem with this is that even though you can see the background of the form your control is sitting on, you cannot see any controls that sit between your control and the form. This is because when a control is placed on the form it OWNS all of the pixels that the control is drawn in. Any controls that sit behind your control do not paint themselves in those pixels, therefor, there's no control there for you to see through your control.

You cannot use a control to do this. You either have to custom paint the overlay yourself or scrap Windows Forms and switch to WPF, where this is much easier to do.

Custom painting will also be very difficult to pull off because you have to constantly repaint your overlay in between frames of the video. Don't even begin to think there will be a tutorial for this.