Survey on Video Capture API: BSD meteor(4) vs. Video for Linux 1/2

[Gary Corcoran]

Intron is my alias on the Internet wrote:
> If I would code to enhance video capture support for FreeBSD, what video
> capture API do you prefer? Your choices:
> 
> 1. BSD Brooktree 848 (See bktr(4) and meteor(4))
> 
> This is *BSD-specific video capture API. So far only Brooktree
> (Conexant) 848/878 chip is supported by *BSD. Thus, actually this API
> is BT848/878-specific.
> 
> 2. Video for Linux 1/2 (See http://v4l2spec.bytesex.org/)
>     These are the video capture APIs for Linux. There are two versions:
> V4L and V4L2. Supported hardware list:
>    http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/drivers.html    (V4L2 mainly)
>    http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html           (V4L)
> 
> MPlayer supports both kinds of API's. But to gain Linux binary
> compatibility for FreeBSD, V4L/V4L2 must be introduced to FreeBSD.

If FreeBSD would support my ATI All-In-Wonder TV tuner/capture card, then
I might finally be able to stop using Windows...  ;-)

FFmpeg/MPlayer could be used to do the actual realtime capture/encoding,
but it expects a video4linux (1) interface to be present.  Of course there
may be other, better solutions for capturing that I'm not aware of.
But I prefer to capture in high bitrate MPEG-1, so that I can edit
it in VirtualDub*, and then transcode to another codec at a much lower
bitrate.

So anyway, you have one vote for using V4L...

Gary

* a windows program, but supposedly can work under WINE emulation