webcam video capture

[Luigi Rizzo]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 12:16:05AM -0700, Julian Elischer wrote:
> does anyone have anything that can capture video
> from the webcams that we have support for?
> 
> I have been able to get still shots but I would like to be able to 
> write a stream to a file..
> 
> 
> I could do it with firewire, but I need to do it with cheap
> hardware..

if you look at the pwcview application that is in the linux-kmod-compat
or linux-kmod-gspca, that one has support for writing raw or jpg
frames to disk. The source code is small and relatively simple
to modif, and it can run in headless mode.

Note though that for many of the webcams, the gspca driver does not
have good support for controlling brightness or contrast, which
basically means that outdoor pictures tend to come coimpletely
white.

With the cheap camcorders under $200 (and they have better resolution,
optics, zoom), one wonders whether it is
worth the trouble of going through USB...
Of course it works a lot better for us europeans with the Euro vs
USD exchange rate, and firweire-equipped camcorders sell for less than
Euro 150 including tax :)


> julian
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