Webcam recommendations

[Matthias Apitz]

Juergen Lock nox at jelal.kn-bremen.de Sun Mar 20 15:46:19 UTC 2011 writes:

> I thought the reason it doesn't work was just that the linuxolator
> doesn't support v4l2?
> 
> Anyway, the webcamd port now installs manpages for the Linux
> drivers it uses so you can also look there to find out if a particular
> webcam (or dvb tuner) might work.  Look at SEE ALSO in webcamd's
> manpage...

Hi Juergen,

My Acer D250 netbook has a built-in cam (0c45:62c0) and I have an
additional USB Philips SPC900NC. Both are supported by the webcamd
drivers and show up in its man pages, in pwc.4 and uvc.4.

But: 'supported' does also mean that you need some application to talk
to them and it turned out that KDE's Kopete uses ioctl of v4l2 (and
works with the 0c45:62c0) while Skype talks ioctl of v4l and does not
work with the 0c45:62c0.

The SPC900NC works nicely with Skype in both ways, either with the
pwc.ko kernel mod or via webcamd with its pwc-driver. 

That's why I think that the man pages of webcamd are not enough, there
should be a note about if v4l or v4l2 is awaited from the application;
or we need some overall table describing the cams(...) from all webcamd
drivers and the application which can be used.

A side note: Hans, the above mentioned Philips SPC900NC shows up on
plug-in as:

Feb  2 08:11:07 current root: Unknown USB device: vendor 0x0471 product 0x0329 bus uhub2

but in pwc.4 as 0471:0320; the source itself 
v4l-dvb-abd3aac6644e/linux/drivers/media/video/pwc/pwc-if.c
contains the correct value:

$ fgrep 0329 v4l-dvb-abd3aac6644e/linux/drivers/media/video/pwc/pwc-if.c
        { USB_DEVICE(0x0471, 0x0329) }, /* Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera
	*/

HIH

	matthias
-- 
Matthias Apitz
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