Recording from multiple webcams

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> On Tue, 17 May 2016 19:04:59 +0200, Eduardo Morras via freebsd-questions
> wrote:
> > Can I record video from multiple webcams? I need record from 3 webcams
> > simultaneusly, I've install webcamd but can't find any app to record
> > from them. Some apps allow 1 webcam but I need at least 3.
>
> Not tested (because I don't have even one webcam here), but would
> mencoder be an option for you? Many years ago, I've been using a
> computer with two Haupauge TV/video cards and accessed their video
> inputs independently by accessing /dev/bktr0 with one mencoder,
> and /dev/bktr1 with the other... not sure if mencoder could do
> the same with webcams controlled by webcamd...
>
>
> --
> Polytropon
> Magdeburg, Germany
> Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
> Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
> _______________________________________________
>
>

I do not have MEncoder :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEncoder
( http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ )
( http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/index.html )

>From documentation , it seems that MEncoder can encode from TV , Radio ,
but I could not see web camera .
Perhaps , it may encode from multiple network cameras ( see Section 3.4 :
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/streaming.html ) because each camera
will have its own IP/address .


I do not have a working FreeBSD .
I tried in Fedora 20 x86_64 KDE ( Assume you have a KDE in your FreeBSD ) .


I have attached two web cameras .
I have started Cheese . It attached to one of the cameras .
I have started Camorama . It attached to another of the cameras .

A second copy of Cheese did not start .
A second copy of Camorama did not start  ( gave an error that "Could not
connect to /dev/video0"  ) .
I have started UCView . It connected to /dev/video1 , but it did not show
any image .


Conclusions :

No one of the programs has any menu item to select a web camera device to
connect .
No one of the programs are able to work in multiple copies .


There are open source other programs you may try compile and run in
multiple copies , but most of them are working with common libraries .
Therefore you need to make modifications to these programs to allow them to
connect to different web cameras , either from one program or from
different programs .


My knowledge is so much .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk