[Nottingham] Webcams (query on new laptop)

[Martin]

On 14/07/10 22:39, Brian Pickford wrote:
> 
> On 14 July 2010 22:14, Frederic Vagner <fred at vagner.me.uk
> 
>     I wonder : what can you do with a webcam on Linux. I can't make it work
>     with Pidgin, as apparently it does not support webcams, what can you do
>     with it ?
> 
> cheese, stopmotion, zoneminder

You might need to use v4l1compat to get some webcam streaming
applications to work. For example:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libv4l/v4l1compat.so camstream

I'll add to the list:

motion, camorama, camstream.

I've used Ekiga ("softphone") with a webcam fine. Not investigated any
others.


More of a problem is finding any webcams that are decent. Usually, even
if the sensor chips are fine, the lenses are rather poor. The newer
"UVC" webcams are definitely the way to go for compatibility.


Is there a list anywhere of v4l2 applications?

Have fun!
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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