[Nottingham] Webcam snapshots

[Phil Lakin]

On 25 August 2011 09:34, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:

> On 25 August 2011 05:18, James Moore <jmthelostpacket at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
> [---]
> >>
> >> Anyone any ideas? I think this has got to be one of those things that
> >> has already been done...
> >>
> > IME Zoneminder grabs frames on a round-robin basis, which has the added
> > bonus of complete system failure if one of the cameras fail(!) since it
> > would just sit there and wait until the camera comes back online.
> Probably
> > not the best thing to use if you're using remote cameras over the
> internet.
> > So basically what you would have on a four camera setup is every fourth
> > frame is grabbed from each camera, in sequence, or a net of 7fps per
> camera.
> > Good if you're doing bullet time, not so good if you're doing what I
> think
> > you're trying to do - simultaneous grabbing from all four units?
>
> Hence, is there any way to use the four webcams in reasonable time (1
> snapshot per second or two) without them all continuously streaming
> data over the USB2?
>
>
I had a similar problem not so long ago, and really struggled to find
anything to do the job, particularly waiting for the camera exposure to
settle down to get a decent picture. The webcams I was using took at least
5-10 seconds before they got a good snap. I ended up using webcam
from xawtv. I remember having to play about with experimental drivers for
the webcams to get it working, so your luck may vary.

You may have more luck with other applications listed as framegrabbers from
tldp.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Webcam-HOWTO/framegrabbers.html

Best of luck.

Phil
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