Announcing a new F-10 Feature Proposal: Better Webcam Support

Hans de Goede j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl
Fri May 23 20:16:40 UTC 2008


Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Hans de Goede (j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl) said: 
>> See:
>>
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterWebcamSupport
> 
> Any reason a shim library is simpler than porting apps to V4L2?
> 

Because most v4l1 apps expect to say things to the webcam like gimme rgb data 
please, whereas the raw format on the usb wire may be something completely 
different with v4l1, the conversion used to be done in the kernel, but with 
v4l2 this is (rightfully) no longer done.

Also there are quite a few v4l1 apps.

So its not just API conversion, but also image format conversion. Alternatively 
a v4l2 library could be written which offers a higher abstraction layer could 
be written and apps ported to that, I guess thats the golden way. But so much 
todo in so little time.

The shim also has the advantage of working with abominations like flash and 
skype, which although abominal are also quite popular.

Regards,

Hans






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