Handling multiple video devices

[Anne Wilson]

I have three video devices that may be in use at any time on this box.  One is 
a pci video-capture card, so always present.  The other two are webcam and 
usb tv tuner.  The problem is that every package that can handle either the 
webcam or the tv tuner looks for video0.

tvtime's menu has an entry for changing the input, and I thought that should 
do it, but absolutely nothing happens if I click on that.  I haven't had any 
more luck with amsn + webcam either - as long as it gets video0 it is happy, 
but it won't talk to anything else.

There must be some way to configure these to talk to video*.  I've had some 
luck with getting udev to track the webcam connection, so if I could point 
amsn to /dev/webcam, that would be solved.  Similarly I could build a rule 
for the tuner, but it's no good if I can't get the software to use it.

Has anyone managed this sort of situation?

Anne