Subject: Re: Webcam support - where to go from here?
To: Martijn van Buul <martijnb@atlas.ipv6.stack.nl>
From: Dave Tyson <Dave.Tyson@liverpool.ac.uk>
List: current-users
Date: 03/03/2005 09:29:42
On Wednesday 02 March 2005 18:19, Martijn van Buul wrote:
> It occurred to me that Martijn van Buul wrote in gmane.os.netbsd.current:
>
> [snip]
>
> The silence is deafaning. Am I correct in assuming nobody gives a damn?

I am interested in both webcam support and video and would like some kind of 
port of Mythtv or similar to NetBSD.  I think there are a couple of people 
from FreeBSD looking at this.

IMHO the only practical approaches are (3) use V4l2 or (4) a separate API and 
a compatability layer. Reusing the bktr API (2)  is probably a bad thing as a 
lot of the satellite PCI cards have quite a different set of requirements .
 
There is a lot of variation in the protocols used in webcams, I have a USB 
quickcam which is supported with software in pkgsrc and also a homec@m which 
pushes out an mpeg stream (and in not supported). The latter would be a 
candidate for support using a Tv/video style API. 

Whatever is chosen it needs to fit in or be acceptable to FreeBSD/OpenBSD to 
avoid fragmentation in the BSD camp. At least V4l is a well supported and
universal despite some of its shortcomings...

Dave
 
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