Re: [xine-user] Using xine to watch V4L video

[James Courtier-D. <Ja...@su...>]

Nate Stuart wrote:

> Is there any way to use xine to display V4L video data, like from a 
> tuner card, or webcam?
>
> I don't need xine to control the device in any way, i can do that 
> seperately, I just want to correctly display the data (NTSC tuner, or 
> webcam) from /dev/video0 for example.
>
> The only meathod I have of doing this right now is by using ffserver, 
> and ffmpeg to encode and serve up the data, then use xine to grab the 
> http stream. This isn't going to work in the situation I need though 
> do to the delay in conversion, and switching channles on a tuner for 
> example becomes a real chore as you wait for the stream to refill the 
> buffer again, and again.
>
> This is for, of all things, a computer that is going into my car. I 
> have been coding a gui for the LCD display in the dash, and I am using 
> xine for all my media needs, such as playing DVD, CD's, MP3's, etc. 
> It's working REALLY well (massive kudos to the xine team for making 
> this possible), I was just curious if I could in anyway convert the 
> v4l data realtime to xine.
>
> Thanks!
> -Nate
>
>
The best way to achieve this is to make a "input plugin" for xine-lib.
The input plugin could then talk direct to the /dev/video0 and gather 
the video frames in whatever format they are.
This would cut out the re-encoding step.
This is already being done with the DVB input plugin for digital video. 
I imagine a similar thing can work for v4l.
Where is the source for v4l pictures coming from. I doubt you have a TV 
arial in your car!

Cheers
James