[NCLUG] V4L Snapshot help

[Brian Wood]

Grant Johnson wrote:
> Rob Bayerl wrote:
>> What card is the v4l device?  If unknown what v4l driver does it use?
>> I would suspect it is RTJPEG, maybe image magick can convert it.
>> Sorry I forgot mplayer doesn't do snapshots..
>>   
> I do not know what the format is when I do the cat.   When I use
> mencoder to grab it, it it OK, though.  I told mencoder to grab a few
> frames (when I told it only one frame, it wigged out, and got nothing,
> so I told it 3, and it seems pretty good.)  Then I told ffmpeg to make
> png out of it.  It seems to work.  The only thing (and this doesn't
> really matter for what I am doing) is that I have not yet figured out
> how to capture sound with it.  If I really need the sound, I will
> probably just route it through my sound card.
> 
> I am planning of capturing a shot of the prairie.  It should be kinda
> cool this winter when things are ugly.  I will pass out the URL if
> anyone cares once I get it up and running.
> 
> I have an outdoor camera (small and cheap at Harbor Freight, and does
> infrared so it works in low light) and a Pinnacle PCTV HD 800i video
> capture/tuner card I got from Woot! for $20.  Years ago I had the
> prairie dog camera.   Now we have no rodents, but we will have snow,
> wind, neighbor's horses, etc. to look at.

Interesting, there's a fellow in Boulder doing that:

http://www.reputable.com/repcam.php

Ooops, I see he moved to Berthoud, I think he sells old SGI gear as well.

If you capture a bit from your camera, you might try playing it with
mplayer and see if it identifies what it is, it's usually pretty good at
that, and if mencoder understands it mplayer should as well.

Shouldn't you consider a live video stream, so we can see the action
when the horses blow over in the wind?

beww