Watch a remote webcam?

Message

trumee · Post by **trumee** » Tue Jan 26, 2010 8:14 pm

Hi all,

I have installed a webcam at my folks place. I was hoping to view it on a remote system. The system which has the webcam doesnt run a display manager.

I sshed into the box, started Xvfb and then skype. Skype logged in ok, but the webcam didnt work. I used skype since it provides video compression which i need since the box has a slow upload speed.

I dont necessarily need skype. Is there any software which i can run on the box which will let the remote user view the webcam?

kevstar31 · Post by **kevstar31** » Tue Jan 26, 2010 8:49 pm

What is the model of the webcam?

trumee · Post by **trumee** » Tue Jan 26, 2010 9:14 pm

Ok, skype with video did run this time. I had to start Xvfb using 24bit color depth. However, skype does a segmentation fault as soon as i turn the video on. The receiving end did receive video momentarily.

I had to run skype using LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

The webcam is some noname version. It uses the gspca driver.

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lsusb -v
  idVendor           0x0ac8 Z-Star Microelectronics Corp.                    
  idProduct          0x307b USB 1.1 Webcam

I was able to successfully record video using

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LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video2 nosound -ovc lavc -o abc.avi

kevstar31 · Post by **kevstar31** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 1:28 am

http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showto ... try1007431

1. Install VMware server, Windows XP guest, Skype for Windows
2. Once the VMware and XP guest is started and before connecting the camera to the guest using Devices -> Logitech Audio Device -> Connect run the following in the console
sudo rmmod ehci-hcd
3. Do Devices -> Logitech Audio Device -> Connect
Windows will complain that the device can run faster but that is OK.
4. Now you can Skype using this camera and microphone on this camera. Works beautifully even though it runs in virtual machine (Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz/2GB ram).

poly_poly-man · Post by **poly_poly-man** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 1:37 am

does it have to be skype? Some clever ffmpeg (and/or ffserver) magic can give you the stream over standard http or so, if you want.

trumee · Post by **trumee** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:25 am

No doesnt need to be skype. I chose skype because it must do some good video compression.

poly_poly-man · Post by **poly_poly-man** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 12:12 pm

trumee wrote:No doesnt need to be skype. I chose skype because it must do some good video compression.

So while you may find that skype is a good premade, fit-it-yourself option, essentially all that video compression is is a transcode of the input video (probably high-bandwidth raw YUV) to a codec that is inherently nicer on bandwidth, plus probably some more bandwidth reduction.

So yes, you will find that as long as you set it up (whcich might prove slightly difficult), you'll have good quality compression that, best of all is tunable.

trumee · Post by **trumee** » Sat Jan 30, 2010 10:11 am

Ok, i have finally got around to streaming using vlc using the command

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cvlc -vvv  v4l:///dev/video2 --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=none,vb=800,ab=128}:standard{access=http,mux=ogg,dst=192.168.1.1:8080}'

My big gripe with this is that anybody can snoop in on the stream. Vlc doesnt seem to provide any way of putting any password access on the stream.

Not very excited about this

poly_poly-man · Post by **poly_poly-man** » Sat Jan 30, 2010 1:35 pm

If you can possibly stream to a file, then run a webserver for that file, you'll have significantly more control.

Also, good to know that vlc can fit that situation.

Chaosite · Post by **Chaosite** » Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:23 pm

Wait wait, does this _have_ to be video? are you trying to do something like video conference (if so, why doesn't the machine have a display?)

What about this: http://webcamserver.sourceforge.net/
It's in portage, too... media-video/webcamserver

I recall there being a program that does it without the java applet, if you're not into that sort of thing. It used static images and a constantly reloading page.