Stream a webcam in real-time?

hunternet93 · 02-06-2010, 09:07 PM

I'm working on an internet-enabled robot project, and I need to stream video from a webcam over a network. I tried using VLC, and it works except the video is about 4 seconds behind real-time. Its not choppy or anything, just behind real time. Is there a better way to stream the video and get near-realtime speed? I don't care very much about video quality, as long as I can see whats happening. The webcam works well under v4l2. Any ideas?

macemoneta · 02-06-2010, 09:57 PM

If you can ssh (with X11 forwarding) to the machine with the webcam, you can run (for example):

Code:

/usr/bin/mplayer -nofs -nozoom -vo x11 tv:// -tv device=/dev/video0:driver=v4l2

On my network, the lag is less than a second.

hunternet93 · 02-07-2010, 09:45 AM

That works very well! Thanks! Now I'll have to try it over the internet.

jjhung88 · 02-15-2014, 02:59 PM

I am totally new at linux. Can someone help and explain in a bit more detail how to do this? What are the steps to do on the linux computer? How do I access the live stream from outside of the network?

Dafydd · 02-15-2014, 05:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjhung88

I am totally new at Linux. Can someone help and explain in a bit more detail how to do this? What are the steps to do on the Linux computer? How do I access the live stream from outside of the network?

You have ask a very broad question. It is no 1 page answer. I suggest you go to these 2 sites and read all the documentation. It may take a couple three days. It is good information and as complete as any on the web.

Then, if you have a project or app you are working on, write some code and come back here with examples of what does not work.

http://www.ffmpeg.org/
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html

PS
Are you new to computers and coding or just Linux?