FFMPEG with C++ accessing a webcam

c++ ffmpeg libavcodec
Godspped picture Godspped · Mar 12, 2014 · Viewed 8.3k times · Source

I have searched all around and can not find any examples or tutorials on how to access a webcam using ffmpeg in C++. Any sample code or any help pointing me to some documentation, would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Answer

user3182551 picture user3182551 · Apr 13, 2014

I have been working on this for months now. Your first "issue" is that ffmpeg (libavcodec and other ffmpeg libs) does NOT access web cams, or any other device.

For a basic USB webcam, or audio/video capture card, you first need driver software to access that device. For linux, these drivers fall under the Video4Linux (V4L2 as it is known) category, which are modules that are part of most distros. If you are working with MS Windows, then you need to get an SDK that allows you to access the device. MS may have something for accessing generic devices, (but from my experience, they are not very capable, if they work at all) If you've made it this far, then you now have raw frames (video and/or audio).

THEN you get to the ffmpeg part - libavcodec - which takes the raw frames (audio and/or video) and encodes them into a streams, which ffmpeg can then mux into your final container.

I have searched, but have found very few examples of all of these, and most are piece-meal.

If you don't need to actually code of this yourself, the command line ffmpeg, as well as vlc, can access these devices, capture and save to files, and even stream.

That's the best I can do for now.

ken

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