PATCH: use libv4l1 to add support for libv4l2 devices
Short intro: I'm a long time Linux developer currently working on improving webcam support in Linux, see: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterWebcamSupport
I'm one of the authors of the v4l2 rewrite of the gspca usb webcam driver framework (which supports more then 100 different cams), this v4l2 rewrite has been merged into the 2.6.27 kernel and thus will become available in the official Linux kernel soon.
One of the parts of the v4l2 rewrite has been removing conversion from various manufacturer cam specific video formats to more normal videoformats from the drivers, as this really does not belong in kernelspace.
As a result of this the gspca subdrivers can generate raw video frames in the following formats:
#define V4L2_PIX_FMT_SN9C10X v4l2_fourcc('S', '9', '1', '0') /* SN9C10x compressed bayer #define V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA501 v4l2_fourcc('S', '5', '0', '1') /* YUYV per line #define V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA505 v4l2_fourcc('S', '5', '0', '5') /* YYUV per line #define V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA508 v4l2_fourcc('S', '5', '0', '8') /* YUVY per line #define V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA561 v4l2_fourcc('S', '5', '6', '1') /* compressed GBRG bayer #define V4L2_PIX_FMT_PAC207 v4l2_fourcc('P', '2', '0', '7') /* compressed BGGR bayer
As we do not want to see each application implement (nor having to implement) support for these various formats, as we like to have one code base and only one code base for these formats. A library has been written (with me as the main author) to convert from these formats to BGR24 or YUV420. For more on this library see: http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/3636.html
This library has 3 parts, the actual conversion lib, a library to make existing v4l2 applications use the conversion lib transparantly and a library which adds v4l1 emulation in userspace for v4l2 devices (the kernel space emulation is incomplete in many drivers).
As vlc sofar only has v4l1 support I've written a patch to use the v4l1 emulation lib, which means that with this patch not only the conversion will be handled but that vlc also will gain v4l2 support.
I've not (yet) made it so that the use of libv4l1 is conditional but doing so is trivial (assuming someone else will write the autoconf stuff)
You can get the latest version of libv4l here: http://people.atrpms.net/~hdegoede/libv4l-0.3.7.tar.gz
Note that this library is an official part of the v4l-dvb project, we just haven't gotten around yet to making a homepage for it at linuxtv.org, but if you look for example at the official v4l-dvb mercurial tree: http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb Under v4l2-apps/lib/libv4l you will find libv4l there, a proper homepage is on my todo.
A note about the patch, the patch is actually quite simple, as libv4l1 has been designed for quick porting of existing apps to libv4l1, for this reason libv4l1 fully mimicks the raw v4l1 /dev/video interface.
All that the patch does and all that needs to be changed to use libv4l1 is replace the relevant xxx calls on /dev/video with v4l1_xxx calls.