Video for Linux (v4l) library for Haskell

Hackage and Google turn up nothing¹, so I am asking here; has anyone written a v4l library for Haskell? I have been reading the v4l documentation² and I am ready to implement a Haskell interface for webcams, but it would be a waste of effort if someone's already got one knocking about. I could hack on theirs! Cheers! Christopher Done ¹ In fact, the only Google result is a posting to this mailing list asking if there is a v4l library to which the single response is "no, write an FFI interface". ² http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sayles/VFL_HowTo/ and http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sayles/VFL_HowTo/Video4LinuxAPI.html

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Christopher Done
Hackage and Google turn up nothing¹, so I am asking here; has anyone written a v4l library for Haskell?
I have been reading the v4l documentation² and I am ready to implement a Haskell interface for webcams, but it would be a waste of effort if someone's already got one knocking about. I could hack on theirs!
If you end up starting from scratch, I'd suggest looking into Xuggler (http://xuggle.com) as a starting point. I was recently considering V4L for a java project, but I found that Xuggler was "better" (unfortunately I really can't remember what the definition of "better" was in that case...). Xuggler uses FFMPEG, which (as far as I could tell..) gave it a lot more capabilities than V4L. I'm no expert, and Xuggle may simply not do what you want, but it's worth a look. --Rogan
Cheers!
Christopher Done
¹ In fact, the only Google result is a posting to this mailing list asking if there is a v4l library to which the single response is "no, write an FFI interface". ² http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sayles/VFL_HowTo/ and http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sayles/VFL_HowTo/Video4LinuxAPI.html
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On Sun, 2009-12-27 at 14:28 -0800, Rogan Creswick wrote:
On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Christopher Done
wrote: Hackage and Google turn up nothing¹, so I am asking here; has anyone written a v4l library for Haskell?
I have been reading the v4l documentation² and I am ready to implement a Haskell interface for webcams, but it would be a waste of effort if someone's already got one knocking about. I could hack on theirs!
If you end up starting from scratch, I'd suggest looking into Xuggler (http://xuggle.com) as a starting point.
I was recently considering V4L for a java project, but I found that Xuggler was "better" (unfortunately I really can't remember what the definition of "better" was in that case...). Xuggler uses FFMPEG, which (as far as I could tell..) gave it a lot more capabilities than V4L.
I'm no expert, and Xuggle may simply not do what you want, but it's worth a look.
--Rogan
Isn't v4l an interface of linux kernel and therefore limiting the capabilities. ffmpeg on the other hand only converts one format into another and as itself cannot contact webcam or tv tuner without v4l (althought it seems to have wrappers around v4l). Regards
participants (3)
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Christopher Done
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Maciej Piechotka
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Rogan Creswick