webcam : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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webcam

A webcam is a low resolution video camera that can broadcast images to the web. Typically clients just repeatedly ask to view a jpg image that is a little different each time, at whatever rate they please. For heavy duty compression, you use hardware MPG3 or MPG4 compression, and send using a JMF stream at fixed frame per second rate. I have written a lightweight Webcam viewer called NetworkCam. Knute Johnson, who frequents the comp.lang.java.programmer newgroup, has written a class for interfacing to webcams.

To interface a Webcam to Java you use JMF, Java Media Framework. Unfortunately many cameras don’t seem to work. I have only been able to get ones that support RGB (not YUV) to work.

Webcams that Work with JMF

Labtec USB: works but image quality is atrocious. Very cheap.

Webcams that Don’t Work with JMF

E-Video DC-350 USB
Creative Labs

The strange thing is Java Media Studio does work with cameras that won’t work in JMF. They are doing somthing clever in Java Media Studio to make YUV work.

JMF
simultaneous video capture and play

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