NAME
webcam-server - a server to stream webcam video or snapshots
SYNOPSIS
webcam-server [-d device] [-p port] [-D[sh]] [-m[bsf]] [-c caption]
[-tf R,G,B] [-tb R,G,B] [-tt R,G,B] [-T x,y] [-q jpeg_quality] [-g
geometry] [-n] [-x] [-G gamma] [-f[hv]] [-R rotation] [-r] [-s] [-v]
[-l logfile] [-a] [-h]
DESCRIPTION
webcam-server is a server daemon that can stream frames from any
video4linux device to remote clients running the provided applet or
single frame snapshots running a web browser.
OPTIONS
-a Enable test mode - does not accept client connections and prints
out the current frames per second (fps).
-c caption
Set a caption to be displayed near the bottom of each captured
frame. This string can be formatted for strftime() as follows:
%Y - year, %m - month, %d - day, %H - hours, %M - minutes, %S -
seconds
The following variables are also formatted:
%%V - webcam-server version, %%f - current frame, %%v - number
of viewers
example: webcam-server -c "my webcam %d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S [version:
%%V, %%f frames, %%v viewers]"
-d device
Specify the video4linux supported device to capture frames from.
-Dh, -Ds
Disable HTTP (h) snapshots or applet streams (s).
-fh, -fv
Flip image horizontally (h) or vertically (v).
-g geometry
Set the image capture size. The specified size must be supported
by your video device.
example: webcam-server -g 352x288
-G gamma
Simple gamma correction. Adjusts image pixels by specified
value. Valid range is -100 to 100.
-h Display help and command line parameters.
-l logfile
Specify a file to print log messages.
-mb, -ms, -mf value
Maximum bytes (b), seconds (s) or frames (f) per client
connection.
-n Force use of read() system call. For some devices this can be
faster than the standard memory mapped method of frame capture.
(**Recommended for some webcams)
-p port
Listen for client connections on the specified port.
-q jpeg_quality
Set JPEG compression quality. Valid range is 0-100 (%).
-r Retry camera initialization inifinitely upon failure. Useful for
when you unplug your camera frequently; the server will start
and wait until the camera has been connected.
-R n Rotate the image 90 degrees (n) times. 1 = 90, 2 = 180, 3 = 270
degrees
-s Enable daemon mode via daemon() system call.
-tf R,G,B
Set text foreground colour. Valid range is 0-255 (for each in
R,G,B).
-tb colour
Set text background colour. Valid range is 0-255 (for each in
R,G,B).
-tf colour
Set text transparency colour. Valid range is 0-255 (for each in
R,G,B). To make the foreground or background of the caption
transparent, set it to the same R,G,B values as the transparency
colour.
-T x,y Draw the caption at the specified x,y coordinates in the frame.
If the caption geometry (size of the text in pixels) is larger
than the width or height of the image subtract the x,y point,
the excess text will be truncated.
-v Verbose mode - display connections and messages to standard
output.
-x Swap RGB colours to BGR colours. (Use this if your frames look
blue or red)
GETTING STARTED
The easiest way to make sure things are working is to run the server
with no options and try to access "http://localhost:8888" via a web
browser.
If your device does not seem to work, try using the -n option to force
the use of the read() system call. Try using your device with other
software and try similar settings with webcam-server.
If you are using a v4l supported TV capture card and want to change
channels, download xawtv and use v4lctl to configure it. This
functionality is not yet supported by webcam-server.
SETTING UP THE APPLET
Note: The applet must reside on the same host as the webcam-server!
Copy the following code into a publicly visible HTML document. You may
have to adjust some values to fit your needs. Before it can be viewable
by others, you must change "localhost" to the host name or IP address
of your server.
<APPLET code="WebCamApplet.class" archive="applet.jar" width="320"
height="240"> <param name=URL value="http://localhost:8888"> <param
name=FPS value="1"> <param name=width value="320"> <param name=height
value="240"> </APPLET>
AUTHOR
Donn Morrison <donn@donn.dyndns.org>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2004 Donn Morrison <donn@donn.dyndns.org>
This manual page was written by Luca Bedogni <me@lucabedogni.it>, for
the Debian project (but may be used by others).
(c) 2004 Donn Morrison webcam-server(1)