Play video from local camera with GStreamer without network streaming
Small application using GStreamer to play video stream from a camera that is
locally attached to the system, without using any network streams at all. The
4vl2src source from GStreamer is used as input. This will search for video
input, starting at /dev/video0. The output is send to GStreamer's sink
glimagesink. This will show the video on the default display.
The target platform for this application is mainly the Raspberry Pi without X installed. However, it should also work on any system with or without X installed. The camera can be a USB camera attached to the system or any other camera that can be found by GStreamer.
Apart from that this application doesn't need a network or storage, it is also guaranteed that no network or storage will be used.
The application can be run with the command:
./run.sh
It will, with the help of label.sh, run:
./bin/gstcam-MACHINE-DISTRIB-VERSION-gst-GSTREM
Where MACHINE, DISTRIB, VERSION and GSTREAM need to be replaced with the name
of the machine's (system's) architecture, the name and version of the
distribution (operating system) and the version of GStreamer installed. Simply
see what is available in the bin directory or has been created by make on
your system. Choose the executable most likely to match your system if run.sh
cannot find a matchting build.
Examples of available binaries are:
./bin/gstcam-x86_64-Ubuntu-16.10-gst-1.8.3./bin/gstcam-armv7l-Raspbian-8.0-gst-1.4.4./bin/gstcam-aarch64-Ubuntu-16.04-gst-1.8.3
Only a few command-line options and arguments can be passed to this application in order to keep this application simple and fast.
-h, --help
Shows the help options.
-a, --autovideosink
Normally, the GL Image sink is used for video output. In case that that is not
available, this option will let GStreamer use autovideosink to find a
suitable video sink.
-f, --fullscreen
TODO Uses the full resolution of the screen ... option ... Is overridden by --resolution.
-d, --device=FILE
GStreamer will search for the first camera available, starting at
/dev/video0. This can be the camera mounted in a laptop's lid. When it is
preferred to use another camera that is attached to the system, the specific
device can be given as an argument via this option.
-r, --resolution=WIDTHxHEIGTH
TODO Sets the resolution of the screen. The fullscreen option will be ignored.
The following application provide alternatives to gstcam but might have more requirements or dependencies for installation. The directory test has scripts to start these alternatives.
GStreamer Launcher can be run with:
gst-launch-1.0 -q v4l2src ! glimagesink
Libav can be run with:
TODO
FFmpeg can be run with:
ffplay -fs -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video0
or
ffplay -fs -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video0 -video_size 800x600
GTK+ UVC Viewer (guvcview) can be run with:
guvcview -m full -g none
or
guvcview -m full -g none -d /dev/video0
or
guvcview -m full -g none -d /dev/video0 -x 1280x768
or
guvcview -m full -g none -x 1280x768
Cheese can be run with:
cheese -f
or
cheese -f -d /dev/video0
See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=780849 for the -d option.
VLC can be run with:
cvlc --no-video-title-show --no-video-deco -f v4l2://
or
cvlc --no-video-title-show --no-video-deco -f v4l2:///dev/video0
see also --preferred-resolution.
MPV can be run with:
mpv --fullscreen av://v4l2:/dev/video0
see also expand, scale and dsize.
TODO
Xine can be run with:
TODO
Webcamoid can be run with:
webcamoid
Note that this application does not yet have command line arguments.
xawtv (unmaintained) can be run with:
xawtv -f
or
xawtv -f -c /dev/video0
raspibid can be run with:
raspivid -t 0 -rot 180
The following commands can be used to list which cameras are available:
v4l2-ctl --list-devices
Prerequisites for building this application can be installed with:
sudo apt-get install make gcc libgstreamer1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-tools
The application can be build by running:
make
and the resulting binary can be found in the bin directory. Note that several
builds are already available.
The source code can be checked with:
./check.sh
For checking, one has to have installed:
sudo apt-get install splint cppcheck
See source code for all comments with TODO. Try to get this application included in some GStreamer DEB package to get it deployed on Ubuntu and Debian (and Raspbian).
For this application the MIT License applies, see also the file LICENSE. The author of this software is Stichting z25.org.
