! Linux Capture Alternative Software: GTK+ UVC Viewer

[Rihard]

Hello to the Linux users.

I know that some of you use Linux and the software "Cheese" to record videos

that will be stacked into planetary images.

I haven't been playing with Linux for a while now, but I know that "Cheese' can

be pretty buggy sometimes. I have found a software called "GTK+ UVC Viewer" that, from the reports,

seems to be much more stable then cheese and has these main features:

- Supports "Universal Video Class" powered webcams

- Has a variety of photobooth-like filters, like in Cheese

- Like Sharpcap, it supports Dynamic Controls / Vendor Specific Controls (Only Logitech Cams at the moment)

- Saving the output in a variety of formats and codecs.

I haven't tried the software myself yet, but the reviews seem encouraging

and put this software ahead of Cheese. I hope to give it a try as soon as I can.

See the official website of GTK+ UVC Viewerfor more infos or try to look it up in

your Linux distribution software repository.

I hope this will be of use for the Linux users.

Clear Skies

[David Smith]

Nice one, thanks will have a look at that.

[David Smith]

FYI - Appears in the Ubuntu software centre - just type UVC in the search box.

[JamesF]

There's also qastrocam-g2, which is similar to SharpCap.

James

[cliver]

Apart from UVC and Qastrocam-G2 there is also wxCam and wxAstroCapture. The last 3 have a few problems though under the latest version of Ubuntu.

I do not use Unity so I installed the Gnome-fall-back.

The 3 programs I mention only really support V4l1 in some ways.

I found that Qastrocam and wxAstroCapture won't work nicley at all.

The authors know of the problemns and will try to fix the issues.

wxCam can be used as a work around by altering the preferences to V4L2 with the Philips webcams.

Do not try to alter the setting though as the program and the webcam will lock up requiring a reboot to regain control.

To alter any setting with wxCam install the QT V4L2 test utility.

One more thing about this last program is that it can do Motion Detection.

I have been playing around with this part of the program to see if it can capture meteors but typical weather did not want to play for the Perseids.

Clive.