Video4Linux

Article summary

Video4Linux (V4L for short) is a collection of device drivers and an API for supporting realtime video capture on Linux systems. It supports USB webcams, TV tuners, CSI cameras, and related devices, standardizing their output, so programmers can easily add video support to their applications. Video4Linux is responsible for creating V4L2 device nodes aka a device file (/dev/videoX, /dev/vbiX and /dev/radioX) and tracking data from these nodes. The device node creation is handled by V4L device drivers using the video_device struct (v4l2-dev.h) and it can either be allocated dynamically or embedded in another larger struct. Video4Linux was named after Video for Windows (which is sometimes abbreviated "V4W"), but is not technically related to it. While Video4Linux is only available on Linux, there is a compatibility layer available for FreeBSD called Video4BSD. This provides a way for many programs that depend on V4L to also compile and run on the FreeBSD operating system.

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