Webcam over network?

Question

I'm looking to place a usb webcam in a remote room. The only nearby computer is a not so powerful HTPC. How might I access that webcam remotely from my main pc?

The HTPC is hooked up to a projector so anything that has to be setup/started would be done using remote desktop. Ideally it would not be cpu/mem intensive, I'm hoping for just some passthru usb-to-network setup.

I've tried using VLC however starting the stream using remote desktop doesn't seem to work and the transcoding takes about 30% cpu. Any suggestions?

Solution

VLC example (for linux):

cvlc -vvv v4l2:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mjpg,vb=2000,width=320,height=240,venc=ffmpeg}:duplicate{dst=standard{access=http,mux=mpjpeg,dst=0.0.0.0:5050/video.mpjpeg}'

Then point your non-IE browser to http://127.0.0.1:5050/video.mpjpeg

You can use vlc to stream things other than mjpeg. If computer is slow you need to experiment with codec parameters. You can also use gstreamer (on linux).

---

ffmpeg example (for linux):

ffmpeg -f video4linux2  -i /dev/video0  -vcodec libx264 -vpre ultrafast -b 1000k -f matroska -y /dev/stdout | nc -lp 5555

playing:

nc 127.0.0.1 5555 | mplayer -cache 1024 -

Highly tweakable.

The same, but with socat and HTTP:

socat tcp-l:5555,fork,reuseaddr system:'printf "HTTP/1.0\\\\x20200\\\\x20OK\\\\r\\\\n\\\\r\\\\n" && ffmpeg -f video4linux2  -i /dev/video0  -vcodec libx264 -vpre ultrafast -b 1000k -f matroska pipe\:1'
mplayer  http://127.0.0.1:5555/

More advanced version with sound here.

Comments

[Christoph Rüegg]

Do you have an OS?

[slhck]

Please only post one answer to a question. You can always go back and edit your previous one too.

[Vi.]

@slhck, Discussing this on meta.