[MLUG] Failed Webcam Install + Also Jpeg Encoding

["Christian M. Cepel" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

After educating myself a bit last night, I learned that there is no hope 
of using my Logitech QuickCam IM with *nix.  There are no drivers 
available, and it's beyond the scope of this hobby for me to sit down 
and write drivers.

There are drivers for lots of other QuickCam cams, but not this newer 
one that has some special hardware for recording video.

In hindsight this was the first thing I should have done, not the 
last... I guess I just saw 'QuickCam' support and figured....  well... I 
figured wrongly.

Also, I posted a while back wondering why I was getting macropixeling on 
images that were 100% quality Jpegs.

Turns out it's not the software.  It's the chip in the cam.  It's 
applying huffman encoding and quantizing every 4th or 8th bit before the 
image data leaves the cam.  The reason for this?  Less bandwidth across 
the USB cable... Considering that even with this turned on it pretty 
much sucks down all the available bandwith across the USB buss (You 
can't have another device on that buss and expect it to function), 
having it NOT turned on would make video at 640x480 impossible.  
Unfortunately I don't want video... I want a snapshot every 15 - 30 
seconds, but alas, it's not a configurable option.

I did find one gentleman who had reverse engineered what had previously 
been an unknown encoding algorithm, and as far as I can tell wrote a 
driver to prevent the encoding (or is it just to decode it?  I didn't 
completely understand).

Anyways.. I guess I get to take it back to Win2k tonight.
-- 

|Christian Marcus Cepel           | And the wrens have returned &
EMAIL:PROTECTED icq:12384980 | are nesting; In the hollow of
371 Crown Point, Columbia, MO    | that oak where his heart once
65203-2202 573.999.2370          | had been; And he lifts up his
Computer Support Specialist, Sr. | arms in a blessing; For being
University of Missouri-Columbia  | born again. --Rich Mullins|


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