Re: LoopBack Feature?

["Jaap A. Haitsma" <jaap haitsma org>]

On Dec 7, 2007 12:54 PM, Cristian Thiago Moecke <birkoff inf ufsc br> wrote:
> Well, I'll try to explain better (sorry about my english, not a
> nativeenglish speaker as you all should already have noticed).
>
> My idea is to work on a vloopback like system for v4l2. For ME it would
> be usefull for fliping the webcam, but I think it would be nice to use
> the other effects on webcam image on ANY software.
>
> But why I am here, on cheese list about it?
>
> For v4l devices, effectv works for that, USING vloopback. All effects
> you aply can be used on skype, on amsn, on ekiga, because effectv output
> feeds a vloopback device that can be used by this software. Is realy
> nice. But obsolete. People are not working anymore on effectv and
> vloopback.
>
> Then I found Cheese. It is active, growing, working with v4l2. Excelent.
> So I was thinking: well, why not try to make a vloopback for v4l2, AND
> make cheese work with it like effectv works with vloopback. I WILL try
> to work on it. But then I was thinking: well, maybe anyone is already
> working on something like this. Or maybe anyone someone get interested
> on working on it too, to show all skype friends Cheese effects :o). And
> thats why I sent the email to the list.
>
> Well, I hope now I was clear on what I want/mean :)
>
>
Cristian,

I understand what you would like to do. However I  think this
functionality does not really fit in cheese because of the following
reasons: (let me know if you see things differently)

1) Technically I don't really see how this can be done with the
gstreamer framework currently we can read from a v4l2 src but we can't
write to it
2) It also would work a bit in a weird way (I don't think users will
discover the feature). If I want  effects with skype, amsn, ekiga I
first have to launch cheese and choose the effects. Then open the chat
program and select the loopback device that cheese is putting the
effects on.

What I suggest is the following
1) write a special vloopback program that does the effects also for v4l2
2) If the chat client uses gstreamer it's very easy to add the
effects. E.g. the empathy client will have video support through
gstreamer so adding effects will be trivial and a very cool feature

Let me know your thoughts

Jaap