Re: Upstream work in HAL

["Patryk Zawadzki" <patrys pld-linux org>]

There are numerous problems as stated in my mail to hal list. One is
that probing v4l devices takes a lot of time even using my method.
Most drivers need lots of time to init. Two is that there are no
device names reported by hal. All devices are named something like
'video device'. Three is that apps are unable to distinguish between
device types. I believe cheese is not a tv watching app and it should
only list cameras by default. My proposition made to hal list should
address all three and benefit other projects including flumotion and
others. Hope this makes sense as I'm typing it from my phone - my
computer is broken at the moment so I'm unable to verify with my
original mail.

Also could any of you please contact guys at fluendo and ask them to
join the discussion on hal lists?

2007/11/2, Jaap Haitsma <jaap haitsma org>:
> On 11/2/07, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys pld-linux org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > All people involved in making gstreamer support and device detection
> > better, please join the upstream discussion:
> >
> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2007-October/009845.html
> >
> > I'm trying to push the detection part upstream so cheese only has to
> > do this as a fallback. Ideally cheese should ship with my script so
> > people who get a fallback can report the correct .fdi to me and get it
> > pushed upstream to hal-info.
>
> Hi Patryk,
>
> Thanks for writing the python script for detecting all video4linux
> devices and their capabilities. I'm planning on translating your code
> to C and use that in the cheese-webcam class so we don't do the
> polling anymore like we do now. Furthermore I want to make a
> preference dialog where you simply select the device you'd like to
> use.
>
> I have some questions about the two problems you mention at the hal
> list, because I'm not sure if I understand them
>
> 1. Not all devices work properly.
>
> Isn't this a gstreamer problem when hal reports a video4linux device,
> we use it in a supported format and it doesn't work?
>
> 2. No ability to distinguish between framegrabbers, webcams and tvcards
>
> I agree that detecting this is nice, but I think for cheese it's
> actually better to list of all of them in the preference setting.
> People might want to use an external camera, or watch TV with Cheese
> ;-)
>
> Thanks again for your script.
>
> Jaap
>


-- 
Patryk Zawadzki
PLD Linux Distribution