video4linux
Please check the v4l wiki for most recent informations about video4linux and the drivers. As I don't maintain v4l any more the informations below will bitrot over time. I'll keep them online for now, but at some point in the future the pages will likely disappear. When setting or updating links please link to the wiki. Please mail any questions to the mailing list. Thanks.
about v4l + v4l2
- v4l
- is the original video capture/overlay API of the linux kernel. It appeared late the 2.1.x development cycle in the linux kernel.
- v4l2
- is the second generation of the video4linux API which fixes a number of design bugs of the first version. It was integrated into the standard kernel in 2.5.x.
Althrough v4l2 is integrated into the standard kernel a number of drivers don't support the new v4l2 API yet, so we'll likely see v4l and v4l2 coexist for some time.
v4l2 stuff
You can find here:
- v4l2 (and other) kernel patches.
- a list of drivers for TV cards.
- Build HowTo for the drivers maintained by me.
- The v4l2 API specs
- some v4l / tv card related links
v4l stuff
The v4l API specs are shipped with the linux kernel sources, they live in the Documentation/video4linux/ subdirectory. A copy of the file is here. It is strongly recommended to focus on the v4l2 API instead through.