Record Video from USB Webcam- How to ?

[jamesbond]

Hello all.,
Received my raspberry pi yesterday. and i am now playing with it and doing some tests.
I am using usb webcam as the rpi camera board is out of stock and i am waiting eagerly to buy it.
my question is :
How can i record video on the raspberry pi's sd card from usb webcam ?

I have successfully attached the usb web-camera to rpi and my pi can detect it, tried installing motion and pi can stream using mjpeg to Firefox too.

but i couldn't find any command to record the video from webcam on the sd card .
is this possible ?
i am using iBall Web Camera C 8.0 .
my pi can detect it a "Bus 001 Device 012: ID 0c45:6340 Microdia"

what i am trying to do is record a clip and upload using ftp/samba.

Thanks for your time and input.


Update:
i tried avconv and it gave some errors. then i added the usb power hub to power the webcam , then i fired the same command

Code: Select all

avconv -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video0 video0.avi

and it worked., voila.....recorded video in 640x480 30 fps.

[SirLagz]

You can use ffmpeg to record to a file.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi

[jamesbond]

You can use ffmpeg to record to a file.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi

thanks , i tried , it says

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pi@mypi ~ $ ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi
ffmpeg version 0.8.6-6:0.8.6-1+rpi1, Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the Libav developers
  built on Mar 31 2013 13:58:10 with gcc 4.6.3
*** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed in a future release. Please use avconv instead.
Unknown input format: 'v4l2'

[SirLagz]

You can use ffmpeg to record to a file.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi

thanks , i tried , it says

Code: Select all

pi@mypi ~ $ ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi
ffmpeg version 0.8.6-6:0.8.6-1+rpi1, Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the Libav developers
  built on Mar 31 2013 13:58:10 with gcc 4.6.3
*** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed in a future release. Please use avconv instead.
Unknown input format: 'v4l2'

try using video4linux2 rather than v4l2

[jamesbond]

You can use ffmpeg to record to a file.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi

thanks , i tried , it says

Code: Select all

pi@mypi ~ $ ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi
ffmpeg version 0.8.6-6:0.8.6-1+rpi1, Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the Libav developers
  built on Mar 31 2013 13:58:10 with gcc 4.6.3
*** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed in a future release. Please use avconv instead.
Unknown input format: 'v4l2'

try using video4linux2 rather than v4l2

Thanks its working great.

[shakirabbas]

Below works for me too. However, I get a lot of dropped frames at 25fps 640x480. If I stream using same this resolution using mjpg_streamer, it works just fine while barely consuming any Pi CPU. I don't understand why ffmpeg chews up all the CPU and still cannot record the video without dropping most of the frames. I can barely record at 3fps at 640x480. I would think streaming would be more cpu intensive than recording locally on the Pi. What am I missing?

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ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -r 25 -s 640x480 -i /dev/video0 out.avi

You can see, it only recorded 53 frames and dropped 370 frames.

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frame=   53 fps=  2 q=4.2 Lsize=     211kB time=26.32 bitrate=  65.6kbits/s dup=0 drop=370    

[ctslick]

I'm having the same issue - ffmpeg / video4linux2 only seems to record at very slow frame rates. I can't seem to find a solution for this....

[wrybread]

My shot in the dark would be that its a writing issue. That's a lot of data to write to an SD card (if that's where you're writing it), and not all SD cards are created equal. Try using a faster (Class 10 or so) faster SD card and see if that fixes it.

[plotino]

wrybread
i have the issue of dropped frames ... it seems the aquisition happens at very low frame rate than provided by command.
i have tried to install Raspbain on a new 32 GB class 10, but does not want to boot at power on.
Do you have any hint about it?

plot

[Dimonira]

RPi-Cam-Web-Interface: http://elinux.org/RPi-Cam-Web-Interface