Webcam Device Driver to support H.264

Question

I have a Creative Live Cam Connect HD (id: 041e:4093) and this webcam has an on-board H.264 encoder. Unfortunately v4l2 only inputs the feed as MJPG.

$ v4l2-ctl --list-formats
ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
 ...
Index       : 1
Type        : Video Capture
Pixel Format: 'MJPG' (compressed)
Name        : MJPEG

Basically I need to use this webcam to get a H.264 feed. Is there a different driver that I can use to use the on-board encoder instead of having to use Gstreamer to encode the feed on my machine?

Since there are no pre-built drivers to do what I want, I am trying to write my own driver. I found lots of recourses for writing linux drivers but not specifically for webcams. Can you point me to some resources or provide an outline of what I need to do? I never wrote a driver before.

Answer 1

From: http://sourceforge.net/p/linux-uvc/mailman/linux-uvc-devel/?viewmonth=201303 (~80%)

What kernel version are you on ?

As far as I remember, since 3.2 (or was it 3.3?) the h264 support in uvc driver should be there.

If v4l2-ctl doesn't list anything other than MJPG, it's probably because the camera itself doesn't support H264 raw stream, but only supports H264 embedded in MJPG frames (which is what skype/windows uses for h264 encoding cameras).

I suggest you give it a try with the uvch64_src (see http://kakaroto.homelinux.net/2012/09/uvc-h264-encoding-cameras-support-in-gstreamer/)

If it supports h264, it should be able to work with it (I never tested that camera though).