Quoting bml22@xxxxxxxxxxx <bml22@xxxxxxxxxxx>: > is anyone on this list aware of someone who has made an effort to improve > the performance of or quality of the ibm C-it USB camera driver under linux? > > i've used the camera under windows and both its performance and the video > quality are signficantly better... The Linux driver for this camera is based on reverse engineering of the USB protocol and the image encoding. It is pretty poor as it is, but to make it perfect one would need specs from Xirlink, and they are not going to publish that any time soon, as I understand. Model 3 camera is especially bad in this respect, because it generally works but the image has greenish tint - not because of total absence of one color but because of some sort of imbalance. It can not be properly corrected without precise formulas (that would come from the DSP guy who programmed the firmware in the camera). IBM/Xirlink cameras are not recommended for new purchase because of that (see http://www.linux-usb.org/ibmcam/). In fact, the most recent crop of Model 4 cameras is not supported at all because these cameras don't even have uncompressed video streams any more! With all recent news from courts I have little desire to work on a decompressor... even if it would be easy (I doubt that - the compressed signal is a very good white noise). Cameras are complicated devices, with tens of registers that you are supposed to program from time to time to achieve white balance, adjust hue, contrast, gain of channels, compensate for the flicker produced by fluorescent lights... it is hard to do without specs. There are cameras that have fully functioning drivers, written with specs in hand - like CPiA, OV511, Philips. Avoid other devices. Dmitri -- Microsoft: where do we want you to go today?
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