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Re: [pwc] vanilla kernel cleanning

To: Philips Webcam Linux Driver <>
Subject: Re: [pwc] vanilla kernel cleanning
From: Kenneth Lavrsen <>
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:56:31 +0100
Luc Saillard wrote:



If i sync the driver to the kernel. User will need to use my driver because
no application have support the compressed format. If you think you can
change motion, gnomemeeting, camorama, mplayer, ffmpeg, xawtv, ... do it !
But the decompression can be done or not done in the kernel. Because without
the decompression you don't have any format useable.

Luc


I can as the maintainer of Motion say that I do not plan to start adding specific camera depending decompressors into Motion.

I expect a V4L device to deliver a decompressed/decoded/deencrypted whatever image in a standard format such as RGB24 or YUV420P.

Remember the old days where you had a DOS machine with Word Perfect and Word Perfect had a couple of hundred printer drivers. And if you was so unlucky to buy a printer that was not supported you could not print or you had to use a similar printer and lack some feature such a printing graphics or not being able to write accented letters correctly. Then Windows and Linux came along with standard API for the printers and you would not buy a printer with a e.g. windows printer driver and ALL programs can now print to any printer.

That is the idea with an API like V4L. The camera driver is supposed to deliver video frames in a standard format - not some encrypted or compressed format that each program has to be built for. I don't care how it is implemented in practical but I expect people using Linux to be able to install some driver (kernel module and maybe something additional) which is generic and works the same way seen from a program such as Motion. Motion already have some camera specific code in it and we want to get this OUT of Motion. We do not want to start adding specific code for each and every type of camera. It will become a maintenance hell and it is just plain stupid.

I do not understand the kernel "cleaning" concept of turning well working kernel modules that presents a nice clean V4L / standard palette video signal and turn it into something unique to cameras with Philips chips. It is a sick idea and I will not play along. Then it is better to keep the drivers out of the official kernels and have a fully working non-cripled kernel module that you can easily download and install.

Kenneth

--
Kenneth Lavrsen,
Glostrup, Denmark

Home Page - http://www.lavrsen.dk


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