[TriLUG] MiniDV firewire camcorder for Google hangouts

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Tue, 2013-11-12 at 20:34 -0500, Thomas V Thomas wrote:

> I would like to use a camcorder connected thru firewire for Google
> Hangouts on linux. Has anyone got this to work and could you share the
> configuration. Is this possible.
> 
> Would be nice to utilize the camera zoom, etc to webcast using Hangouts on Air.


I think it might be easier for you to buy a low cost USB camera.

Older camcorders using Firefire by default capture video and put it into
DV video frames. You can capture those on Linux using the 'dvgrab'
utility.  Normally the workflow is to capture DV frames into a rather
large file or set of files, then edit and process that video.  Finally,
you export the video into a more compact format like h264.

I'm guessing that to make Hangouts work on Linux its going to want a
camera feed it can read directly from a device like a USB camera.  In
other words, something that's providing a compressed video format by
default or something other than DV.  Something it can upload rather
quickly with minimal overhead.

If anyone else has suggestions on how to make this work, I'd be curious
to know more, too.

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Maxwell Spangler
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