Videoconferencing for Linux

INSTALLING A VIEWER / WEBCAM APP

The Camorama or Camstream viewer/webcam applications are adequate to verify camera operations. Either will automatically upload via FTP to a webpage. You may already have either or both programs preinstalled by default. If not, then:

# aptitude install camorama

or

# aptitude install camstream

Non-Debian/Ubuntu users should use the equivalent automated installer commands for their distribution. If neither is available, you can download source from these two pages, camorama or camstream. Download to a convenient directory. For build-from-source applications, the following is the generalized method for building the great majority of applications provided as source code: ...for files ending in tar.gz or tgz:

$ tar xvzf programname.tar.gz 
$ cd [top of new directory tree created by unpacking tarball]

...for files ending in bz2:

$ tar xvjf programname.tar.bz2
$ cd [top of new directory tree created by unpacking tarball]

Follow the instructions in the README files after unpacking the tarballs and opening the directories into which the tarballs were unarchived, open as:

$ nano README

Further information should be available on the developer sites, including a pointer to the web forums or mailing lists to ask for help in if need be.

Configuring these things once installed to point them at ftp sites/directories, and frame size, frame rate, and in some cases, choice between V4L and V4L2 is point and click on the GUI. The following figures feature screenshots of the Camorama Webcam Viewer and Controls and the Online Camorama ftp setup respectively:

Displaying a continuously updating webcam image is a server-side operation and therefore beyond the scope of this article. Some website hosts have a built-in setup for this. Otherwise, you'll need to set it up on your Apache or whatever Web server.

HOW TO INSTALL VIDEOCONFERENCING

Every videoconferencing application has its advantages and disadvantages. The only ones I discuss here are cross-platform. Video modes work best (or at all) when the different computers in the connection are all running the same videoconferencing application.