sane-v4l.5

sane-v4l(5)              SANE Scanner Access Now Easy              sane-v4l(5)

NAME

       sane-v4l - SANE interface for Video for Linux API

DESCRIPTION

       The  sane-v4l library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) back-
       end that provides generic access to video cameras and similar equipment
       using the V4L (Video for Linux) API.

       This  is  ALPHA  software.  Really!  Important features are missing and
       there are lots of bugs. The code is currently only tested  on  a  Linux
       2.4 system with a Hauppauge WinTV video card.

DEVICE NAMES

       This backend expects device names of the form:

              special

       Where  special is the UNIX path-name for the special device that corre-
       sponds to the v4l device.  The special device name must be a v4l device
       or  a  symlink to such a device.  For example, such a device name could
       be /dev/video0 or /dev/bttv0.

CONFIGURATION

       The contents of the v4l.conf file is a list of device names that corre-
       spond  to v4l devices.  Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark
       (#) are ignored.  A sample configuration file is shown below:

              /dev/bttv0
              # this is a comment
              /dev/video3

FILES

       /usr/local/etc/sane.d/v4l.conf
              The  backend  configuration  file  (see  also   description   of
              SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

       /usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-v4l.a
              The static library implementing this backend.

       /usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-v4l.so
              The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
              that support dynamic loading).

ENVIRONMENT

       SANE_CONFIG_DIR
              This environment variable specifies the list of directories that
              may contain the configuration file.  On *NIX systems, the direc-
              tories are separated by a colon (`:'), under OS/2, they are sep-
              arated  by a semi-colon (`;').  If this variable is not set, the
              configuration file  is  searched  in  two  default  directories:
              first,  the current working directory (".") and then in /usr/lo-
              cal/etc/sane.d.  If the value of the environment  variable  ends
              with  the directory separator character, then the default direc-
              tories are searched after the explicitly specified  directories.
              For example, setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would re-
              sult in directories tmp/config, ., and /usr/local/etc/sane.d be-
              ing searched (in this order).

       SANE_DEBUG_V4L
              If the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this en-
              vironment variable controls the debug level  for  this  backend.
              E.g.,  a  value  of 128 requests all debug output to be printed.
              Smaller levels reduce verbosity.

AUTHOR

       Juergen G. Schimmer, Henning Meier-Geinitz

BUGS:

       If more than one video card is present, a crash  may  occur.  Frequency
       and geometry selection is missing.
       Send  bug reports to the SANE mailing list: sane-devel@alioth-lists.de-
       bian.net.  You must be  subscribed  to  the  list  to  send  mail.  See
       http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html for details.

SEE ALSO

       sane(7), xcam(1)

                                  14 Jul 2008                      sane-v4l(5)