annotate README @ 1:bcf5fe83f332

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vloopback is a video4linux driver providing video pipes.
With the driver you can use the output of a user program to feed a program that
would normally communicate with a video4linux device.
To achieve this a video pipe consists out of two video4linux devices:
one for the generating program to write its data to and one for a normal
video4linux program to read from.

At the moment there are only few programs that can feed the input of the pipe:
invert and resize, the example programs with the driver and
motion, my motion detection program.

Just type 'make' and then 'insmod vloopback'.
If you want more pipes use 'insmod vloopback pipes=N' with N between 1 and 16.
If you want to create spare pipes use 'spares=N'.

Type 'dmesg' to see which video devices have been created as input and output.
For example: if you have a camera on /dev/video0 the input pipe will most likely
be /dev/video1 and the output on /dev/video2.
e.g. if you want to watch an inverted image of the camera you would start invert
with /dev/video0 as its input and /dev/video1 as its output.
Then start a viewing app (such as camstream or xawtv) with as input /dev/video2
and you can see yourself inverted.

This is a very experimental device driver!
SMP should work from 0.2 on..... but is untested!
If it troubles you fix it or tell me how to fix it :)

Using vloopback with xawtv:
As of 0.83 xawtv will work with vloopback outputs, but you will have to specify
the size to use. For example: 'xawtv -c /dev/video2 -geometry 320x240'

Jeroen Vreeken, [e-mail]

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Module now supports kernel 2.6.x .
The current version 1.0 has been tested with kernel 2.6.x ( not with >= 2.6.16 ).

To compile and install :

make ; su - ; make install
/sbin/modprobe videodev 
/sbin/modprobe vloopback

To uninstall :

make uninstall ( as root ).

- Problems :

* If you got this message after 'insmod ./vloopback.ko' :

 "insmod: error inserting './vloopback.ko': -1 Unknown symbol in module" 

  Solution : You must load videodev module :

 'insmod videodev ; insmod ./vloopback.ko'

* If you got this message after 'modprobe vloopback [options]' :

 "FATAL: Error inserting vloopback (/lib/modules/2.6.8-1-k7/kernel/drivers/misc/vloopback.ko): Too many open files in system"

 You probably used dev_offset= as a option , but the video device that vloopback was trying to register was already in use, maybe the value used for dev_offeset was too high.

  Solution : Try to use a lower value for dev_offset= or even better don't use it .

Angel Carpintero, [e-mail]
Kenneth Lavrsen, [e-mail]