Evening, all.
Following the purchase of a new UVC-compliant webcam yesterday, I was having a browse (as you do!), to see what alternative webcam apps to Guvcview and Luvcview might be available.....and I came across this, on the 'AlternativesTo' site:-
http://alternativeto.net/software/webcamoid/
And that led me here, to the 'WebCamoid' page at GitHub:-
https://webcamoid.github.io/
I liked the look of this one straight away.....and the fact that it was available as an AppImage got me even more interested. There's three versions:-
1) The '
Installable'. This is an all-in-one .run file, that has a built-in 'installer' (similar to a Windoze installer). Like a Windows .exe file, you click on this, and follow the instructions.....and the end result is that WebCamoid is installed on your system.
2) The '
Bundled'. This is the AppImage; everything needed self-contained.
3) The '
Portable'. This one, I'm guessing, is what you can build into a complete, true 'portable app', which you can run from a USB stick literally anywhere. But it's an enormous package, since it contains the entire Qt5 set of libraries.....almost 100 MB in total!
I downloaded both 32- and 64-bit AppImages, and tried them out in Tahr64 and 32-bit Xenialpup. In both cases, the AppImage runs flawlessly; there's always something of a delay with these things, since I suspect they're having to 'unpack' in RAM before running.
You can take snapshots; you can record videos.....just like Guvcview. The difference here is that these will run in any Pup; you don't need to wait for a package for your specific Pup.
The 'kicker' (there's
always one!) is that they will
only run on fairly recent Pups, as WebCamoid utilises
Qt5, and requires at least
glibc-2.19 &
gcc 4.8.8. I've tried the 32-bit version out in Xenialpup, Tahrpup 6.05, and rg66's X-Tahr 2.0 (based on Tahr). It runs fine in all cases.
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For anyone who might like to try this out, I've made these up into .pet & SFS packages, for both 32- and 64-bit, utilising the AppImage itself. Rather than clicking directly on the AppImage every time, this will give you a MenuEntry to start from, and a .desktop entry if you want to place a 'launcher' on the desktop. These are 40+ MB packages, so I anticipate the SFS will probably be the favoured choice. The more so, since I have no idea how the .run installer will show up in the PPM, and therefore I don't know how easy it will be to un-install it. SFS packages can, of course, be loaded/unloaded as & when the user wishes to do so.
Packages can be found here:-
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/uny...g5cb/WebCamoid
Feedback would be appreciated. Have fun.
Mike.
