libuvc: a cross-platform library for USB video devices

libuvc is a library that supports enumeration, control and streaming for USB Video Class (UVC) devices, such as consumer webcams.

Features

• UVC device discovery and management API
• Video streaming (device to host) with asynchronous/callback and synchronous/polling modes
• Read/write access to standard device settings
• Conversion between various formats: RGB, YUV, JPEG, etc.
• Tested on Mac and Linux, portable to Windows and some BSDs

Roadmap

• Bulk-mode image capture
• One-shot image capture
• Improved support for standard settings
• Support for "extended" (vendor-defined) settings

Misc.

The source code can be found at https://github.com/ktossell/libuvc. To build the library, install libusb 1.0+ and run:

$ git clone https://github.com/ktossell/libuvc.git
$ cd libuvc
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
$ make && make install

Example

In this example, libuvc is used to acquire images in a 30 fps, 640x480 YUV stream from a UVC device such as a standard webcam.