Re: video(4) landed. "No webcam driver" is dead.

On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 11:41 PM Abdelkader Boudih <[email protected]>
wrote:

> For years, the go-to move for dodging a video call was "well, I run
> FreeBSD, and there's no webcam driver, so."
>
> Camera stays off, nobody questions it, everyone assumes a serious systems
> person and not someone hiding from a standup. That excuse is now retired.
> By Adrian Chadd, Baptiste Daroussin, and me.
> We did this. On purpose. I don't know what we were thinking.
>
> video(4) is a new kernel-side capture framework:
> a common device model for things that produce frames, instead of every
> capture driver reinventing /dev/videoN from scratch.
>
>  Initial consumers:
>
>    - uvideo(4): USB Video Class webcams, converted onto the new
>    framework. Most of the hard logic here was already done for us - OpenBSD's
>    Robert Nagy and Marcus Glocker wrote the original driver years ago,
>    Baptiste ported it to FreeBSD.
>    - fwcam(4): Apple firewire camera. work perfectly for me, but
>    Australian mode (upside down) for Adrian.
>
> Where its been tested:
>
>    - across basically the whole Apple fleet here : MacBooks, iMacs, Every
>    one of those machines is now missing exactly one thing (WiFi, still
>    catching up on some chipsets).
>    - Also tested on regular Laptops with integrated webcams, which mostly
>    just worked .
>
> Diffs for the design: D58367-D58369
>
> What's coming next:
>
>    - PCI capture cards - the "I have a real capture card, not a webcam".
>    - SBC-class cameras (think Raspberry Pi camera modules) - CSI-ish
>    targets, for anyone doing embedded/SBC work on FreeBSD
>
> I'd love it if you:
>
>    - Threw a UVC device at uvideo(4) that has those non generic cameras.
>    (especially 2k, 4k, thermal cameras, ect).
>    - Have an firewire webcam
>
> *Once a few more hackers have tested this, I will post it to
> freebsd-current@.*
>

Thank you all for this!

I tested it a few weeks ago in current. It worked fine when using Google
Meet but it does not work fine with pwcview.
I
 tested again in FreeBSD hammer 16.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT #8
main-n288009-d025b84268ec and pwcview (1.4.1_9) does not work properly, it
looks like the image is quadrupled in four columns... It's difficult to
explain, but I can provide a screenshot if necessary :-). This was run on a
laptop with an embedded webcam.

Similar effect in pwcview for a Logitech USB camera:

ugen0.6: <vendor 0x046d C270 HD WEBCAM> at usbus0
uvideo1 on uhub0
uvideo1: <vendor 0x046d C270 HD WEBCAM, class 239/2, rev 2.00/0.21, addr 7>
on usbus0
uvideo1: 2 format(s), iface_index=1, endpoint=0x81, psize=3060, isoc
uvideo1: default format: pixfmt=0x56595559, 640x480, max_fbuf=2457600
uvideo1: UVC camera on /dev/video1

This camera works fine in Google Meet, it does not with pwcview.

pwcview worked fine with webcamd, though.

Please, feel free to reach out should you need more details.

Thanks!



>
> As for meetings: the next generation of excuse is already in production.
> "Sorry, can't turn my camera on, I'm running TempleOS this week, it's
> between me and God." Untestable & Unfalsifiable. Nobody's going to ask
> follow-up questions. You're welcome.
>
> *Sent from HolyC Internet Missionary.*
>