mod_video 0.1.0 review

mod_video was created in order for me to be able to check on my apartment while on holiday using a camcorder hooked up to my Linux ma

License: The Apache License 2.0 File size: 14K Developer: Bjorn Borud

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mod_video was created in order for me to be able to check on my apartment while on holiday using a camcorder hooked up to my Linux machine. It it an Apache module.

A few months earlier I had picked up a BTTV-based (Bt848) frame grabber card from the leftovers bin, and although I was able to make it work I can't say that it was very impressive.

The software that came with it just locked up my machine under Windows, and the software available under Linux wasn't too hot either. The image quality can at best be described as questionable.

The module was written the night before I was leaving for my holiday, and being the first time I had used the video4linux API, I had to pick apart a few programs written by other people in order to figure out how to make things work. The documentation I was able to find on the net didn't really answer all my questions and at times it was just confusing.

I hadn't written anything that encodes JPG or PNG images before either, so I had to figure out how libpng and libjpeg work as well. Hopefully I didn't screw up too badly.

Requirements:
The module was developed and tested on a machine running Apache 1.3.11 under Linux 2.2.12 with compiled-in support for BT848 cards. It uses the video4linux API in order to perform the actual grabbing, and since I have very little experience with frame-grabbing software I have no idea if it will work with various cards.

Zlib
libpng
libjpeg

Compiling Apache with the module

Start by downloading and unpacking the latest Apache 1.3 source. Unpack it the usual way:

tar xvfz apache_1.3.11.tar.gz
cd cd apache_1.3.11

Now there are two ways you can build Apache with the video module. The first way we describe is the one you might want to use the first time you try out the module.

./configure --add-module=/path/to/mod_video.c
make
make install

This will copy your module to the src/modules/extra directory, build the Apache webserver with the video module and install it. (Be sure to specify a proper --prefix argument to configure so your server will be installed where you want it).

The second way you can build mod_video assumes that you have already copied mod_video.c to src/modules/extra (which --add-module will do) , and is well suited if you want to run configure again later to change some of the other parameters.

./configure --activate-module=src/modules/extra/mod_video.c
make
make install

Actually, I usually skip the make install command and copy the httpd binary directly to its target dir to avoid messing up what else is there. (Be sure to stop Apache before attempting to overwrite the old binary).