Programming webcam on Linux

Question

I want to be able to capture images from a webcam on Linux. This is still a project requirement and I'm having a difficulty finding up-to-date information about capturing images from a webcam on Linux. Is it true that every webcam has different API (unlike the Windows variant where I can use a common API), so I must write the program for a specific webcam?

Answer 1

Webcams on Linux are accessed through the Video4Linux API, which is common across all camera models.

There are plenty of existing framegrabbers for webcams that use this API - you could look at these for ideas, or just one as-is.