How to program an audio/video application on network?

Question

I want to make (for fun, challenge) a videoconference application, I have some ideas about this: 1) taking the audio/video streams (I don't know what an audio/video stream is) 2) pass this to a server that lets communicate the clients. I can figure out how to write a server(there are a lot of books and documentation about this) but I really don't know how to interact with the webcam and with the audio/video in general. I want some links, book, suggestions about the basics of digital audio/video expecially on programming. Please help me!!!

I want to make it run on a Linux platform.

Answer 1

Linux makes video grabbing really nice. As long as you have a driver that outputs the video stream to the /dev/video/v* channels. All you have to do is open up a control connection to the device [an exercise for the OP] and then read in the channel like a file [given the parameters set by the control connection. Audio should be the same way, but don't quote me on it.

BTW: Video streaming from a server is a very complex issue. You have to develop or use an existing protocol. You have to be very aware of networking delays, and adjust the information sent (resize or recompress) to the client based on the link size between the client and the server.