[Spice-devel] Discuss about camera redirection in SPICE

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> Although USB redirection has already provided a solution to use a remote
> webcam, I notice that it uses a heavy network(1280*720 at 30FPS in MJPEG uses
> 5MB/s+). I have tested several webcam, and all of them don't support h264.
> So I'd like to develop camera redirection in SPICE with h264 support, and
> expect to reduce the network bandwidth(300K/s may be enough).

Well, one option would be to add usb webcam emulation to the spice client,
simliar to cdrom redirection (which emulates an usb cdrom drive under
the hood).  Advantage: works without spice protocol changes as you can
simply tunnel everything through the usb redirection protocol.

I'd also recommend to look for another video codec (if possible, not
sure what the usb webcam spec allows).  H.264 is a patent minefield,
which makes it rather difficult to use in open source projects.  You'll
end up with a lot of legal problems when it comes to software
distribution.  vp8/9 would be a much better choice.

take care,
  Gerd