A tag for video camera and microphone?

[Enrico Zini]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 10:26:03AM +0100, Tanguy Ortolo wrote:

[quoting in full because the original message did not reach the list due
 to list configuration; Tanguy's email now added to email whitelist]

> While looking for a Jabber client with audio/video support, I thought it
> might be useful to have a facet to describe video cameras (aka webcams)
> and microphones, like hardware::camera for still image cameras.
> 
> Perhaps something like hardware::videocamera and hardware::microphone?
> The existing tags works-with::video and works-with::audio are also
> relevant for videoconferencing software, I think. And perhaps
> hardware::video, but I am not sure, since this one seems to designate
> graphic output rather than input.

You are right, I just noticed that the current hardware::camera is more
for things like gphoto which can interface with digital cameras and
download photos, and we don't have a tag for webcams.

OTOH, hardware::camera is currently used to tag both kamera and
gtkam, and webcamd and cheese. So we might be looking at splitting the
existing tag in two.

hardware::video is for graphic card drivers and utilities, so I agree
with you, it doesn't fit.

We could split hardware::camera in hardware::digicam (making it explicit
what it is for) and hardware::videocamera or, probably better,
hardware::webcam? hardware::videocamera looks more like something to
control expensive video cameras via Firewire connections for the Debian
Video Team than something for jabber video chats. That's yet another use
case that we currently miss, I'd say (I'm thinking all the tools to deal
with DV streams: dvsource, dvswitch, kino, dvgrab, kdenlive, and fancy
that! There's even a dvbackup :)

So here's a draft proposal:

  Split hardware::camera into 3:

   - hardware::digicam
     (kamera, gtkam, gphoto2, ...)
   - hardware::webcam
     (webcamd, camorama, cheese, ...)
   - hardware::videocamera
     (dvsource, dvswitch, kino, dvbackup, ...)

There isn't much for audio input either. I don't know if we should be
specific and say "hardware::microphone" or just be generic and say
"hardware::audio", to say "packages that use a sound card".

Comments?


Ciao,

Enrico

-- 
GPG key: 4096R/E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org>
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