wxCam is a webcam application for linux. It supports video recording (in an avi uncompressed and Xvid format), snapshot taking, and some special commands for philips webcams, so you can also use the program for astronomy purposes. It supports both video4linux 1 and 2 drivers, so it should work on a very large number of devices.

Update:
There is a new branch of wxcam, with faster filters, written in assembly. It works on 64 bit versions of Linux. Check it out at galimba git repository

In loving memory of my dad:
Current version: 1.1
-) Replaced OSS recording with ALSA
-) Bugfixes in getting supported resolutions list
-) Added a buffer in xvid recording
-) Other bugfixes in quering capabilities and in philips webcam v4l2 controls


Bugs reporting:
Please for questions about wxcam, bugs reporting or feature requests send an email to: wxcam-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net.

Compiling wxCam sources:
-) Make sure you have wxWidgets installed on your distribution.
(Ubuntu names: libwxgtk2.8 and libwxgtk2.8-dev)
-) Make sure you have libxvidcore4 and libxvidcore-dev
-) Make sure you have libv4l-dev
-) NEW: Make sure you have CImg library (cimg-dev). For wxcam versions >= 1.0.5, use at least cimg version 1.33. For older version, use CImg 1.2.
-) NEW: Make sure you have mjpegtools (libmjpegtools-dev)
-) NEW: Make sure you have alsa developement (libasound2-dev)
-) You may also require: libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-dev libglade2-dev
-) Only for versions older than 1.0.3: Download, compile and install revel library: (http://revel.sourceforge.net)
-) NEW: liblavjpeg-2.1-0
-) Note for 64 bit systems: If you encounter the error "int_64 was already declared in this scope" in file mjpeg_types.h, this is a bug of mjpeg library. To overcome this bug, simply comment row 40 of your mjpeg_types.h file (ubuntu puts it in /usr/include/mjpegtools/mjpeg_types.h).

Now you can compile wxCam.
Type:
shell> ./configure;make
shell> sudo make install
A wxCam rpm for Mandriva 2008 is also available from http://rpmlinux.org. For older versions or other distributions, please compile wxCam from sources.

wxCam features:
-) Frame grabbing using video4linux 1 and 2 api;
-) Adjust resolution, brightness, contrast, gamma and saturation;
-) Support for some special controls for philips webcam: frame rate, gain and shutter speed;
-) Snapshot taking in various formats, including BMP, PNG, JPEG, TIF, PCX, XPM.
-) There are graphics effects such color correction, negative, edge, monochrome, upturned, laplacian, and mirror.
-) Video recording without audio in an avi uncompressed format: e.g., useful for astronomy purpose (lunar and planetary video recording) because it is totally lossless.
-) Video recording with audio, in the Xvid format: it is a lossy video format, but with great hard disk space saving.
-) Video recording on movement detection.

Movement detection
There are two new checkboxes: "Movement detection" and "Show movement detection areas". "Movement detection" enable recording only when a motion event is detect. If no area is specified when Movement detection is activated, the default will be the full size of the image. The "Show movement detection areas" will show the area settings. It is, of course, possible to delete the default full image area and replace it with some smaller area. By recording the dialog will not be updated and has therefore been hidden on such an occasion. If the "show areas" checkbox is activated, the areas will be displayed, but of course not recorded. The motion detection dialog will show detected minimum, maximum and average results, of the RGB sensitivities and the detected areas, during some time interval. There is a possibility to tune the sensitivities of the different areas by modifying the values and then click "modify". If one has modified the values and not yet clicked on "modify" it is possible to get the original ones by clicking "reload".

Thanks to:
Örjan Medhage (recording on movement detection)
Thorsten (v4l1 core improvements)
Vlad T (fixed compiling with new version of cimg)
Zdravko Nikolo (icons and desktop icon file)
Daniel Nascimento (brazilian translation and some patches)
Lorenz Quack (bugfix in setting video standard)
Daniel Fraga (some testing :-) )
Cenk Güre (turkish translation)
Sandor Lisovszki (hungarian translation)
Jacques Blouin (french translation)
Maria (spanish translation)

CVS:
To get a fresh version of wxcam, download it from cvstree:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@wxcam.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wxcam login [press enter at password prompt]

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@wxcam.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wxcam co -P wxcam

Version history:
1.0.8: Compiling fixed in Ubuntu 11.04.
Added support for BGGR16, GBRG8, GRBG8, SPCA561 frame formats.
1.0.7: Better support for MJPEG webcams.
Some bugfixes in gain and shutter speed (for philips webcams).
1.0.6: Bug fixes in setting webcam resolution and showing fullscreen.
Added laplacian filter.
1.0.5: Fixed compiling issues with new versions of cimg (thanks vladtbmn). Cleared some warnings during compilation.
1.0.4: Bugfix in setting video standard (thanks Lorenz Quack). Correct loading of saturarion at startup. Updated french translation (thanks Jacques Blouin).
1.0.3: Added support for jpeg frame format. Some bug fixes in resolution change.Added support for some devices that need to set a video standard (NTSC, PAL, SECAM).
1.0.2: Great improvement in fps for some v4l1 cams.
1.0.1: Support for MJPEG stream added. Support for sonix webcams stream added. Hungarian and French translations added.
1.0: Added recording on movement detection. Added some new filters. Added turkish translation
0.9.8: Fixed some crashes in v4l2 core. Image controls now work for v4l2 webcams. New icons set.
0.9.7: This release adds the ability to choose the Web cam microphone device during recording (usually /dev/dsp1). It has a new layout in some configuration dialogs. A Brazilian translation has been added.
0.9.6: The v4l2 core was improved. A bug in taking a snapshot in a format other than TIFF was fixed. A Spanish translation was added.
0.9.5: Added support for YUYV frame format. Code ready for internationalization support. Added italian translation.
0.9.4: Added experimental support for v4l2 device drivers. Some bug fixes in v4l1 core, and support for more video palette formats. Solved a bug in resolution changing using a webcam with VIDEO_PALETTE_RGB24 frame format.
0.9.3: Some filters and effects (color correction, negative, edge, monochrome, upturned, and mirror) were added.
0.9.2: Audio/video recording using the Xvid codec was added.
0.9.1: There are some improvements in the video4linux code. Support for Unicode was fixed.
0.9: First release.