First, is your kernel setup for video4linux? See the v4l website: http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/. Second, if you need the latest v4l releases and patches: See http://dl.bytesex.org/releases/video4linux/. And there is a really interesting article by Marc Lehman( author of Video::Capture::V4l) at: http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_2/tpj0502-0008.html Note:: Is your kernel setup for video4linux?---I mentioned that because alot of the linux distros need to be adjusted. I thought that the video on my FC5 would work right out of the box, but it had problems. For instance, the AGP was turned off. I had to recompile the kernel to get all the features to work:-)

Update: You might also try FFmpeg and there's a perl module FFmpeg on CPAN.

FFmpeg: http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

FFmpeg module: http://search.cpan.org/search?query=FFmpeg&mode=all