xiaoyafeng:

I'd start by looking around the Monastery for possible webcam articles, then CPAN to see if any of the modules there (only two that I noticed) will work for you. If that doesn't get you anywhere, I'd check around in the Linux UVC driver & tools page. From there, you may find a useful command-line program, easy-to-call driver interface or some other way to talk with the Webcam. Once you find a way to talk to your webcam, then you can figure out where to start.

From my (very brief) browsing, I found that some systems have command-line tools to capture images (such as the Mac), while others have FTP and/or HTTP servers built into them, and others are USB devices, presumably with a relatively-standard method to talk to them. Since you've got a laptop, I imagine that it doesn't use FTP/HTTP, so I'd look around the HP forums for a command-line program.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

Using Wx::MediaCtrl to display a live videofeed (eg a webcam), Gtk2 Webcam?, Windows Webcam access., Cross platform webcam-capturing?, perly webcam generic interface, App::VideoMixer, Video::Capture::V4l

From my experience, the apps "mencoder" and "mplayer" are your best bets. They are available on Windows. If you are on linux, you may have to use a usb microphone to get recording, you can google for setting up alsa for a usb microphone recording session. See USB_mic_on_linux

Here is a simple mencoder string for a usb mic, listed as hw2 in the usb list. Linux hasn't good support for built-in mikes yet. :-( So your built-in mic is hw 1) Google for more mencoder examples. If you want to see how to control mplayer and mencoder from Perl with IPC::Open3, see ztk-v4l-video-bloger/recorder

mencoder tv:// -tv \
driver=v4l2:device=/dev/video0:width=320:height=240:adevice=/dev/dsp:f
+orceaudio:alsa:adevice=hw.2,0 \
-ofps 15 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=32 -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
vbitrate=92 -o ./out-low-quality.avi


# You can change framerate up to 25, video bitrate to 800 
# and sound bitrate to 128 or greater to get excellent quality.
[download]

#########################################

and here is a simple snapshot app.... just press "s"

############################################

mplayer -vf screenshot tv:// driver=v4l2:width=800:height=600:device=/
+dev/video0 -fps 15 

# and that gave me 800x600 video, and after I pressed 's' i obtained 8
+00x600 in the snapshot.
# q to quit

# I did the same for 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 and obtained a
+ 1024x768, 
# 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 video and snapshot respectively.

# or get shots from a video
# mplayer -vf screenshot some.avi
[download]