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# sane-v4l.5

    sane-v4l(5)              SANE Scanner Access Now Easy              sane-v4l(5)

## NAME

           sane-v4l - SANE interface for Video for Linux API

## DESCRIPTION

           The  sane-v4l library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) back-
           end that provides generic access to video cameras and similar equipment
           using the V4L (Video for Linux) API.

           This  is  ALPHA  software.  Really!  Important features are missing and
           there are lots of bugs. The code is currently only tested  on  a  Linux
           2.4 system with a Hauppauge WinTV video card.

## DEVICE NAMES

           This backend expects device names of the form:

                  special

           Where  special is the UNIX path-name for the special device that corre-
           sponds to the v4l device.  The special device name must be a v4l device
           or  a  symlink to such a device.  For example, such a device name could
           be /dev/video0 or /dev/bttv0.

## CONFIGURATION

           The contents of the v4l.conf file is a list of device names that corre-
           spond  to v4l devices.  Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark
           (#) are ignored.  A sample configuration file is shown below:

                  /dev/bttv0
                  # this is a comment
                  /dev/video3

## FILES

           /usr/local/etc/sane.d/v4l.conf
                  The  backend  configuration  file  (see  also   description   of
                  SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

           /usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-v4l.a
                  The static library implementing this backend.

           /usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-v4l.so
                  The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
                  that support dynamic loading).

## ENVIRONMENT

           SANE_CONFIG_DIR
                  This environment variable specifies the list of directories that
                  may contain the configuration file.  Under UNIX, the directories
                  are separated by a colon (`:'), under OS/2, they  are  separated
                  by a semi-colon (`;').  If this variable is not set, the config-
                  uration file is searched in two default directories: first,  the
                  current     working     directory     (".")    and    then    in
                  /usr/local/etc/sane.d.  If the value of the environment variable
                  ends  with  the  directory separator character, then the default
                  directories are searched after the explicitly specified directo-
                  ries.   For  example,  setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:"
                  would   result   in   directories   "tmp/config",    ".",    and
                  "/usr/local/etc/sane.d" being searched (in this order).

           SANE_DEBUG_V4L
                  If  the  library  was  compiled with debug support enabled, this
                  environment variable controls the debug level for this  backend.
                  E.g.,  a  value  of 128 requests all debug output to be printed.
                  Smaller levels reduce verbosity.

## AUTHOR

           Juergen G. Schimmer, Henning Meier-Geinitz

## BUGS:

           If more than one video card is present, a crash  may  occur.  Frequency
           and geometry selection is missing.
           Send      bug     reports     to     the     SANE     mailing     list:
           sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org.  You must be subscribed to the list
           to  send  mail.  See http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html for
           details.

## SEE ALSO

           sane(7), xcam(1).

    sane-backends 1.0.12-cvs          28 Aug 2002                      sane-v4l(5)