Utilize a webcam on a Linux PC to a Windows PC

Question

I have a dummy PC (Linux Mint 14 Nadia) that it just have a webcam and TeamViewer. I use that PC to connect to a virtual machine (Win 7) hosted in a more powerful PC. Both are located in the same house. I'm in need of a way to use the webcam in my dummy PC from the virtual machine in the other PC. My question is what software is there that can stream/utilize over a webcam on the dummy PC to the more powerful pc? Is there software that works directly through TeamViewer or is there some third party software I can use?

Answer 1

You can run VLC on the "dummy PC" and set it to stream its web cam from the IP address of that PC - then any other machine on the same network, including your VM, can connect to it as a consumer of that stream.

• To begin with open an instance of VLC media player and choose Open Capture Device then select your Web Cam
• Select the Drop Down Arrow at the side of the Play button and select Stream

• Step through the resulting wizard selecting a destination such as http depending on how you are going to consume the stream & providing any required transcoding.

VCL is available for most platforms and is free, gratis & open source.

You can almost certainly do the same with other software that allows the web cam as a source and can output a stream - IIRC this is possible from the command line using FFMPEG but with a lot more specific settings required.