A lot has happened since I posted my ugly hacks required to take advantage of the H.264 compressor in the Logitech C920 webcam. Gstreamer 1.2 now includes a uvch264src that can be used to read H.264 encoded video stream from the camera eliminating the need for an external capture application.
C920
Turning the Beaglebone into a high definition IP camera
Few weeks ago I posted some notes about using the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 with Gstreamer. I have since ported the setup to the Beaglebone, effectively turning my Beaglebone into a streaming IP camera that can deliver constant bitrate H.264 video at full 1920x1080p30 resolution without breaking a sweat.
Using the Logitech C920 webcam with Gstreamer
You may already know about my existing enthusiasm for Logitech webcams, which is due to the combination of relatively good image quality, high resolution and easy to use UVC interface. I was therefore very happy to learn about their newest camera, the HD Pro Webcam C920, which in addition to the standard HD webcam stuff we already know from the C910, also provides hardware encoded H.264 video stream! This is rather new and there isn’t much software that can take advantage of it; however, with a little tweaking and hacking we can get the H.264 stream into Gstreamer, where after we can do pretty much whatever we want.