Viewing a V4L webcam with mplayer…
This took me a few minutes, but I figured it out, and archived it here so I wouldn’t need to spend that time again.
mplayer -cache 128 -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:outfmt=i420 -vc rawi420 -vo xv tv://
It works.

[tags]My Projects,Webcam,Mplayer[/tags]
Addendum: You can specify which video device by adding it to the tv options:
mplayer -cache 128 -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:outfmt=i420:device=/dev/video1 -vc rawi420 -vo xv tv://

January 4th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Thank you for this post!
March 19th, 2008 at 2:09 am
[...] to google and brainwagon fro the [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I am hoping this will save a lot of time…………Thanks in Anticipation
June 21st, 2008 at 8:52 am
Mine needs the frame rate. This works:
mplayer -fps 30 -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video1 tv://
September 1st, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Has anyone get this working with a Logitech Quickcam on N800? If yes, where can I find the kernel module?
November 8th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Worked first time, thanks! (Using it with a Logitech Communicate STX USB webcam and the gspca driver for it, which provides a v4l interface.)
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:39 am
Need to use ‘v4l2′ driver on Hardy 8.04 (Linux thor 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Fri Oct 24 06:42:44 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux):
mplayer -fps 30 -cache 128 -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0 tv://
This is rockin!! Long live mplayer!
Still one of my fav apps for almost a decade.
Cheers