http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=450581

schweini has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dearly beloved,

I need to integrate the functionality of reading the current picture from a webcam that is connected to a PC into my Tk app - if at all possible, in a cross-platformy kind of way.
I haven't done it yet, but on linux, simply (ab)using vidcat for this looks as if it's going to be quite trivial - and if not, there's always Video::Capture::V4l (even though the documentation is a bit 'lacking'). Now, how can i do this on Windows in a minimalistic way? Is there a vidcat-equivalent for Windows somewhere? Is there some really easy way to tell DirectX (or VfW, or whatever - I've never 'talked' to Windows components before) to simply give me the data for the current picture? I could live without this program running on windows, but if there's a really simple to do this, I'd obviously prefer to maintain Windows compatability...

thanks for any pointers,

-schweini