Multiple Webcams Make Computer Grind to a Halt

[rowanparker]

Hello,
I'm just a bit puzzled, I am unsure whether this is how aMSN works under linux or how v4l works under linux but you might be able to help regardless.

If i do webcam (send) with one person, the computer works at normal speed, totally fine. But if i do it with two people (sending) then it just stops. I cannot do anything until i close one of webcam windows.

Any work around or fix to this?
Thanks, Rowan.

[kakaroto]

hum... if you do two webcams, we use the same capture object to capture from both... it could be the driver that doesn't work fine, or it could be because we capture too fast (twice as fast since we have two streams requesting the data), and the driver just 'hangs' because the webcam itself can't output that many FPS.

[rowanparker]

Oh right, I see, I see.

Is there any way to, say, when doing two webcams only get the same amount of frames but then share them between. For example, if it currently grabs them at 10FPS per webcam and if you send webcam again then it would still be 10FPS from the whole thing (and 5 each from webcam). Does that make sense?

Or is there a better work around?

Thanks, Rowan.