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author | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
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committer | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
commit | 5d1646d90e1f2cceb9f0828f4b28318cd0ec7744 (patch) | |
tree | a94efe259b9009378be6d90eb30d2b019d95c194 /Documentation/driver-api/media/v4l2-intro.rst | |
parent | Initial commit. (diff) | |
download | linux-upstream/5.10.209.tar.xz linux-upstream/5.10.209.zip |
Adding upstream version 5.10.209.upstream/5.10.209upstream
Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>
Diffstat (limited to '')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/driver-api/media/v4l2-intro.rst | 76 |
1 files changed, 76 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/media/v4l2-intro.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/media/v4l2-intro.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..4d54fa9d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/driver-api/media/v4l2-intro.rst @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 + +Introduction +------------ + +The V4L2 drivers tend to be very complex due to the complexity of the +hardware: most devices have multiple ICs, export multiple device nodes in +/dev, and create also non-V4L2 devices such as DVB, ALSA, FB, I2C and input +(IR) devices. + +Especially the fact that V4L2 drivers have to setup supporting ICs to +do audio/video muxing/encoding/decoding makes it more complex than most. +Usually these ICs are connected to the main bridge driver through one or +more I2C buses, but other buses can also be used. Such devices are +called 'sub-devices'. + +For a long time the framework was limited to the video_device struct for +creating V4L device nodes and video_buf for handling the video buffers +(note that this document does not discuss the video_buf framework). + +This meant that all drivers had to do the setup of device instances and +connecting to sub-devices themselves. Some of this is quite complicated +to do right and many drivers never did do it correctly. + +There is also a lot of common code that could never be refactored due to +the lack of a framework. + +So this framework sets up the basic building blocks that all drivers +need and this same framework should make it much easier to refactor +common code into utility functions shared by all drivers. + +A good example to look at as a reference is the v4l2-pci-skeleton.c +source that is available in samples/v4l/. It is a skeleton driver for +a PCI capture card, and demonstrates how to use the V4L2 driver +framework. It can be used as a template for real PCI video capture driver. + +Structure of a V4L driver +------------------------- + +All drivers have the following structure: + +1) A struct for each device instance containing the device state. + +2) A way of initializing and commanding sub-devices (if any). + +3) Creating V4L2 device nodes (/dev/videoX, /dev/vbiX and /dev/radioX) + and keeping track of device-node specific data. + +4) Filehandle-specific structs containing per-filehandle data; + +5) video buffer handling. + +This is a rough schematic of how it all relates: + +.. code-block:: none + + device instances + | + +-sub-device instances + | + \-V4L2 device nodes + | + \-filehandle instances + + +Structure of the V4L2 framework +------------------------------- + +The framework closely resembles the driver structure: it has a v4l2_device +struct for the device instance data, a v4l2_subdev struct to refer to +sub-device instances, the video_device struct stores V4L2 device node data +and the v4l2_fh struct keeps track of filehandle instances. + +The V4L2 framework also optionally integrates with the media framework. If a +driver sets the struct v4l2_device mdev field, sub-devices and video nodes +will automatically appear in the media framework as entities. |