The 7 Best Webcam Tools For Linux Users
While the Linux platform doesn’t have as many webcam programs as Mac or Windows, there still are many webcam tools for Linux. If you’ve had some problems finding an excellent webcam viewer for your PC’s webcam, or webcam manipulation program for Linux, this list is sure to help!
Read on below to learn the seven best webcam tools for the Linux platform!
1. OBS (Open Broadcaster)
Open Broadcaster is a sophisticated tool that is highly popular with online video streamers. However, the app also makes an excellent webcam manipulation program and screencasting tool (especially since it allows users to add webcams on top of recordings/broadcasts).
Notable Features:
- Open Broadcaster is an excellent tool for those on Linux who need to produce professional-looking content, as it can handle multiple webcams at a time, independently without difficulty.
- In OBS, it’s possible to change the default audio input, meaning if your webcam has a lousy microphone, you don’t have to use it.
- OBS can stream to the internet to a multitude of services, like YouTube, Twitch, and more, with only a little bit of setup.
- Real-time audio/video mixing and capture feature mean your content produced on Linux looks excellent.
- Open Broadcaster has support for an unlimited amount of scenes, which allows users to orient many different webcam shots and switch to them in realtime during a stream or recording.
- Integrated webcam configuration tool lets users adjust and tweak how OBS handles each webcam.
- OBS sports a modular user interface that is customizable.
- Aside from excellent webcam support on Linux, Open Broadcaster supports various types of capture cards.
- Recording video games on Linux with a webcam scene is possible, thanks to OBS’s stellar video game detection abilities.
2. Kamoso
Kamoso is a simple webcam recording tool for the KDE desktop environment. With Kamoso, users can easily record videos directly from any webcam for YouTube, take screenshots, etc.
Notable Features:
- Kamoso has a useful plugin feature that users can take advantage of to add in features that the main program doesn’t support.
- The program has a pretty useful video settings tweak tool that lets users adjust how the video recording looks. Video tweaks include brightness, hue, contrast, saturation, and gamma.
- Kamoso’s “Burst” mode lets the user take many photos in one go, rapidly. This feature is useful, especially for making animated GIFs of webcam recordings.
- The built-in gallery browser feature lets users quickly view previously recorded videos and pictures.
3. Cheese
The Cheese webcam booth is a piece of software that allows users to record video easily, take pictures and even apply graphical effects on screen.
Cheese is part of the Gnome desktop environment, though many other GTK desktop environments use it too.
Notable Features:
- Cheese is one of the only webcam applications on Linux that lets users add quick effects to their video recordings or pictures with relative ease.
- The Cheese webcam app has a useful countdown timer that lets the user know when recording starts.
- The “Burst mode” in Cheese lets users set the number of pictures to take in one go with a webcam.
- Cheese has a Kiosk mode that lets the app record/take photographs with the webcam in full-screen. This feature is perfect for setting up an office webcam PC.
4. Motion
Motion is a webcam-centric security tool. Its primary function is to monitor footage for subtle changes, as well as movement.
Notable Features:
- Motion has support for Video4Linux webcam devices, as well as network cameras.
- With Motion, users are not stuck with a single streaming format. Instead, the application has support for a few different types of streams for the devices that can connect to it.
- The Motion security monitoring tool is highly configurable, with dozens of settings tweaks and features making it perfect for those looking to take total control of their security using Linux.
- Motion is accessible in the web browser, so if set up on a Linux server, anyone on the network can access the Motion security center.
5. Guvcview
GTK+ UVC Viewer is a webcam viewing tool for Linux. It isn’t a webcam booth or recording studio tool. Instead, GTK+ UVC Viewer’s primary function is to make capturing footage through webcams on Linux effortless.
Notable Features:
- Dozens of configurable features, including camera brightness, contrast, saturation, white balance, picture temperature, gamma and more.
- Guvcview has a built-in audio mixing tool which lets users easily adjust the on-board microphone of many webcams.
- The program has an FPS counter in the title-bar for easy monitoring of video footage during video recordings.
6. Camorama
Need to take a picture with your webcam on your Linux PC? Do it with Camorama; a simple webcam picture taking app.
Though there are many webcam photo-taking applications for Linux, Camorama stands out by offering many image filters.
Notable Features:
- Aside from capturing local video on webcams, the Camorama can connect and record video files to a remote location (as of now, this feature only supports FTP).
- Camorama can save photo captures in both JPEG and PNG formats.
- Automatic capture feature works similar to “burst” and allows users to take many pictures at one time.
- Users can modify the white balance, brightness, color, and hue.
- Camorama has an FPS counter that appears at the bottom of the user interface, which allows users to determine the quality of video they’re recording. The FPS counting tool also displays the average framerate.
7. wxCam
wxCam, a refreshingly simple webcam recording tool for Linux, offers users the ability to take video, photos and even connect to Philips webcams for work with astronomy.
Notable Features:
- wxCam supports capturing photos via webcam with the Video4linux driver and can save pictures in various formats, like JPEG, TIF, BMP, PNG, XMP, and PCX.
- With wxCam, users have access to many different video effect, like mirror mode, monochrome, and even a color correction mode.
- Video recording in the wxCam is entirely lossless, so recordings from webcams look excellent.
- wxCam has support for the Philips webcam, including the ability to tweak shutter speed, FPS and more.
