February 12, 2022

Manually control a webcam using the command line on Linux

Any webcam compatible with the USB Video Class (UVC) standard should expose an API usable via v4l2-ctl.

Use the following command to check which devices are connected to your computer at the moment.

v4l2-ctl --list-devices

To check the available controllers for your device, run:

v4l2-ctl --list-ctrls-menus

For me, this feature is specially useful for managing focus, brightness and sharpness. The following commands work well with Logitech C922 at least.

# Manual focus
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl=focus_auto=0  # default=1
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl=focus_absolute=0

# Manual light exposure controls
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl=exposure_auto=1  # default=3 (Aperture Priority Mode)
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl=exposure_absolute=166  # min=12 max=664 default=166

# Brightness and other useful controls
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl=sharpness=170  # default=128
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl=brightness=150  # default=128
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl=backlight_compensation=1  # default=0

<laury.dev/>

Manually control a webcam using the command line on Linux

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