Finding capture device

Question

hi,
im trying to determine through code whether a person has a web cam installed on the computer. I know the following code can do that but the code assume RGB format is supported by the capture device.
RGBformat rgbFormat = new RGBFormat();
Vector videoDevs = CaptureDeviceManager.getDeviceList(rgbFormat);
Is there a way i can retrieve the list of webcams registered with jmf without having to assume a specific format is supported?
thanks

Answer 1

Yeah, pass null instead... here's a code snippet.
Also, if this fails, you can try to iterate through the VFW ( video for windows ) devices too.
regards,
Owen
public CaptureDeviceInfo autoDetect ( )
    Vector list = CaptureDeviceManager.getDeviceList ( null );
    CaptureDeviceInfo devInfo = null;
    if ( list != null )
        String name;
        for ( int i=0; i<list.size(); i++ )
            devInfo = (CaptureDeviceInfo)list.elementAt ( i );
            name = devInfo.getName();
            if ( name.startsWith ("vfw:") )
                break;
        if ( devInfo != null && devInfo.getName().startsWith("vfw:") )
            return ( devInfo );
        else
            for ( int i = 0; i < 10; i++ )
                try
                    name = VFWCapture.capGetDriverDescriptionName ( i );
                    if (name != null && name.length() > 1)
                        devInfo = com.sun.media.protocol.vfw.VFWSourceStream.autoDetect ( i );
                        if ( devInfo != null )
                            return ( devInfo );
                catch ( Exception ioEx )
                    // ignore errors detecting device
                    statusBar.setText ( "AutoDetect failed : " + ioEx.getMessage() );
            return ( null );
    else
        return ( null );
}