This is a proof-of-concept, experimental capture driver. It uses FFmpeg to stream video from webcam device through process standard output.

This driver has been tested on:

• Fedora 26 (FFmpeg 3.1.11 and Oracle JDK 8),
• Ubuntu 14.04 (FFmpeg 3.3.3 and Oracle JDK 8) ,
• Raspbian GNU/Linux 9.3 (stretch) (FFmpeg 3.2.10 and OpenJDK 1.8.0_151),
• Windows 7 64bits (FFmpeg 3.4.1 and Oracle JDK 9).

It has some problems because it starts own sub-process to stream data from ffmpeg and this process needs to be killed, but in general works well.

Set new driver before you start using Webcam class:

public class TakePictureExample {

	// set capture driver for ffmpeg tool
	static {
		Webcam.setDriver(new FFmpegCliDriver());
	}

	public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

		// get default webcam and open it
		Webcam webcam = Webcam.getDefault();
		webcam.open();

		// get image from webcam device
		BufferedImage image = webcam.getImage();

		// save image to PNG file
		ImageIO.write(image, "JPG", new File("test.jpg"));

		// close webcam
		webcam.close();
	}
}

This particular driver code is released under Public Domain license.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

In case this is not legally possible, I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.