The USB video device class (also USB video class or UVC) is a USB device class that describes devices capable of streaming video like

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripher ...

s, digital

camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-sw ...

s, transcoders, analog video converters and still-image cameras. The latest revision of the USB video class specification carries the version number 1.5 and was defined by the USB Implementers Forum in a set of documents describing both the basic protocol and the different payload formats.USB Device Class Definition for Video Devices, Revision 1.5
June 2012.

Devices

Webcams

Webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripher ...

s were among the first devices to support the UVC standard and are currently the most popular UVC devices.

TV receivers and video recorders

UVC v1.5 supports transmission of compressed video streams, including MPEG-2 TS,

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

, MPEG-4 SL SMPTE VC1 and

MJPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPEG ...

Formats

* Uncompressed

YUV YUV is a color model typically used as part of a color image pipeline. It encodes a color image or video taking human perception into account, allowing reduced bandwidth for chrominance components, compared to a "direct" RGB-representation. H ...

formats

YUY2 YUV is a color model typically used as part of a color image pipeline. It encodes a color image or video taking human perception into account, allowing reduced bandwidth for chrominance components, compared to a "direct" RGB-representation. ...

, NV12 * DV formats SD-DV, SDL-DV, and HD-DV (525-60, 625-50, 1125–60, 1250-50) * Frame-based * Video stream formats like MPEG-2 TS,

, MPEG-4 SL, SMPTE VC1,

VP8 VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released as an open and royalty-free format in May 2010 after Goo ...

and

Revision history

For detailed history on releases, see the revision history section of the published USB UVC documents, available from th
USB.org
page.

Operating system support

; Android:As of the release of Android 10 (and still as of June 2020) Android does not support UVC (USB video devices). Earlier Android versions do support UVC. ; Linux:USB video class support for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

is provided by th
Linux UVC driver
although as of July 2017 support for still-image capture is not yet implemented. The UVC driver has been included in the Linux kernel source code since kernel version 2.6.26. ''Detection'' of UVC 1.5 devices was introduced in Linux kernel version 4.5, but support in the driver for UVC 1.5 specific features or specific UVC 1.5 devices was not added and MPEG-2 TS, H.264 and VP8 payloads are not supported yet. The result is that some UVC 1.5 devices that also support UVC 1.1 work correctly. ; macOS:

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

ships with a UVC driver included since version 10.4.3, updated in 10.4.9 to work with iChat. ; Windows:

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

has a

class driver {{inline, date=May 2015 In computing, a class driver is a type of hardware device driver that can operate a large number of different devices of a broadly similar type. Class drivers are very often used with USB based devices, which share the esse ...

for USB video class 1.0 devices since Service Pack 2, as does

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and

Windows CE 6.0 Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (codenamed "''Yamazaki''") is the sixth major release of the Microsoft Windows embedded operating system targeted to enterprise-specific tools such as industrial controllers and consumer electronics devices like digital ...

. A post-service pack 2 update that adds more capabilities is also available. Windows 7 added UVC 1.1 support. Support for UVC 1.5 is currently only available in Windows 8, 10 and 11. Most device manufacturers do, however, provide their own drivers tailored to the capabilities of the product in question.: ; FreeBSD:

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

added the ''uvc'' driver for UVC devices in Jan 18, 2011; added in the 9.0 release. ; NetBSD:

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is ava ...

added the uvideo driver for UVC devices in September 2008; added in the 5.0 release. ; OpenBSD:

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project e ...

added the uvideo driver for UVC devices in April 2008; it appears in the 4.4 release. ; PlayStation 3:The

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...

added support for UVC compatible webcams in firmware version 1.54 (only works for video chat, not games.) ; MenuetOS:

MenuetOS MenuetOS is an operating system with a monolithic preemptive, real-time kernel written in FASM assembly language. The system also includes video drivers. It runs on 64-bit and 32-bit x86 architecture computers. Its author is Ville M. Turjan ...

added support for UVC compatible webcams in version 0.87 ; Solaris: Solaris includes support for UVC webcams in the form of the usbvc driver for OpenSolaris. The driver ships with Solaris Express and later.

References

{{USB USB Videotelephony