The USB video device class (also USB video class or UVC) is a

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

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, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

s, digital camcorders, 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, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

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, MPEG-4 SL SMPTE VC1 and MJPEG.

Formats

* Uncompressed YUV formats YUY2, 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, H.264, MPEG-4 SL, SMPTE VC1, VP8 and MJPEG

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. As of December 2023 Feature drop update to Android 14 UVC support returns to the system. ; Linux:USB video class support for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

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, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

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 released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

has a class driver 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, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and Windows CE 6.0. 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.: In Microsoft Windows, hardware acceleration support for UVC device required vendor drivers must be installed. ; FreeBSD:

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

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-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

added the uvideo driver for UVC devices in September 2008; added in the 5.0 release. ; OpenBSD: OpenBSD 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 and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

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