USB video capture? composite, s-video, etc

does anybody have any experience with any of these composite video to usb devices on linux?
usb video capture - Google Product Search

would like to get one but a linux newbie and having trouble figuring out if any are ported...
i've found lots of things that link to freedesktop.org DisplayLink Wiki - FrontPage but haven't found any specific mentions of any of these video capture devices.

any tips?

thanks,
dan

"porting" isn't quite the right word. That implies having access to some other source code to base things off of, and that's almost never the case for hardware drivers. They generally have to write linux drivers from scratch based on device specifications, which manufacturers are often loath to provide. So a lack of a driver doesn't mean "not ported yet", but often means "no specifications available for anyone to even try to make a driver".

Nitpicking aside, it might be better to see what drivers linux has than to randomly google USB hardware. Linux drivers usually list chipsets, not models, since many different things ultimately use the same or similar chipsets hence drivers.

Here's the USB devices the 2.6.27 kernel has available:

USB Video Class (UVC)
USB GSPCA driver (NEW)
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2 support (NEW)
Empia EM28xx USB video capture support (NEW)
USB video devices based on Nogatech NT1003/1004/1005 (NEW)
USB 3com HomeConnect (aka vicam) support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
USB IBM (Xirlink) C-it Camera support (NEW)
USB Konica Webcam support (NEW)
USB Logitech Quickcam Messenger (NEW)
USB ET61X[12]51 PC Camera Controller support (NEW)
OmniVision Camera Chip support (NEW)
USB W996[87]CF JPEG Dual Mode Camera support (NEW)
USB OV511 Camera support (NEW)
USB SE401 Camera support (NEW)
USB SN9C1xx PC Camera Controller support (NEW)
USB STV680 (Pencam) Camera support (NEW)
USB ZC0301[P] Image Processor and Control Chip support (NEW)
USB Philips Cameras (NEW)
USB ZR364XX Camera support (NEW)
USB Syntek DC1125 Camera support (NEW)
USB Sensoray 2255 video capture device (NEW)

Highlighted the interesting-looking ones...

  • UVC is a generic driver that supports most any video device with the UVC device class.
  • The Hauppage driver is pretty obvious in what devices it's for.
  • The em28xx driver supports a huge variety of devices.