This may be slightly off-topic. We have 4 Logitech Pro 4000 webcams processed through PiDiP on ubuntu 6.04. There is a latency (less than 1 second?) between the live action and the video as shown by the webcams. The number of webcams connected doesn't affect the latency. The latency is not cause by PiDiP since the same latency is present when using the webcams with any application, such as VLC.

My experience with webcams is basically limited to just this Linux system with these webcams. Is this latency normal? Is it avoidable? Would I experience this latency on any OS and with all webcams and distros? Is the USB2 part of it i.e. would there be less latency with firewire? Would a patched real-time kernel make any difference, or are the differences from patched kernels mostly about sound? Is the latency coming from the webcam itself, video for Linux, or the pwc driver for the webcam?

Related: I have been under the impression that running realtime-lsm and realtime scheduling for JACK would pretty much minimize the latency for sound. However, I've been wondering if a patched kernel would have further benefits. If anybody has advice for me on this, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

-John