What *exactly* comes out of a webcam's USB connector?

Specifically, what kind of data is being squirted from a camera into a computer? Is it a raw format, is it immediately converted to an MPEG...what is the video format coming out and where can I read up more about it?

Thanx very much.

Al Peterson
Washington DC

I found these two web sites, that might be worth looking at:

http://www.astrosurf.com/astrobond/...
http://arnholm.org/astro/software/a...

"What *exactly* comes out of a webcam's USB connector?"

A series of ones and zeros.

The format of the resultant video will depend on the capture software used. A webcam is one of the simplest of camera designs, containing no video encoder onboard. The cam does have circuitry that processes the images into a digital signal, but no encoding is done. The cam then sends the digital signal (the ones and zeros) to your computer, where the signal is encoded by software.

Please let us know if you found someone's advice to be helpful.

Aegis, thank you. Those sites may prove helpful to me.

Sci-Guy, why did you even bother to post? I'm getting information about RGB24 and YUV420 from people with a genuine desire to be helpful, not a snarky "ones and zeros" response. If you can't contribute something useful, please don't post.

Al Peterson
Washington DC

Jeez, RadAmEngr, that's pretty rude to someone who was just trying to help. I'm sorry now that I made an attempt. It probably won't happen in the future.

Probably a teenager who has some growing up to do.