xawtv is SUPPOSED to be able to capture video, but i haven't heard anyone getting this working yet.

I used the webcam utility that comes with xawtv and didn't really care for it too much as (IMHO) it was pretty heavy on the configuration end to get it to do what I wanted. Now using a very simple utility called motion.

http://motion.sourceforge.net/

I run everything from a CD so I carry around a thumbdrive with basic utilities, scripts, and drivers I need. On there I have the logitech quickcam-usb drivers and a compiled motion binary.

There are limitations; motion works on motion detection, so you can't get a standard 30FPS video like you can with some web utilities. However, it does a great job of letting you set the thresh hold sensitivity. When it detects motion, it takes a picture. The resulting jpgs I join together to make a DIVX avi file, or just watch via slide show in kuickshow.

Usually use the command:

./motion -Q -L85

for decent framerate and no annoyin beep everytime a jpg is rendered.

Its not perfect, but it is very small and portable, and I found easiest to deal with. Also great for just testing a webcam.

As a final note, if you want standard 30 FPS avi type video, I do the same sort of thing by carrying around a compiled version of streamer which is part of the mplayer package, but I just use this utility. These files are good quality, but get HUGE quickly (approx 10M a minute rough guess). I never have been able to get mencoder working with my logictech quickcam, keeps skwauking about not having a bttv device attached (duh!). Theortically it should work with better quality and smaller video foot print.

~pau1