I want to take the input from a standard, off the shelf, IP based webcam - which, has yet to be decided, so the API is not yet clear - manipulate it a little and then pump it back out so that others can view my manipulated image.
Given that this is a little vague, which technologies can you recommend?
I am thinking to use an Adroid slate, to save costs, so it's probably Java coding. So, how best to get an image stream (plus void, modify the stream and send the modified video plus unmodified audio?
I might also add file transfer & IM chat into the mix ...
FOSS solutions highly welcomed
Most IP cameras produce RTP/RTSP with jmpeg, mpeg4 or h.264 encoded stream.
You would need to write a RTP/RTSP client and then a decoder for the particular stream, then manipulate images, reencode stream and serve it over some standard protocol (again probably RTP/RTSP).
Not something Android devices are powerful enough to do. Also there are no pure Java libs that can do this.
What you should use is Xuggler. If you need to serve streams to Flash and/or iPhone you should add Wowza or Red5.